Researchers in the laboratory of Tom Kirchhausen at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, the Immune Disease Institute, and the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School have identified conditions under which the actin cytoskeleton plays a supporting but crucial role in endocytosis.In Nature Cell Biology, Dr. Kirchhausen and his colleagues reported on aspects of clathrin-mediated endocytosis using live cell imaging, a well-established area of research for the lab.  They found that although the clathrin system alone was often sufficient to bring cargo into the cell, certain circumstances including elevated cellular membrane tension… Read Full Article »