The Molecular and Cellular Biology Portal

Welcome to the Molecular and Cellular Biology portal. Molecular biology is the study of biology at the molecular level. The field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry. Cell biology studies the properties of cells including their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. Molecular and cellular biology are interrelated, since most of the properties and functions of a cell can be described at the molecular level.

Molecular and Cellular Biology encompass many biological fields including: Biotechnology, Developmental biology, Genetics and Microbiology.

Selected article

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (i.e. accelerate) chemical reactions. Enzymes are biochemical catalysts. In these reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process are called substrates, and the enzyme converts these into different set of molecule(s), the product(s). Almost all processes in the cell need enzymes in order to occur at significant rates. Since enzymes are extremely selective for their substrates and speed up only a few reactions from among many possibilities, the set of enzymes made in a cell determines the biochemistry and signal transduction that occur in a cell.

Selected picture

Overview of C4 carbon fixation, one of three biochemical mechanisms, along with C3 and CAM photosynthesis, functioning in land plants to "fix" carbon dioxide (binding the gaseous molecules to dissolved compounds inside the plant) for sugar production through photosynthesis.

Selected biography

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English physical chemist and crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine structures of DNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. In the years following, she led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses. She died in 1958 of cancer of the ovary.

Did you know...

• ...that a Ribozyme is an RNA molecule that can catalyze a chemical reaction just like enzymes and may pre-date them?
• ...that several groups have manage to add non-natural bases to DNA, while others have added non-natural amino acids into the genetic code?
• ...that Deinococcus radiodurans is one of the most radioresistant organisms known, while some fungi survive by harnessing the energy from radiation?
• ...that the cytoskeleton of a cell acts like a tensegrity model [1], such that a cell can resist shear, compression and tension.
• ...that eggs laid by the Ostrich can weigh 1.3 kg and the contained yolk is the largest single cell of any organism?
• ...that Red blood cells have an average life span of 120 days?
• ...that Red blood cells do not contain the genetic material in order to synthesize new proteins or undergo cell division?
• ...that Robert Hooke coined the biological term cell -- so called because his observations of plant cells reminded him of monks' cells which were called "cellula"?

Did you know archive

Molecular and Cellular Biology news

• October 2009, Nobel foundation: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 went to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase.

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Categories

Branches of Molecular and Cellular Biology

• Biochemistry
• Biotechnology
• Bioinformatics
• Cell Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Genetics
• Microbiology
• Molecular Biology: Cell Signaling
• Systems Biology

WikiProjects

• WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology

Daughter Project

• WikiProject Cell Signaling

Task forces

• Metabolic Pathways

Quotes

—Jules Henri Poincaré, La Science et l'Hypothèse (Of Science and Hypotheses) (1901)

Molecular and Cellular Biology topics

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