The developmental on-switch

German researchers have demonstrated for the first time why the molecular cocktail responsible for generating stem cells works. Sox2 and Oct4 are proteins whose effect on cells resembles that of an eraser: They remove all ...

Preventing the spread of repression

Scientists at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research have identified a novel and unexpected regulatory activity of RNA at the edge of inactive chromosomal regions. In their publication in Nature Structural ...

The TALE of new tools to study gene regulation

In nearly every organism's genome, scattered between genes that encode proteins, long regulatory regions stretch across expanses of DNA. Understanding what role these so-called enhancer regions play in controlling the activation ...

Human Argonaute proteins: To slice or not to slice?

What makes one Argonaute a slicer and another one not? Human Argonaute proteins are key players in the gene regulation process known as RNA interference, RNAi. Professor Joshua-Tor's group of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ...

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