Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

36 open-access papers in Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, free to watch.

3:16

The transcription factor CsS40 negatively regulates TCS1 expression and caffeine biosynthesis in connection to leaf senescence in Camellia sinensis

Xinzhuan Yao, Hufang Chen, Antao Ai, Fen Wang, Shanshan Lian, Hu Tang, Yihe Jiang, Yujie Jiao, Yumei He, Tong Li, Litang Lu

As tea leaves grow older, they make less caffeine, and this study points to a biological switch that may connect caffeine loss with the leaf’s aging process. What if a tea plant’s aging program also controls how much caffeine its leaves contain? This study identifies CsS40, a senescence-related transcription factor linked to lower TCS1 expression and reduced caffeine accumulation.

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4:26

Alteration of the N6-methyladenosine methylation landscape in a mouse model of polycystic ovary syndrome

Lingxiao Zou, Waixing Li, Dabao Xu, Shujuan Zhu, Bin Jiang

Polycystic ovary syndrome can affect periods, fertility, and long-term health, yet there is no single treatment for its underlying cause. This study points to a tiny chemical mark on genetic messages as one possible piece of the puzzle. In a mouse model of polycystic ovary syndrome, hundreds of messenger RNAs carried altered m6A methylation, and the strongest pathway signal pointed toward insulin signaling. But correlation is not causation.

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4:22

Single-molecule visualization of mRNA circularization during translation

Byungju Kim, Jincheol Seol, Yoon Ki Kim, Jong‐Bong Lee

Inside every living cell, tiny messages are read to build proteins. Scientists thought many of those messages formed helpful loops, but watching them one at a time suggests the loop may be an illusion of motion. For years, mRNA circularization has been treated as a functional closed loop that helps translation. But single-molecule imaging reveals a striking possibility: translating mRNA can look compact without being physically connected at its ends.

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4:31

Combined SERS-Raman screening of HER2-overexpressing or silenced breast cancer cell lines

Sara Spaziani, Alessandro Esposito, Giovannina Barisciano, Giuseppe Quero, Elumalai Satheeshkumar, M. Di Leo, Vittorio Colantuoni, Maria Mangini, Marco Pisco, Lina Sabatino, Anna Chiara De Luca, Andrea Cusano

Breast cancers that look alike can behave very differently. This study uses light to find a key cancer marker on individual cells, and then reveals a surprising change that remains even after that marker is silenced. What if one optical workflow could both map HER2 on an individual cancer cell and read the cell’s broader metabolic state, and then test what changes when HER2 is silenced?

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4:07

Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold

John Jumper, Richard Evans, Alexander Pritzel, Tim Green, Michael Figurnov, Olaf Ronneberger, Kathryn Tunyasuvunakool, Russ Bates, Augustin Žídek, Anna Potapenko, Alex Bridgland, Clemens Meyer, Simon A. A. Kohl, Andrew J. Ballard, Andrew Cowie, Bernardino Romera-Paredes, Stanislav Nikolov, Rishub Jain, Jonas Adler, Trevor Back, Stig Petersen, David Reiman, Ellen Clancy, Michał Zieliński, Martin Steinegger, Michalina Pacholska, Tamas Berghammer, Sebastian Bodenstein, David Silver, Oriol Vinyals, Andrew W. Senior, Koray Kavukcuoglu, Pushmeet Kohli, Demis Hassabis

Every cell depends on proteins, but scientists have seen the shape of only a tiny fraction of them. AlphaFold showed that a sequence of chemical letters can be enough to predict a protein’s three-dimensional form with near-experimental accuracy. For more than fifty years, predicting a protein’s three-dimensional shape from its sequence remained an open problem. AlphaFold changed the scale of what was possible, reaching near experimental accuracy in many cases, even without a similar known structure.

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4:36

The HOX code of human adult fibroblasts reflects their ectomesenchymal or mesodermal origin

Lucie Pfeiferová, Michal Španko, Jana Šáchová, Miluše Hradilová, Kenneth J. Pienta, Jaroslav Valach, Vladimír Machoň, B Vymolová, Aleksi Šedo, Petr Bušek, Pavol Szabó, Lukáš Lacina, Péter Gál, Michal Kolář, Karel Smetana

Two fibroblasts can look almost identical under a microscope, yet one may still carry a molecular record of the body region it came from, and that record can remain visible in cancer. Two adult fibroblast populations can look almost identical under the microscope yet carry strikingly different developmental signatures. This study asks whether HOX genes preserve a cell’s embryonic address long after development ends.

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4:30

Case report: Extending the spectrum of clinical and molecular findings in FOXC1 haploinsufficiency syndrome

Alexandra Garza Flores, I. Nordgren, Maria Pettersson, Dora Dias‐Santagata, Daniel Nilsson, Anna Hammarsjö, Anna Lindstrand, Dominyka Batkovskyte, Janey L. Wiggs, David S. Walton, Paula Goldenberg, Jesper Eisfeldt, Angela E. Lin, Ralph S. Lachman, Gen Nishimura, Giedré Grigelioniené

A condition often recognized through the eyes can reach far beyond vision. In two adults, the same missing genetic instruction was linked to glaucoma, unusual bones, loose joints, and problems that became clearer with age. What happens when losing one copy of a developmental gene produces not just eye disease, but a much broader skeletal and neurologic picture? This case report shows how genome sequencing exposed that expanded spectrum.

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4:33

An Authentication Survey on Retail Seafood Products Sold on the Bulgarian Market Underlines the Need for Upgrading the Traceability System

Lara Tinacci, Deyan Stratev, Mariyana Strateva, G. Zhelyazkov, Ralica Kyuchukova, Andrea Armani

A seafood label can promise one species while the food inside is another. In Bulgaria, a broad check of shop-bought seafood found that this was not a rare mistake, but a problem affecting about one product in nine. A seafood label can look perfectly ordinary while naming the wrong species. In Bulgaria, DNA testing found that eleven percent of the sampled products were mislabeled, exposing both consumer risks and weaknesses in traceability.

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4:09

Drought Resistance and Ginsenosides Biosynthesis in Response to Abscisic Acid in Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer

Lingyao Kong, Peng Chen, Cheng Chang

A dry spell can damage ginseng twice: it weakens the plant and threatens the valuable compounds in its roots. This study found that one natural plant signal may help with both problems. What if the same hormone that helps ginseng conserve water during drought also boosts its valuable medicinal compounds? This study tests that connection, and finds ABA strengthens both drought resistance and ginsenoside biosynthesis.

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3:49

Biotransformation and bioaccessibility of active ingredients from Radix Astragali by Poria cocos during solid-state fermentation and in vitro digestion and antioxidant activity evaluation

Caiyun Chen, Run Zhang, Lijie Zhang, Zhiyong Hu, Shaoping Wang, Xue Mei, Wei Mi, Jiayu Zhang

A traditional herbal root contains a valued protective compound, but only a small amount is normally available. This study found that growing a food fungus on the root could make much more of that compound accessible after digestion. A medicinal fungus turns a hard-to-access Astragalus compound into something far more abundant, and the fermented material still shows stronger antioxidant activity after simulated digestion.

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4:16

ULTRA-effective labeling of tandem repeats in genomic sequence

Daniel R. Olson, Travis J. Wheeler

Some of the most important parts of a genome are made from repeated DNA, but once those repeats become damaged and irregular, computer programs can mistake them for something else entirely. This paper introduces a way to keep finding them. Long-read sequencing reveals repetitive DNA that used to look unmappable, but mutations, insertions, and deletions can hide its repeating structure. ULTRA tackles that problem by modeling the sequence and its errors together.

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5:02

Implementation of a high-throughput whole genome sequencing approach with the goal of maximizing efficiency and cost effectiveness to improve public health

Michelle C. Dickinson, Samantha E. Wirth, Deborah J. Baker, Anna Kidney, Kara Mitchell, Elizabeth Nazarian, Matthew Shudt, Lisa M. Thompson, Sai Laxmi Gubbala Venkata, Kimberlee A. Musser, Lisa Mingle

When disease outbreaks move quickly, public health laboratories need answers quickly too, but often without more staff or money. This study found a way to process thousands of bacterial genomes while keeping the results dependable and affordable. What if a public health laboratory could sequence thousands of bacterial genomes faster, while cutting the workflow cost to under eighty dollars per sample? This study shows how batching, automation, and quarter-volume library preparation made that possible.

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