University of Wisconsin–Madison

cell biology

A greyscale electron microscopy image of a plant cell is shown on the left, the false-color rendering of the features in the EM image is shown on the right — Give most kids a basic microscope and a leaf or a drop of pond water, and they are in awe of the, well, microscopic patterns and organisms they can now see. Give a cell biologist a transmission electron microscope (TEM), and they can understand how structures within cells are organized […]

Seeing things more clearly, thanks to campus-wide microscopy effort

February 20, 2019 by Sarah Perdue

Three T cells are shown surrounding and binding a cancer cell, which will activate the T cells and lead to cancer cell death. — Leukemia is one of the most common cancers of childhood. So, as childhood cancer awareness month comes to a close on this almost final day of September, we wanted to take a moment to help explain a groundbreaking new FDA treatment – CAR-T cells – that offers hope to children with a […]

Driving the CAR-T toward better cancer treatments

September 29, 2017 by Sarah Perdue

At the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters’ James Watrous Gallery, local artist Leslie Iwai’s exhibit, Daughter Cells, is on display now through January 22. Iwai’s work was largely inspired through a collaboration with UW Carbone Cancer Center professor Mark Burkard and his research on cell division. I sat down with Iwai and Burkard recently to […]

When science becomes art

November 30, 2016 by Sarah Perdue

A plasma globe operating in a darkened room. — In a sense, kinases are like cellular spark plugs, says Kaine Korzekwa, a science writer for the UW–Madison biochemistry department. They help kick-start complex cellular machines, like the ones that decipher genome to transcribe RNA from DNA. But in another sense, he says, they’re like electrical relays, transferring signals from one cellular […]

Shutting down cellular “spark plugs” to understand how they work

August 25, 2016 by Kelly April Tyrrell

As gross as it may be, many of us have a hard time not picking a scab. We get a wound, it bleeds, and then seemingly like magic, it closes up and an oft irresistible crusty protective cap forms. With this, you’re familiar, but you probably haven’t given much thought […]

“A mad orgy of fusion”*

March 12, 2015 by Kelly April Tyrrell