Did I Miss the Memo? Cancer Cells Have Walls?

According to this press release, cancer cells can be kept from dividing by preventing them from making cell walls. Cell walls? Yeah, cell walls. Like plants or bacteria. Last time I checked, animal cells ain't got no walls. Ordinarily, I'd attribute this to a stoopid reported getting the information screwed up, but here's a quote from the lead author of the paper:

"Last year we discovered that a protein called SREBP1 that regulates the synthesis of lipids needed for new cell walls was regulated during the cell cycle."

Cell membranes are made of lipids. Membranes! MEMBRANES!! Not walls. I'd give my introductory biology students (ie, college freshman) so much shit if they ever claimed that animal cells have cell walls. Quit feeding misinformation to science reporters, and they'll probably stop writing dreck.

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Let's just hope it was an issue in Swedish-to-English tranlansation and the the main office of the Ludwig didn't catch it (but, agreed, there is no excuse for the latter).

My Swedish isn't too accurate these days anyway.