Published in Genes & development
Nuclear Argonaute proteins, guided by their bound small RNAs to nascent target transcripts, mediate cotranscriptional silencing of transposons and repetitive genomic loci through heterochromatin formation. The molecular mechanisms involved in this process are incompletely understood. Here, we show that the SFiNX complex, a silencing mediator downst...
Published in Genes & development
SUMO modification regulates diverse cellular processes by targeting hundreds of proteins. However, the limited number of sumoylation enzymes raises the question of how such a large number of substrates are efficiently modified. Specifically, how genome maintenance factors are dynamically sumoylated at DNA replication and repair sites to modulate th...
Published in Genes & development
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by NADPH1 oxidase 1 (NOX1) are thought to drive spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) self-renewal through feed-forward production of ROS by the ROS-BCL6B-NOX1 pathway. Here we report the critical role of oxygen on ROS-induced self-renewal. Cultured SSCs proliferated poorly and lacked BCL6B expression under hypoxia d...
Published in Genes & development
RNase E is an essential, multifunctional ribonuclease encoded in E. coli by the rne gene. Structural analysis indicates that the ribonucleolytic activity of this enzyme is conferred by rne-encoded polypeptide chains that (1) dimerize to form a catalytic site at the protein-protein interface, and (2) multimerize further to generate a tetrameric quat...
Published in Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry
Background/Aims: In addition to their action of lowering blood cholesterol levels, statins modulate biological characteristics and functions of arterial myocytes such as viability, proliferation, apoptosis, survival and contraction. The present study tested whether simvastatin, as a prototype statin, enhances autophagy in coronary arterial myocytes...
Published in Genes & development
The molybdenum cofactor (Moco) is a 520-Da prosthetic group that is synthesized in all domains of life. In animals, four oxidases (among them sulfite oxidase) use Moco as a prosthetic group. Moco is essential in animals; humans with mutations in genes that encode Moco biosynthetic enzymes display lethal neurological and developmental defects. Moco ...
Published in Genes & development
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is a lethal disease characterized by late diagnosis, propensity for early metastasis and resistance to chemotherapy. Little is known about the mechanisms that drive innate therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer. The ataxia-telangiectasia group D-associated gene (ATDC) is overexpressed in pancreatic cancer and p...
Published in Genes & development
The physiological functions of many vital tissues and organs continue to mature after birth, but the genetic mechanisms governing this postnatal maturation remain an unsolved mystery. Human pancreatic β cells produce and secrete insulin in response to physiological cues like glucose, and these hallmark functions improve in the years after birth. Th...
Published in Genes & development
The regulation of gene expression catalyzed by RNA polymerase II (Pol II) requires a host of accessory factors to ensure cell growth, differentiation, and survival under environmental stress. Here, using the auxin-inducible degradation (AID) system to study transcriptional activities of the bromodomain and extraterminal domain (BET) and super elong...
Published in Genes & development
How homeodomain proteins gain sufficient specificity to control different cell fates has been a long-standing problem in developmental biology. The conserved Gsx homeodomain proteins regulate specific aspects of neural development in animals from flies to mammals, and yet they belong to a large transcription factor family that bind nearly identical...
