News & Comment

Edith Heard describes how the discovery of lamina-associated domains changed her thinking about the mechanisms of X-chromosome inactivation and gene regulation.

Physically bridging an enhancer to a β-globin gene increased transcription and explained how enhancers could function over long distances.

Matthias Mann describes a 1992 paper by Donald Hunt and colleagues that revolutionized the use of mass spectrometry in molecular biology.

Laurent Blanchoin reminds us of a seminal paper by Tom Pollard reporting the meticulous measurement of rate constants of actin assembly, and highlights its contribution to quantitative understanding of actin filament dynamics as well as its impact on his own research interests.

It turns out that Meselson and Stahl were not the first to show that DNA replicates semi-conservatively. The preceding experiment was almost forgotten, partly because it showed something incredible.

Galluzzi and Kroemer take advantage of a large study of somatic copy number alterations to revisit the previously suggested idea that cancer aneuploidy frequently arises from genome duplication.

As far as James Haber is concerned, the big picture is all he wants of protein structures. This was not the case, however, with the structure of RecA, published in 2008.

Recognition of the innovative nature of the Beadle and Tatum experiment of mutation induction followed by selection has faded in the decades since; Bernard Strauss explains why.

Lynne Maquat reminds us that almost 20 years before the discovery of microRNAs, an antisense regulatory RNA was identified in embryonic chick muscle cells.

Azim Surani discusses how induced pluripotent stem cells have enabled researchers to demonstrate that it is possible to cross the germ line–soma barrier, known as the Weismann barrier.