Man, it's so wild how little we know about biology and how much we as a society spend on absolute, utter, bullshit, instead of figuring out how just the basics of us work.

I know it was never possible before modern computers, labs, and equipment, but we really should have like 1000x the amount of basic biological research going on that we do.

All I know is that Vaults are NOT the powerhouse of the cell.

The infographic appears to be noob-friendly because of its title but then expects you to know what VPARP is and what it's for

Borderlands devs just came up with episode 5

Interesting. Makes me wonder if it might play a role in some physical illnesses we haven’t found a cause for yet, especially immune mediated ones.

Decent article going more in depth

What if they're only to make the cells bigger so our bodies don't need to make so many of them to reach a total size as large as we are?

I find it fascinating that researchers have been able to acquire so much structural details about vaults without figuring out their purpose. It's possible that they're bits of evolutionary garbage - things that don't contribute to survival in any discernible way, but also don't hurt anything, so natural selection doesn't get rid of them.

Incredible article and read that will send me down the rabbit-hole later when I have some free time!

Thanks for sharing!

My wild speculation:

Viral snares/traps? Semi-permeable membrane + RNA; the virus gets in and binds to the RNA inside, then the viral package is "spent" on fake RNA that can't replicate. The MVP shell could keep regular cellular machinery away from the trap RNA. There are thousands of these vaults within the cell, as to create a bunch of "pits" that a virus could fall into, thus effectively slowing viral spread, even a little?

edit: from a link in the article:

vault protein somehow helps epithelial cells internalize P. aeruginosa, which in turn speeds the clearance of an infection. Compared to normal mice, for example, MVP-less mice were 3 times as likely to die when their lungs were infected with the bacterium

This was mentioned as a hypothesis that was determined to be fruitless. Was this ever explored further? Different viruses, organ systems, etc.? Since it's in a lot of different organisms, maybe some common virus that affects many different species is affected by this.

This is very interesting.

What's next, our cells commit usury?

They're for storing the molecular correlates of trauma, obviously :3

Nice
( N.B. : Typo : "TIL about vaults, the largest structures in the our cells. No one knows what they're for." )