{"id":314823,"date":"2026-03-05T20:51:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T20:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/314823\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T20:51:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T20:51:06","slug":"plant-cell-structure-could-hold-key-to-cancer-therapies-and-improved-crops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/314823\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant Cell Structure Could Hold Key to Cancer Therapies and Improved Crops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can the bend of a banana give us insight into cancer? What does the shape of a rice grain have to do with infertility? The proteins that give plants their shape and structure are also involved in human disease. A team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, has mapped out the structure of a key player, augmin, in exhaustive detail<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work shows how plants and animals are similar,\u201d said Jawdat Al-Bassam<\/a>, associate professor of molecular and cellular biology at UC Davis. \u201cIt could help answer some fundamental questions not just about plants, but also humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Augmin is a protein complex that binds to microtubules, the cell\u2019s internal skeleton, aiding in the formation of branched microtubules and playing a key role in cell division.<\/p>\n

Augmin defects can cause infertility in humans. In addition, \u201csome augmin subunits are highly expressed in human cancer cells,\u201d said Bo Liu<\/a>, a professor of plant biology who collaborated with Al-Bassam on the new study. Understanding its structure could yield both new medical treatments and new strategies for breeding higher-quality rice and cotton crops.<\/p>\n

A surprise in plants<\/p>\n

Inside the cells of every plant and animal is a shape-shifting skeleton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This morphing skeleton can cause cells to expand, stretch, or bend \u2014 sculpting the overall shapes of bulging strawberries, curving cucumbers, and the long skinny nerve cells that connect our brains and feet.<\/p>\n

When a cell divides, its protein skeleton grows long arms that reach out and grasp the DNA-containing chromosomes. The arms then shorten \u2014 pulling the chromosomes apart \u2014 ensuring that each daughter cell receives a complete set of genes.<\/p>\n

A cell\u2019s skeleton assembles from tiny protein blocks called tubulin. The tubulin snaps together, creating hollow rods called microtubules. These microtubules form the arms of a bigger structure, called the spindle, which delicately separates the chromosomes when a cell divides.<\/p>\n

In 2007, scientists found that animal cells could not form a functioning spindle if they lacked the augmin protein complex. Without it, the microtubules could not branch, spindle arms were weak and flimsy, and the cells often died during division.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people did not think augmin was also in plants,\u201d Liu said. But, in 2011, he and his students discovered a set of eight augmin genes in Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant in the mustard family<\/a> often used in genetic research. Those plant genes encode a protein complex whose overall structure is very similar to human augmin.<\/p>\n

Cellular scaffolds, cotton and rice<\/p>\n

Liu discovered that plant augmin doesn\u2019t just assist cell division, as it does in animals, it also regulates the shapes of plant cells.<\/p>\n

As a plant cell grows, a scaffold of microtubules expands within it. That scaffold positions enzymes at the growing edges of the cell, allowing them to expand the rigid cellulose wall that surrounds a plant cell.<\/p>\n

When Liu reduced a cell\u2019s production of augmin, its scaffold became flimsy and disorganized<\/a>. \u201cMicrotubules guide the growth of cells,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This microtubule scaffold is critical for plant survival; oryzalin, an herbicide frequently used on farms, kills plants by interfering with it.<\/p>\n

Arabidopsis plant with defective augmin (right and inset) does not grow compared to a control plant (left). Some weedkillers attack the augmin system. (Bo Liu, UC Davis)<\/p>\n

The scaffolding also shapes important traits in crop plants. The juice in oranges is contained in gigantic cells whose dramatic ballooning is driven by a microtubule skeleton that expands inside each cell. Long-grained rice owes its shape to the microtubule scaffolds that cause individual cells to elongate. It\u2019s also important in cotton, whose fiber cells begin the size of a red blood cell and then extend, driven by telescoping microtubules.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty dramatic,\u201d Liu said. \u201cThey lengthen by thousands of times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as Liu pieced together the function of plant augmin, he knew almost nothing about how it physically initiates branches in microtubules. So, he collaborated with Al-Bassam, who worked upstairs in the same building, and who specializes in protein structures.<\/p>\n

A molecular pitchfork<\/p>\n

Md Ashaduzzaman, a postdoctoral fellow in Al-Bassam\u2019s lab, cooled plant augmin proteins to -196\u00b0C and took thousands of electron microscope images \u2014 an approach called CryoEM. He and Al-Bassam spent months assembling the data into a single structure.<\/p>\n

Their job was akin to someone who had never seen the Eiffel Tower, mapping its overall structure by piecing together thousands of up-close photos.<\/p>\n

They finally succeeded in unveiling the mystery structure<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAugmin turns out to look like a pitchfork,\u201d said Al-Bassam. He and Ashaduzzaman worked out how the pieces come together to form the complete augmin complex. They identified the critical structures that it uses attach to microtubules and form branches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seeing the nuanced differences between the plant and animal versions of augmin could improve our understanding of how it works on both sides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In humans, altered levels of augmin protein are associated with a worse prognosis in certain cancers of the liver, brain and other organs. Understanding how augmin functions \u2014 or malfunctions \u2014 could illuminate new ways to treat these cancers. It could also help identify the unknown causes of infertility in some people.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, understanding how augmin functions in plants could help scientists breed new varieties of important California crops, such plums and strawberries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Al-Bassam, it\u2019s a fulfilling outcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a very long endeavor,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a real labor of love that required a lot of people working together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their Augmin research utilized advanced scientific facilities at UC Davis, including the Biological Electron Microscopy Campus Core<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Additional authors of the new paper include: Aryan Taheri and Fei Guo, UC Davis; Yuqi Tang and Stephen D. Fried, Johns Hopkins University; and Shubham Mittal and Faruck Morcos, University of Texas at Dallas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can the bend of a banana give us insight into cancer? What does the shape of a rice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[170879,5300,37304,111,139,69,6244,147,51436],"class_list":["post-314823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-augmin","tag-cell-biology","tag-college-of-biological-sciences","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-plant-biology","tag-science","tag-structural-biology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}