Cells maintain membrane function by actively balancing the molecular shape of their lipids. Milshteyn et al. find that, when subjected to high hydrostatic pressure, yeast and human cells, but not bact...

Das et al. show that the death mechanism ferroptosis is regulated in cell populations by the parallel induction of necrotic and apoptotic modes of execution. Death propagation, a unique feature of nec...

To what extent can large-scale approaches accurately reconstruct classic signaling pathways? Here, authors revisit the EGF pathway using phosphoproteomics and kinase-substrate interactions

Coupling an optogenetic lipid-modifying enzyme with proximity labeling reveals protein networks and mechanisms regulating lipid homeostasis in the membranes of target organelles.

Intracellular sterol transport proteins (STPs) are key regulators of cholesterol homeostasis and potential drug targets in a broad range of diseases i…

Bempedoic acid is a recently approved drug that lowers cholesterol and lipids. Papa et al. show that bempedoic acid directly binds to and activates PPARα to enhance fatty acid oxidation, revealing the...

Schweinfurthins (SWs) are natural products isolated from the plant genus Macaranga which display a unique cytotoxicity profile in human cancer cell lines with low nanomolar potency. Their known target...

Cholesterol is ubiquitous in biology, shaping membrane properties and serving as a biosynthetic precursor for essential signaling molecules and hormones─and, in some contexts, acting as a signaling mo...

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising strategy for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), but the immune consequences of tumor cell death remain incompletely understood. We compared two ruthenium(II) polypyridine photosensitizers (PSs) in HNSCC models and found that both were potently phototoxic (nanomolar IC50s), triggered diverse cell death pathways (including autophagy and ferroptosis), and promoted hallmark danger signals of immunogenic cell death (ICD). Strikingly, only one PS induced apoptosis and strong endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, yet paradoxically led to immune tolerance in vivo. Conversely, the PS that did not induce apoptotic cell death with milder stress responses resulted in a better antitumor immunity in vivo. These unexpected findings challenge the prevailing view that PDT-triggered apoptosis and ER stress are essential for ICD. Our study underscores the complexity of PDT-induced cell death balance and immunogenic signals and highlights the need to redefine ICD-inducing criteria for the rational design of next-generation PSs.

Elhan et al. show that ATG2A acts with DGAT2, the enzyme producing triacylglycerol (TAG), in lipid droplet growth. By delivering diacylglycerol to lipid droplets, ATG2A not only fuels TAG production b...

Cao, Peng, and Yang et al. present a high-content image-based phenotyping pipeline for quantitative analysis of organelle morphology. The interpretable fea

Lange et al. identify a lipid droplet quality control pathway in which FSP1 safeguards stored neutral lipids from lipid peroxidation, thereby preventing the induction of ferroptosis.

Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is an undefined additive that is ubiquitous to mammalian cell culture media and whose functional contributions to promoting c…

Cholesterol attenuates progesterone signaling through competitive binding of progesterone receptors.

A new review of recent studies shows the great apes rely on medicinal plants to heal infections, but the plants’ chemistry remains mostly a mystery

Nature Cell Biology - Wang et al. show the recruitment of the lipid channel protein VPS13C and formation of VPS13C-dependent contacts between endoplasmic reticulum and lysosomes after lysosomal...

VPS13A and VPS13C are bridge-like lipid transport proteins with distinct subcellular localization and function, and their absence is linked with chorea-acanthocytosis and Parkinson's disease, respecti...

An approach combining bioorthogonal chemistry with genetically encoded fluorogen-activating proteins enables subcellular imaging of phospholipids and glycans, as well as the visualization of lipid tra...

Bioimaging has transformed our understanding of biological processes, yet extracting meaningful information from complex datasets remains a challenge, particularly for biologists without computationa....