WHEN WE HUMANS got a first glimpse of our genome, we had good reason to question our biological complexity. Many scientists predicted we would possess some 100,000-plus genes, but sequencers finally ...

In human cells, only a small proportion of the information written in genes is used to produce proteins. How does the cell select this information? A large molecular machine called the spliceosome ...

A conserved region of U6 small nuclear RNA has been implicated in binding an essential metal ion. Is this a glimpse of the spliceosome's catalytic core? Identifying divalent metal ion binding sites in ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 119, No. 48 (November 29, 2022), pp. 1-12 (12 pages) Spliceosome activation is the process of creating the ...

To sustain life, processes in biological cells have to be strictly controlled both in time and in space. Researchers have elucidated a previously unknown mechanism that regulates one of the essential ...

Humans share a comparable number of protein-coding genes with the simple roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, yet we are arguably more sophisticated organisms. This difference in complexity is thanks to ...

All of the information needed for building an organism is contained within its genome, present in every cell. When new proteins are required, the genetic information that encodes for it is transcribed ...

Our new paper in the EMBO Journal links minor spliceosome to chromosome segregation. We identified the CCDC84/CENATAC protein as a novel component of the minor spliceosome. It has a striking ...

Certain diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy are linked to genetic mutations that damage the important biological process of rearranging gene sequences in pre-messenger RNA, a ...

Image: “Like a constellation of atoms” – splicing modulator (purple) bound to a spliceosome subunit. Credit: Professor Vlad Pena. Scientists have uncovered the inner workings of one of the most ...