Study: Cell movements are totally modular

U.S. medical scientists say they've found distinct groups of proteins that each control one of four simple activities involved in cells' collective migration.

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers said their findings detailing how cells within blood vessel walls move en masse overturn an assumption common in the age of genomics -- that the proteins driving cell behavior are doing so much multitasking that it would be near impossible to group them according to a few discrete functions.

The research, led by Professor Tobias Meyer and graduate student Philip Vitorino is reported in the journal Genes and Development.