{"id":211829,"date":"2025-04-19T02:29:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T07:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/throwing-a-spanner-in-the-works-of-our-cells-machinery-could-help-fight-cancer-fatty-liver-disease-and-hair-loss"},"modified":"2025-04-19T02:29:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T07:29:50","slug":"throwing-a-spanner-in-the-works-of-our-cells-machinery-could-help-fight-cancer-fatty-liver-disease-and-hair-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/throwing-a-spanner-in-the-works-of-our-cells-machinery-could-help-fight-cancer-fatty-liver-disease-and-hair-loss","title":{"rendered":"Throwing a \u2018spanner in the works\u2019 of our cells\u2019 machinery could help fight cancer, fatty liver disease\u2026 and hair loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/throwing-a-spanner-in-the-works-of-our-cells-machinery-could-help-fight-cancer-fatty-liver-disease-and-hair-loss.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fifty years since its discovery, scientists have finally worked out how a molecular machine found in mitochondria allows us to make the fuel we need from sugars, a process vital to all life on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, have worked out the structure of this machine and shown how it operates like the lock on a canal to transport pyruvate\u2014a molecule generated in the body from the breakdown of sugars\u2014into our mitochondria.<\/p>\n<p>Known as the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier, this <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/molecular+machine\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">molecular machine<\/a> was first proposed to exist in 1971, but it has taken until now for scientists to visualize its structure at the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/atomic+scale\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">atomic scale<\/a> using cryo-electron microscopy, a technique used to magnify an image of an object to around 165,000 times its real size. Details are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.adw1489\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Science Advances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years since its discovery, scientists have finally worked out how a molecular machine found in mitochondria allows us to make the fuel we need from sugars, a process vital to all life on Earth. Scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, have worked out the structure of this [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211829","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}