For immediate release: August 5, 2010 Media contact: Kitta
MacPherson, (609) 258-5729, firstname.lastname@example.org
Princeton-led team finds new building block in cells Zemer
Gitai, an assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton
University, members of his laboratory, and scientists from the
California Institute of Technology have published results in
Nature Cell Biology of new research into how a metabolic enzyme
in bacteria forms cytoplasmic filaments that affect bacterial
cell shape. The study was published online July 18. Gitai
describes the findings as follows: "We have discovered that an
enzyme that has a role in basic cellular metabolism (CtpS, the
enzyme that makes the essential nucleotide CTP), also forms
cytoskeletal filaments that can play a structural role in
regulating cell shape. "I'm very excited about this work since
it changes a lot of our thinking about both metabolism and the
cytoskeleton, and provides a clue about how the cytoskeleton
might have evolved in the first place. The w