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Bracken and Goodall discuss why epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) has so many regulators, but also consider whether many of these may be ‘false positives’.
Christine Mummery and Eric Anthony discuss some key changes to the ISSCR Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation, which concern, among other experimental procedures, the culturing of human embryos, genome editing and mitochondrial replacement techniques.
In this Comment, the authors draw attention to the role of partial order in biomolecular condensates and propose that cooperative, ordered interactions between condensate components could underlie the formation and function of these diverse macromolecular assemblies.
Rippe and Papantonis suggest that intrinsically disordered regions in transcription-relevant factors underlie the formation of both ‘transcriptional condensates’ and ‘transcription factories’.
Michele Vendruscolo and colleagues propose that polyglutamine repeat expansion diseases could be caused by glutaminyl-tRNA depletion, leading to ribosome frameshifting and mistranslation of transcripts with specific characteristics.
Johnstone and Galloway contend that, to support complex patterning within engineered tissues, synthetic biology should be able to manage transcriptional noise.
Michael Levin and colleagues discuss how computer-designed organisms ― biobots and xenobots ― are driving a new research field with applications in biomedicine and engineering, and associated ethical and philosophical questions.
Circadian clocks control our immune system, infections and pharmacokinetics. Ray and Reddy argue that better understanding the effects of circadian biology on SARS-CoV-2 infection would improve COVID-19 management.
Shivashankar and Uhler propose a link between cell mechano-genomics and coronavirus replication with implications for understanding the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2.
Roop Mallik argues for the importance of considering the impact that membrane lipids have on motors, and the dynamics of the membrane–motor interface, in studies of cytoskeletal motors.