Neuroscience

How the brain knows when to take out the trash

The brain has its own housekeeping service, a sophisticated mechanism that cleans up debris that is left over from cellular activity. But scientists have had a hard time figuring out exactly how the brain knows when to initiate ...

Oncology & Cancer

Zombie cancer cells eat themselves to live

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Cell Reports and presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Conference 2014 shows that the cellular process ...

Medical research

Why do neurons die in Parkinson's disease?

Current thinking about Parkinson's disease is that it's a disorder of mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside cells, causing neurons in the brain's substantia nigra to die or become impaired. A study from Children's ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Function of gene mutations linked to neurological diseases identified

Several gene mutations have been linked to Parkinson's disease, but exactly how and where some of them cause their damage has been unclear. A new Yale study, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, shows that one of the ...

Medical research

Researchers reformulate the model of mitochondrial function

The discovery confirms the model proposed by the team in 2008 to account for observations that could not be explained by the established model of mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are the organelles in the interior of ...

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Organelle

In cell biology, an organelle ( /ɔrɡəˈnɛl/) is a specialized subunit within a cell that has a specific function, and is usually separately enclosed within its own lipid bilayer.

The name organelle comes from the idea that these structures are to cells what an organ is to the body (hence the name organelle, the suffix -elle being a diminutive). Organelles are identified by microscopy, and can also be purified by cell fractionation. There are many types of organelles, particularly in eukaryotic cells. Prokaryotes were once thought not to have organelles, but some examples have now been identified.

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