#alternative splicing

Making a Muscle

Details of the genetic and molecular mechanisms – including the control of alternative splicing (where one gene encodes multiple forms of a protein) – regulating the development of muscle revealed in fruit flies

Read the published research article here

Image adapted from work by Elena Nikonova and colleagues

Biomedical Center, Department of Physiological Chemistry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, April 2024

Splice of Life

Splicing – the production of different forms of a protein from a gene's DNA instruction – in a sex-specific way occurs throughout the genome at the very earliest stages of embryo development

Read the published research paper here

Image from work by Mukulika Ray and colleagues

MCB department, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, March 2023

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Messenger RNAs: not just bare protein builders for oncology and neuroscience

Where mutation does not become a tumor: RNAs and neurons Neuro-inflammation can worsen the outcomes of stroke, traumatic brain injury or spinal cord injury, as well as accelerate neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s. This suggests that limiting neuroinflammation may represent a promising new approach for the treatment of neurological diseases and neuropathic pain.…

Investigations on ALS: to adjust “protangleins”, could you put the right tool out of the “pocket”?

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects over 100,000 people worldwide. Currently, there are no effective treatments, largely due to a poor understanding of how the disease begins and progresses at the molecular level, so it is invariably fatal. Among the pivotal cellular phenomena, the researchers noted that the motor neurons of ALS patients contain excessive aggregation of a protein…