Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Novoa, Mason and Mattick propose to use phage display technology and direct sequencing through nanopores to facilitate systematic interrogation of RNA modifications.
Worms with impaired H3K4 trimethylation have an extended lifespan, which is associated with the accumulation of monounsaturated fatty acids in their intestines.
The ESCRT-III complex is shown to counteract the loss of plasma membrane integrity in cells undergoing necroptosis, thereby preventing or delaying cell death.
An isoform of the RNA-editing protein ADAR1 is shown to be activated through nuclear export in response to cellular stress and to protect anti-apoptotic mRNAs from Staufen 1-mediated decay.
Allan Jacobson reminds us of how a study by Deveret al. published in 1992 connected several data on translational regulation, bringing attention to its crucial role in the regulation of gene expression.
Expansion of polyglutamine tracts in proteins interferes with the process of autophagy and may contribute to the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases.
The heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) chaperone machinery is a key regulator of proteostasis. Recent progress has shed light on the interactions of HSP90 with its clients and co-chaperones, and on their functional implications. This opens up new avenues for the development of drugs that target HSP90, which could be valuable for the treatment of cancers and protein-misfolding diseases.
Lipid rafts are relatively ordered membrane domains that are enriched in cholesterol and saturated lipids, and selectively recruit other lipids and proteins. They are dynamic and heterogeneous in composition and are thus challenging to visualizein vivo. New technologies are providing novel insights into the formation, organization and functions of these membrane domains.
Planar cell polarity — the asymmetric distribution of proteins in the plane of a cell sheet — dictates the orientation of various subcellular structures and drives collective cell rearrangements. Better understanding of this conserved axis of polarity can shed light on the mechanisms of morphogenetic processes and explain the underlying causes of human birth defects.
In animal cells, actin is dynamically distributed between multiple coexisting arrays. Carlier and Shekhar propose that a global treadmilling process — whereby the various actin networks grow and shrink depending on the local activity of actin regulators — establishes a steady-state concentration of actin monomers that supports this homeostatic actin turnover.