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The oligomerization of scaffold attachment factor A through its binding to chromatin-associated RNAs regulates the structure of interphase chromosomes.
Inhibitors of DNA methyltransferases and of histone deacetylases induce transcription from cryptic transposable elements, which results in 5′-truncated and mis-spliced proteins that may increase cancer immunogenicity.
DNA replication regulates nucleosome dynamics at the promoter of a negative element of the circadian clock, thereby providing regulatory feedback into circadian rhythms.
A modification of Meselson and Stahl's density gradient centrifugation method and a rare Texan yeast helped show that eukaryotic ribosomes dissociate and reform during translation.
Recent evidence indicates that controlled generation of DNA breaks, accompanied by activation of DNA damage repair pathways, can regulate transcription through promoter and enhancer activation and the relief of DNA torsional stress.
Blood and lymphatic vessels have essential roles in physiology and disease. The endothelial cells that line these vessels specialize to fulfil the needs of the tissue that they pervade. Recent studies in animal models have provided insights into the mechanisms underlying vessel type- and organ-specific specialization, which is crucial for the understanding of several diseases.
In mammalian cells, DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are repaired predominantly by the non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway, which includes subpathways that can repair different DNA-end configurations. Furthermore, the repair of some DNA-end configurations can be shunted to the auxiliary pathways of alternative end joining (a-EJ) or single-strand annealing (SSA).
The termination of DNA replication involves convergence of replication forks, the completion of DNA synthesis, replisome disassembly and the decatenation of daughter DNA molecules. Recent discoveries illustrate how replisome disassembly in eukaryotes is controlled by E3 ubiquitin ligases and how this activity is regulated to avoid genome instability.
Protein methylation was discovered over 50 years ago, but only with the advent of genomic and proteomic technologies could its mechanisms and cellular functions be studied in detail. Shi and Murn discuss the seminal discoveries in protein methylation research and highlight future directions for this field.
