From Laurel Hamer at Science News:
Textbook drawings of the cell’s largest organelle might need to be updated based on new images. Super-resolution shots of the endoplasmic reticulum reveal tightly packed tubes where previous pictures showed plain flat sheets, scientists report in the Oct. 28 Science.
The finding helps explain how the endoplasmic reticulum, or ER, reshapes itself in response to changing conditions, says study coauthor Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, a cell biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Va. More.
And it all just happens, see, via natural selection acting on random mutations, like textbooks have been preaching for fifty years.
Yuh.
See also: Royal Society meeting on new trend in evolutionary biology is definitely going ahead If Darwin’s boys don’t get to town in time, it will be historic.
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Legend to figure: Components of a typical animal cell:
- Nucleolus
- Nucleus
- Ribosome (little dots)
- Vesicle
- Rough endoplasmic reticulum
- Golgi apparatus (or “Golgi body”)
- Cytoskeleton
- Smooth endoplasmic reticulum
- Mitochondrion
- Vacuole
- Cytosol (fluid that contains organelles, comprising the cytoplasm)
- Lysosome
- Centrosome
- Cell membrane