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BECN1 plays a central role in determining cell fate, acting as a balance point in the decision to undergo autophagy or apoptosis. Three distinct structural domains allow BECN1 to interact with several other proteins. Recent crystallographic data provide insight into the nature of the coiled-coil and evolutionarily conserved domains.
The prevalence of certain driver mutations in prostate cancer varies across ethnic populations. A recent study uses RNA-seq to profile the mutational landscape of prostate cancer in a Chinese population to gain additional insights on ethnic variation in this disease.
Histone modifications have previously been leveraged to map the locations of candidate enhancer and promoters in one dimensional genomic space. Chepelev et al. report the first Chromatin Interaction Analysis with Paired-End Tag (ChIA-PET) sequencing of a specific histone modification to systematically map long-range physical interactions among enhancer and promoters, yielding insights into the nature of these interactions.
The discovery of Nongken 58S, a natural recessive photoperiod-sensitive male sterile line, served as a starting point for development of two-line hybrid rice in China. While original Nongken 58S in its japonica background is photoperiod-sensitive male sterile, after introgressing of the related locus into indica rice background the same trait become mainly temperature-sensitive male sterile. Although those photoperiod- and temperature-sensitive male sterile lines have been successfully used in two-line hybrid rice seed production, the genetic cause remained a mystery till the two recent publications, with one in Cell Research.