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New biochemical experiments with the retroelement restriction protein APOBEC3G indicate that it processively deaminates single-stranded DNA cytosines by a unique jumping and sliding mechanism.
Bacterial chemotaxis systems have cooperatively interacting clusters of transmembrane receptors and signaling proteins to detect, amplify, integrate and adapt to environmental signals. A recent study provides experimental data to construct a new model of the signaling complex.
Protein complexes at telomeres have been assumed to present an obstacle to the passing replication fork. The observation that the Schizosaccharomyces pombe telomere-binding protein Taz1 is required for replication suggests otherwise.
Two new studies demonstrate that transmembrane voltage-sensing domains can act without an obvious pore-forming domain to sense membrane potential changes and make a proton-selective pore.
A major challenge in gene expression is to understand how precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) processing events are integrated with transcription. A recent study suggests that distant exons in nascent RNA are held together during transcription, promoting accurate splicing independent of intron fate.
Two recent studies provide a glimpse of the structure of an intermediate in the formation of β-2-microglobulin fibrils involved in dialysis-related amyloidosis.
Posterior development in flies requires precise spatial regulation of Oskar translation. A recent report shows that Bruno controls Oskar translation by mediating the formation of large inert ribonucleoprotein particles that contain multiple copies of oskar messenger RNA. This work defines a new silencing mechanism and suggests a link between oskar translation control and localization.
A recent study describes a novel mRNA-surveillance pathway called 'no-go decay' that triggers the endonucleolytic cleavage of yeast mRNAs with translation-elongation stalls. This adds to the repertoire of mRNA-decay processes in which abnormal translation may activate mRNA degradation through proteins recruited to the ribosomal A site.
Two recent studies focusing on synaptotagmin-1's role in synaptic vesicle fusion suggest that it may be key in bringing vesicle and target membranes together and in promoting SNARE assembly. The highly positive electrostatic potential of the synaptotagmin surface could catalyze fusion.
Translational inhibition of male-specific msl-2 messenger RNA by the female-specific protein SXL is crucial for X-chromosome dosage compensation in Drosophila melanogaster. Two recent studies identify an RNA-binding protein, UNR, as a novel corepressor that is recruited by SXL to the 3′ UTR of msl-2 mRNA for translation inhibition in females.
Two new crystal structures of ubiquitin (Ub) in complex with fragments of the endosomal proteins Rabex-5 and HRS show intriguing new modes of Ub binding and reveal that both fragments can bind two Ub molecules simultaneously.
Recent structures of Dicer and the related bacterial enzyme, RNase III, demonstrate how Dicer acts as a molecular ruler, measuring out a precise length of double stranded RNA before cleavage.
Chromatin barriers restrict silenced chromatin domains from invading active domains. A recent study shows that a tRNA gene functions as a barrier in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. These results, similar to previous observations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, point toward a novel function for tRNA genes and a common mechanism of compartmentalizing and organizing eukaryotic chromatin.
