316 papers
Molecular biology explores the tiny machinery inside living cells, revealing how genetic instructions are read, copied, and turned into the proteins that keep us alive. This field acts as a bridge between the static code of DNA and the dynamic processes that drive growth, disease, and life itself, offering insights into everything from cellular repair to the development of new medicines.
On Gist.Science, we track every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv in this category to make these complex discoveries accessible to everyone. Our team processes each submission to provide both clear, plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries, ensuring you can grasp the core findings without getting lost in dense academic jargon.
Below are the latest molecular biology papers freshly processed from bioRxiv, ready for you to explore and understand.
By integrating AI structure prediction with biochemical and molecular dynamics approaches, this study reveals that two Pleckstrin homology domains (PH1 and PH2) scaffold SNAP-47-containing SNARE complexes to regulate membrane fusion during synaptic plasticity, with PH1 specifically interacting with the SNARE coiled coil in a manner sensitive to lysine acetylation.
This study demonstrates that lateral flow devices (LFDs), already used for rabies diagnosis, can be repurposed as genomic specimens to enable rapid, decentralized viral surveillance in remote areas without requiring additional sample collection or a cold chain, offering a practical window of approximately three weeks for near-complete genome recovery.
This paper introduces network fixation expansion microscopy (nfExM), a novel protocol that resolves the tension between preserving protein organization and achieving isotropic expansion by directly anchoring proteins to a hydrogel network via a rapid, low-temperature chemical process, thereby enabling superior epitope retention and nanoscale structural preservation.
This study reveals that the human cytoplasmic enzyme ELAC1 (RNase ZS), previously known for repairing damaged tRNAs, has been repurposed to process structured non-coding RNAs, specifically cleaving vault RNAs (vtRNAs) and Y RNAs, thereby demonstrating functional specialization between the ELAC1 and ELAC2 paralogs.
This study demonstrates that while AlphaFold 3 can effectively identify plausible aptamer-protein binding interfaces, its confidence metrics do not reliably predict binding affinities, underscoring the necessity of integrating AI-based structural modeling with experimental biophysical validation like microscale thermophoresis for accurate aptamer optimization.
This study reveals that viral noncoding RNAs HSUR1 and HSUR2 recruit host Pumilio proteins (PUM1/2) as essential cofactors to license their engagement with target mRNAs, demonstrating a novel mechanism where RBPs enable noncoding RNA-mediated gene repression rather than acting as downstream effectors.
This study reveals that the transcription factor Fzf1 dual-regulates chemical stress-induced DDI2/3 expression in *Saccharomyces cerevisiae* by acting as both a direct transcriptional activator and a pioneer factor that facilitates chromatin remodeling at upstream repressing sequences, thereby enabling significantly higher induction levels compared to other Fzf1-regulated genes.
By applying metatranscriptomic sequencing to 76 necropsied marine turtles in Australia, this study reveals a complex pathobiome of diverse co-occurring parasites, bacteria, and novel viruses, suggesting that turtle mortality is often driven by intricate interactions between multiple infectious agents and environmental stressors rather than single causative agents.
Virion-scale molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the organization of HIV-1 integrase into a single long ribonucleoprotein filament, rather than as isolated tetramers, is essential for directing the assembly of mature capsids into their characteristic conical and elongated morphology.
This study introduces a rank normalization strategy that enables the cross-pathway comparison of protein turnover rates between the ubiquitin-proteasome and autophagy-lysosomal systems by converting absolute stabilization values into percentile scores, thereby revealing proteome-wide degradation preferences and providing quantitative evidence for proteaphagy.