There are many genes, or at least markers of one sort or another within our DNA sequences, that have been associated with height. By some estimates the number could be thousands. However, finding those select genes that have ...
A viable molecular explanation for the origin of compact myelin of vertebrates has been a long time coming. While many invertebrates are certainly capable of wrapping their axons with crude glial extensions, none can manage ...
The homotrimeric spike glycoprotein (S) from SARS-CoV-2, particularly its S2 subunit, is a fusion protein extraordinaire. It can fuse viral particles to cells and also fuse cells to cells to create multifarious syncytia among ...
Cobalt sits in the center of the corrin ring of vitamin B12 and the important cobalamins we derive from it. Perhaps surprisingly, only two of our enzymes bother to use these painfully constructed and meticulously channeled ...
Transposable elements, or jumping genes, are now known to be responsible for many human diseases. Keeping them repressed by methylation, RNA binding, or the attentions of the innate immune system is a full-time jump for ...
One of the biggest challenges in biology today is to explain the structure of cristae, the inner membranes of mitochondria. An explanation in this case is a set of principles to predict what form the cristae will take after ...
Charles Darwin wrote a book called "The Power of Movement in Plants" with his son Francis in which they first identified the root apex as the central command center of plants. In contrast to our own orientation with respect ...
About half of our genome is made up of transposable elements (TEs), also known as transposons. These 'jumping genes' are short stretches of DNA that have the unique ability to duplicate themselves and change their position ...
The human cellular kinome contains over 500 kinases, accounting for almost 2% of all our genes. It is currently impossible to gauge the phosphorylation status, or even phosphorylation potential, of the entire proteome of ...
Although the CRISPR/Cas9 system has seen widespread application in editing the nuclear genome, using it to edit the mitochondrial genome has been problematic. The main hurdles have been a lack of suitable editing sites in ...
