{"id":206182,"date":"2025-02-11T22:16:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T04:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/disruption-of-a-single-amino-acid-in-a-cellular-protein-makes-breast-cancer-cells-behave-like-stem-cells"},"modified":"2025-02-11T22:16:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T04:16:04","slug":"disruption-of-a-single-amino-acid-in-a-cellular-protein-makes-breast-cancer-cells-behave-like-stem-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/disruption-of-a-single-amino-acid-in-a-cellular-protein-makes-breast-cancer-cells-behave-like-stem-cells","title":{"rendered":"Disruption of a single amino acid in a cellular protein makes breast cancer cells behave like stem cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/disruption-of-a-single-amino-acid-in-a-cellular-protein-makes-breast-cancer-cells-behave-like-stem-cells2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Vimentin is a type III intermediate filament (IF) protein normally expressed in cells that develop into connective tissue, blood vessels, and lymphatic tissue (mesenchymal cells). Despite being widely studied, its role in tumor growth and progression remains unexplored.<\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers at Queen Mary University of London have discovered how a small change in the vimentin protein can make <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/breast+cancer\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">breast cancer<\/a> more aggressive. The work is <a href=\"https:\/\/elifesciences.org\/reviewed-preprints\/104191\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal <i>eLife<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>By modifying a specific amino acid cysteine to serine residue at position 328 in vimentin, they discovered that this mutation disrupted the protein\u2019s interaction with the cell\u2019s structural network. Remarkably, the mutated vimentin induced aggressive cancer-like behavior in breast cancer cells, including faster cell growth, migration, and invasion accompanied by reduced <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/cell+adhesion\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cell adhesion<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vimentin is a type III intermediate filament (IF) protein normally expressed in cells that develop into connective tissue, blood vessels, and lymphatic tissue (mesenchymal cells). Despite being widely studied, its role in tumor growth and progression remains unexplored. A team of researchers at Queen Mary University of London have discovered how a small change in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}