eLife: upcoming articles

A unifying model of T-cell signaling protein condensates in reconstitution experiments

yadomar@mit.edu (Arup K Chakraborty) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The formation of condensates by the Linker for the Activation of T-cells (LAT) is a key signal gating and amplification step in the T-cell receptor signaling pathway. LAT condensation is challenging to study in-vivo and is therefore often investigated using reconstitution experiments. While these experiments recapitulate key aspects of LAT condensation, they also exhibit some puzzling features. Here, we describe the mechanisms underlying these observations using two complementary models. First, we employ a Smoluchowski aggregation model to show that the delay time before condensation is observed arises from a low effective binding probability between LAT monomers. Second, we propose a field-theoretic model that reproduces all condensate morphologies observed in experiments, showing that they can arise from common underlying dynamics modulated by variations in experimental conditions. This result unifies different experimental observations reported previously. While this article addresses open questions regarding the formation of LAT condensates, our results also provide a common framework for understanding condensation of other multivalent membrane proteins such as EGFR, FGFR2, and nephrin.

A novel prognostic score based on carbohydrate antigen 125, alpha-fetoprotein and carcinoembryonic antigen for Predicting postoperative prognosis in endometrial cancer: Results from a retrospective cohort study

yangh9@sj-hospital.org (Bo Wang) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Background: Endometrial cancer (EC) is a common gynecological malignancy with increasing incidence. While several serum biomarkers have been studied for EC, their combined prognostic value remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of preoperative serum CA125, CA19-9, CA72-4, CEA, and AFP levels in EC patients and develop a risk score for predicting survival outcomes.

Prominin 1 and Tweety Homology 1 both induce extracellular vesicle formation

bell@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu (Arezu Monshizadeh) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Prominin-1 (Prom1) is a five-transmembrane-pass integral membrane protein that associates with curved regions of the plasma membrane. Prom1 interacts with membrane cholesterol and actively remodels the plasma membrane. Membrane bending activity is particularly evident in photoreceptors, where Prom1 loss-of-function mutations cause failure of outer segment homeostasis, leading to cone-rod retinal dystrophy (CRRD). The Tweety Homology (Ttyh) protein family has been proposed to be homologous to Prominin, but it is not known whether Ttyh proteins have an analogous membrane-bending function. Here, we characterize the membrane-bending activity of human Prom1 and Ttyh1 in native bilayer membranes. We find that Prom1 and Ttyh1 both induce formation of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in cultured mammalian cells and that the EVs produced are physically similar. Ttyh1 is more abundant in EV membranes than Prom1 and produces EVs with membranes that are more tubulated than Prom1 EVs. We further show that Prom1 interacts more stably with membrane cholesterol than Ttyh1 and that this may contribute to membrane bending inhibition in Prom1 EVs. Intriguingly, a loss-of-function mutation in Prom1 associated with CRRD induces particularly stable cholesterol binding. These experiments provide mechanistic insight into Prominin function in CRRD and suggest that Prom and Ttyh belong to a single family of functionally related membrane-bending, EV-generating proteins.