When cells reach their breaking point
June 25, 2019—Researchers led by Quan Lu, associate professor of environmental genetics and pathophysiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School Public Health, recently published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that sheds light on the process that allows cells to bounce back from periods of intense stress and return to a healthy state. The findings, Lu said, could lead to new drug targets for a range of ailments, including diabetes, cancers, and neurodegenerative disorders.
Many factors can inflict stress on a cell. One common scenario begins with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), an organelle within a cell that acts like an assembly line, synthesizing and delivering essential proteins, including those that sit on the cell surface. When that happens, various molecules in the cell sense something is amiss and sound a proverbial alarm bell, which triggers a stress response.
When a cell’s stress response kicks in, one of two things will happen: The cell either works out the kinks in the system and gets up and running again, or it’s overwhelmed and self-destructs, a process scientists call apoptosis.