Microtubules — cellular “highways” that deliver cargo to the cell membrane for secretion — have a surprising role in pancreatic beta cells. Instead of facilitating glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, they limit it, a team of Vanderbilt investigators reported recently in Developmental Cell.

There’s a little bit of Peru in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.

Vanderbilt investigators have defined a gene expression program that controls the timing of synaptic remodeling – a process that is critical to brain development, learning and memory.

A signaling factor called Wnt10b is a novel target for optimizing cardiac repair after a heart attack.

Understanding how signaling molecules are transported within and out of the cell may help to uncover the causes of certain cancers.

The factor FoxM1 increases the proliferation and function of insulin-producing beta cells, making it an attractive therapeutic target for diabetes.

Vanderbilt’s Ian Macara, Ph.D., has won an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) — nearly $6.6 million over seven years — to support the “unusual potential” of his research, which seeks to understand and predict cancer cell “behavior.”