The dynamics of stem cell maintenance and proliferative patters determine tissue aging in many organisms. This study uses longitudinal lineage tracing and shows that clonal diversity steadily declines with age in Drosophila intestinal stem cells, identifying dominant and failing clones. Read more ›
Targeted protein degradation eliminates disease-driving proteins by co-opting the ubiquitin–proteasome system. Now, a single degradation tail enables a molecular glue to hijack two E3 ubiquitin ligases in parallel, degrading SMARCA2 and SMARCA4 and providing a chemical safeguard against resistance. Read more ›
Successful mammalian development requires both maternal and paternal genomes, but how do these parental components jointly shape the growing organism? This study uses engineered bipaternal mice to reveal the physiological consequences of development supported exclusively by paternal genomes. Read more ›
Nature Chemical Biology - Revealing the Wnt signalosome Read more ›
Image-guided pharmacotherapy, in which drug activity is strictly confined to disease areas revealed by medical imaging modalities, holds great promise for the development of personalized medicine. A key step in realizing this potential is the development of safe and precise methods for drug activation. Electromagnetic radiation, spanning the energy ranges from γ-rays to ultraviolet–visible and infrared light, has emerged as a method of choice for this purpose. Because many imaging modalities ... Read more ›
The human endocrine system orchestrates critical physiological processes, yet a systematic quantification of circulating hormones has been lacking. This study provides an integrative analysis of all known circulating human hormones, revealing patterns in their abundance and distribution. Read more ›
Recombination suppression leads to genomic erosion through an accumulation of deleterious mutations. This Primer discusses a new study that reveals an outstanding increase in aberrant splicing in non-recombining genomic regions in green algae. Read more ›
Nature Chemical Biology - A double-edged sword Read more ›
The synaptic homeostasis hypothesis proposes that wakefulness increases synaptic strength, while sleep facilitates synaptic down-selection, but direct evidence for this phenomenon in the human brain remains scarce. This PET imaging study provides new evidence that sleep deprivation increases synaptic density across the human brain. Read more ›
Splicing dysfunction may represent a cryptic form of genome erosion in functionally constrained regions. This study shows that intron retention frequencies are considerably higher in recombination-suppressed mating-type regions in four phytoplankton species, producing an excess of aberrant transcripts and functional decay. Read more ›
Is microbial ecology fair? This study uses an ecological 'Game of Growth' to explore how fair ecological dynamics is as a distribution rule of biomass, revealing the degree of meritocracy found in the state of nature. Read more ›