In his first year of graduate school, Rice University biochemist Zachary Wright discovered something hidden inside a common piece of cellular machinery that’s essential for all higher order life from yeast to humans.
In his first year of graduate school, Rice University biochemist Zachary Wright discovered something hidden inside a common piece of cellular machinery that’s essential for all higher order life from yeast to humans.
What Wright saw in 2015 — subcompartments inside organelles called peroxisomes — is described in a study published today in Nature Communications.
“This is, without a doubt, the most unexpected thing our lab has ever discovered,” said study co-author Bonnie Bartel, Wright’s Ph.D. adviser and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. “This requires us to rethink everything we thought we knew about peroxisomes.”
Peroxisomes are compartments where cells turn fatty molecules into energy and useful materials, like the myelin sheaths that protect nerve cells. In humans, peroxisome dysfunction has been linked to severe metabolic disorders, and peroxisomes may have wider significance for neurodegeneration, obesity, cancer and age-related disorders.
Read more at: Rice University
