News & Comment

David Jones discusses problems associated with the application of machine learning to biology and advocates for improving publishing standards in this area through a more thorough reporting on the design of the computational experiments.

A demonstration of a physiological role of amyloid aggregates in switching on enzymatic activity required for fly development.

Demonstration that active collective cell migration importantly contributes to the movement of intestinal epithelial cells along the villi.

Cytosine methylation (m⁵C) in mRNAs is important for their transport to distant tissues in plants.

Emil Heitz was a pioneer of epigenetics at a time when the nature of the heredity material was still unclear.

Ubiquitin ligase parkin — a key mediator of mitophagy — is induced in necroptotic conditions through the activity of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) to restrain necroptosis and limit associated pathologies.

Restricted Argonaute expression supports selective interaction with microRNAs, which is essential for microRNA stability.

Oncogenic growth factor signalling promotes synthesis of saturated membrane lipids and subsequent plasma membrane ordering to support signalling and tumour growth.

Stahl and Raposo discuss the emerging paradigm of cell–cell signalling via extracellular vesicles, highlighting key questions that need to be answered to firmly establish extracellular vesicles as important signalling entities.

Upon loss of liver DNA methylation, H3K27me3 is redistributed from pro-regeneration genes to hypomethylated transposons, thereby potentiating liver regeneration.

Rodríguez-Paredes and Lyko argue that non-histone proteins should be considered when assessing cancer drugs that target protein methylation.

Hydraulic forces have important roles in the early development of mouse embryos.

Early in his career, Gordon Carmichael was inspired by the contradictory conclusions of three articles.

Miguel Beato describes his Eureka moment after reading that ATP is a nuclear hydrotrope.

Kroemer and Lopez-Otín discuss how the induction of autophagy could slow down human ageing and thus also delay the onset of ageing-associated diseases, by decelerating biological clocks.

Arnaud Echard discusses two studies that uncovered a key role for the ESCRT machinery in cytokinesis.

Henrik Jönsson discusses the mathematical model for hormone movement through plant tissues that Graeme Mitchison proposed in 1980, and how models can inspire new research.

Duplex-forming circular RNAs interact with PKR and repress aberrant activation of innate immunity. Upon viral infection, PKR is activated through the degradation of these circular RNAs by RNase L.

A new CRISPR–Cas9-based ‘molecular recorder’ can provide information on cell state and cell lineage, in mice, from fertilization through to adulthood.

Glycoproteins of the glycocalyx are shown to have the capacity to bend the plasma membrane.