Volume 17 Issue 4, April 2016

TGFβ signalling induces EMT and elicits apoptosis by switching SOX4 from acting as a tumour promoter to a tumour suppressor.

Acetylation of H3K56 suppresses the transcription of newly replicated DNA during S phase to buffer changes in gene expression.

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

The role of DICER1–miR-328–BACE1 signalling in brown adipose tissue differentiation and function.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are produced from precursor RNA back-splicing. Recent findings reveal the complexity of the biogenesis of circRNAs and their cell type-specific expression. They also show that circRNAs can shape eukaryotic transcriptomes by sequestering microRNAs and by regulating transcription and interfering with splicing.

As most mitochondrial proteins are encoded in the nucleus, mitochondrial activity requires efficient communication between the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. This is mediated by nucleus-to-mitochondria (anterograde), mitochondria-to-nucleus (retrograde) and mitonuclear feedback signalling, as well as the integrated stress response and extracellular communication, which regulate homeostasis and, consequently, healthspan and lifespan.

The versatile RNA-degradation functions of the RNA exosome complex make it crucial for RNA biogenesis. It is now emerging that the nuclear exosome is a specific regulator of gene expression in different physiological processes, and that it has a role in transcription regulation and in maintaining genome stability.

Ephrin ligands and Eph receptor Tyr kinases are transmembrane proteins that elicit short-distance cell–cell signalling when they interact. As both Eph kinases and ephrins exist in various isoforms and function as receptors or ligands, this signalling evokes versatile responses, which regulate a plethora of morphogenetic and homeostatic processes.

Quante and Bird propose that the epigenome is modulated by the recruitment of cell type-specific DNA-binding proteins to short, abundant sequence motifs. The regulation of gene expression may thus be simplified by tuning gene expression in multigene blocks.