Category: News
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An Ancient Alarm: Bacterial Schlafen Proteins Reveal a Deep Evolutionary Root for Antiviral Immunity
In mammalian cells, the Schlafen family of enzymes is known for an unusually drastic antiviral defense: when a virus invades, certain Schlafen nucleases shut down protein synthesis by shredding the cell’s own transfer RNAs (tRNAs), starving the pathogen of the machinery it needs to replicate. Whether bacteria, which pioneered CRISPR-based immunity long before animals existed,…
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Life’s molecular motors — myosin hauling cargo through muscle fibres, kinesin ferrying vesicles along microtubules, the ribosome translating messenger RNA one codon at a time — convert chemical energy into directed mechanical work with a precision and efficiency that synthetic systems have long struggled to approach. Building an artificial equivalent entirely from proteins, rather than…
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For more than two centuries, naturalists have marvelled at the intricately shaped shells that tintinnid ciliates — planktonic, single-celled eukaryotes comprising roughly a thousand species — assemble from material secreted directly into the surrounding water within minutes, and yet the molecular identity of this material has remained entirely unresolved. A study published in June 2026…
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One of the most persistent challenges in gene and cell therapy is not simply delivering a therapeutic gene to the right cell — it is ensuring that, once delivered, the gene’s expression can be turned on and off with sufficient precision to remain both safe and effective over time. Current inducible systems, which allow researchers…
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Among the countless molecular transactions that sustain life, few are as consequential — or as easily overlooked — as the quiet, continuous work of DNA repair. Each day, every cell in the human body is subjected to a barrage of chemical insults that introduce errors into its genomic sequence; left unattended, even a single misincorporated…
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Transfer RNA is among the most chemically decorated molecules in the cell — an average human tRNA carries more than a dozen distinct post-transcriptional modifications, each one placed with exquisite precision to fine-tune its performance on the ribosome. Among these, the family of 5-carboxymethyluridine (cm⁵U) modifications at the wobble position of the anticodon holds particular…
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Among the more than 150 chemically distinct modifications that have been identified in cellular RNA, 5-methylcytosine — abbreviated m5C — has long occupied an ambiguous position in the landscape of epitranscriptomics. Present in transfer RNAs, messenger RNAs, and several non-coding RNA species, m5C is deposited by a family of enzymes whose biological importance has become…
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MYC is, by almost any measure, the most consequential oncogene in human cancer biology. Deregulated in the vast majority of human tumours across virtually every tissue type, this protein has long been known as a master transcriptional amplifier — a molecular regulator that commandeers gene expression programmes to drive relentless proliferation, metabolic reprogramming, and tumour…
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Long regarded as a passive structural feature, the glycocalyx — the dense, sugar-rich coat enveloping the outer surface of every human cell — has now emerged as something considerably more consequential: a dynamic molecular display screen, whose nanoscale spatial organization faithfully encodes the functional state of the cell it surrounds. A study published on 14…
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Among the many RNA viruses that continue to threaten human and animal health, orthobunyaviruses occupy a particularly concerning position. This large family of segmented, negative-sense RNA viruses includes pathogens responsible for encephalitis, febrile illness, and hemorrhagic disease — among them the La Crosse, Oropouche, and Schmallenberg viruses — yet no licensed antiviral therapy exists for…