Like any appliance, proteins in living cells eventually become obsolete. The body relies on intricate machinery to tag proteins for recycling at a molecular factory, where they are chopped into pieces. Without recycling, the cell would overflow with molecular garbage and have scarce material to build new proteins. In a paper posted online this week by the journal Structure, researchers Maria Gaczynska, Ph.D., and Pawel Osmulski, Ph.D., of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and Mark Hochstrasser, Ph.D., of Yale University, describe how different parts of the factory communicate with each other to efficiently recycle cellular proteins. Full Story.