Tag: HSATII

  • When Dormant RNA Awakens: How Satellite Sequences Drive Protein Aggregation and Muscular Dystrophy

    When Dormant RNA Awakens: How Satellite Sequences Drive Protein Aggregation and Muscular Dystrophy

    Pericentromeric satellite repeats—tandemly arrayed DNA elements comprising millions of base pairs adjacent to chromosome centromers—were long dismissed as genomic “junk” tolerated through evolutionary inertia. Research published in the Journal of Cell Biology in February 2026 by investigators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center reveals how inappropriate activation of human satellite II RNA precipitates catastrophic protein aggregation—molecular…