Peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Cell Press covering research in molecular biology, biochemistry, and cellular mechanisms.
Gladstone researchers report in Molecular Cell a bacterial antiviral defense, type VI retrons, that works in reverse of known systems. Shipman's lab is working to use retrons to rewrite disease-causing mutations in human cells, but the tests described here used bacteria.
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ETH Zurich-led teams report in Molecular Cell that fusing a cell's two nuclear membranes for a new pore takes both Torsin-1A and CLCC1 proteins. They tie the mechanism to DYT1 dystonia, which affects about six in 100,000 people, and propose raising CLCC1 as a possible therapy.
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A team led by microbiologist Joe Peters fused two unrelated bacterial proteins into a compact tool that inserts large DNA blocks at a chosen genome site. It works in bacteria, and the team is still hunting for relatives that work in human or plant cells.
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Ohio State physicists found that the gene-silencing histone H1 slides along DNA but needs a chaperone to load onto nucleosomes. The single-molecule result adds a delivery step to the working model of how cells keep unused genes compacted.
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Chromatin looseness has been a research-microscope quantity, measured on cells prepared specially to be looked at. A dye that blinks on its own reaches it inside the archived wax block, which is where the patients are.
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Azusa Inoue's RIKEN team reports in Molecular Cell that a repressive histone mark carried over from the oocyte shapes placental growth. The lab is now tracking how that mark gets installed as mouse oocytes mature.
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A Yale-led study in Molecular Cell puts the RNA-tagging enzyme inside the cell division switch. Oncology programmes have been explaining what its drugs do a different way.
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