281 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.
This study reveals that rapidly evolving aphid gall effector proteins, known as bicycle proteins, adopt diverse saposin-like folds that likely evolved from ancestral disulfide-bonded structures to target various plant mechanisms and evade immune surveillance.
This study utilizes molecular simulations to compare the binding interactions and conformational effects of the natural ligand SAM, the non-functional analog SAH, and a potential binder JS4 on the SAM-I riboswitch, providing critical insights for designing effective RNA-targeting antibiotics.
This study identifies a mutant miR-3260 with a loop structure deletion in a translucent-skinned silkworm strain, revealing that while the wild-type miRNA targets juvenile hormone-related genes, the loop mutation prevents Dicer-mediated cleavage yet fails to produce the expected phenotypic effects.
This study identifies that Ebola virus replication and transcription are driven by host cell remodeling mediated by cyclin-dependent kinases (particularly CDK2), which can be effectively inhibited to block viral processes, highlighting these kinases as promising antiviral targets.
This study integrates multi-omics data and functional validation in human dopaminergic neurons to identify Parkinson's disease-associated regulatory variants that modulate SCARB2 and BAG3 expression by altering transcription factor binding and chromatin accessibility, thereby elucidating potential mechanisms underlying neuronal degeneration.
This study characterizes the zebrafish mitochondrial transcriptome using long-read sequencing to identify a novel, ubiquitously expressed polyadenylated lncRNA (lncOriL) and specific mRNA features that are conserved across teleost fish, pigs, and humans.
The tumour suppressor RBM5 enforces apoptotic alternative splicing by acting as a dual-action gatekeeper that physically stalls spliceosome progression while simultaneously activating the DHX15 helicase to unwind the branch helix.
This study demonstrates that secretomes derived from both adipose- and limbal-derived mesenchymal stem cells effectively protect oxidative stress-damaged retinal pigment epithelium cells by enhancing viability, modulating inflammation and apoptosis, and inhibiting pathological angiogenesis, thereby highlighting their potential as safe, cell-free therapies for retinal degeneration.
By analyzing nearly 15,000 samples across 45 human tissues, this study reveals that local tissue clocks drive widespread 24-hour gene expression rhythms, uncovering a significantly larger extent of rhythmic transcription in the brain than previously known and identifying numerous disease-associated genes with distinct diurnal phases that offer new opportunities for chronotherapeutic interventions.
This study identifies copper importer CTR1 as a critical regulator of adaptive thermogenesis, demonstrating that its upregulation by cold exposure and 3-adrenergic signaling is essential for maintaining copper homeostasis, mitochondrial oxidative capacity, and lipolytic activation to sustain thermogenic responses in adipose tissues.