How cell membranes patch holes

Cell membranes of our muscle cells can get ripped when we exercise. Ack! But don't shy away from the gym or the great outdoors. Of course our cells have a way to repair the tiny holes. It happens all the time. But we haven't been quite sure how things got patched up. In this article, scientists were actually able to observe the repair of cell membranes of living cells in a living organism. To do this, they used a zebrafish embryo, which is tiny and mostly transparent. They tagged proteins with florescent proteins (a cool technique for seeing molecules which I'll blog about someday) which the researchers knew were involved in repair. Then they burned holes in the cell membrane with a laser and watched what happened under a microscope. Holes in a cell membrane with a laser - wow.

This was done by Prof. Uwe Strähle and Dr. Urmas Roostalu from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg University. Read more about what they observed in the article from Science Daily.