233 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 presents the development and validation of three Cre-dependent CRISPR-based mouse lines that enable inducible, locus-specific DNA methylation editing in vivo, successfully demonstrating causal links between methylation and gene expression at specific genomic loci in both ex vivo myeloid cells and in vivo neurons.
This study identifies a novel microprotein, circSmad1-194aa, encoded by the circular RNA circSmad1, which promotes skeletal muscle differentiation by localizing to the nucleus to suppress ID1 expression and upregulate MYOD1.
This study demonstrates that IL1R1 antagonists actively block inflammatory signaling not by failing to stabilize an active state, but by dynamically increasing flexibility in the distal D3 domain to allosterically prevent co-receptor recruitment, thereby revealing receptor dynamics as a critical determinant of signaling control.
This study reveals that HIF-1α coordinates adrenal steroidogenesis under hypoxia by directly regulating steroidogenic genes and selectively modulating the expression of miRNA biogenesis machinery to shape post-transcriptional control.
This study reveals that a subset of miRNAs, particularly miR-21, localizes to the nucleus in anthropoid primates to form RNA-DNA triplexes with Argonaute 2, representing an evolutionarily recent mechanism for chromatin-based gene regulation.
This study reveals that a mouse-specific retrotransposon drives developmentally regulated alternative transcription start site switching in the Ash2l gene to generate a truncated protein isoform, which primes developmental promoters via histone modifications to control embryogenesis and cell fate decisions.
The paper introduces InvDNA, a deep learning framework that designs single-stranded DNA sequences directly from all-atom backbone coordinates, achieving over a twofold improvement in sequence recovery and a 44.4% success rate in folding into predefined conformations compared to existing methods.
By applying a stochastic modeling framework to Tabula Muris Senis single-cell RNA sequencing data, this study quantifies mitochondrial DNA deletion dynamics in mouse limb muscle, revealing that rare mutation events followed by rapid clonal expansion drive accumulation over approximately three months, with specific gene disruptions influencing heteroplasmy levels.
This study characterizes the molecular epidemiology of Chikungunya virus outbreaks in Kenya from 2017 to 2020, revealing that Indian Ocean Lineage strains with fitness-enhancing mutations caused geographically distinct but related transmission clusters in Mombasa and Dadaab-Hagadera, while identifying specific clinical symptoms that can aid in differentiating Chikungunya from other acute febrile illnesses in resource-limited settings.
This study demonstrates that relocating a specific eight-amino acid "Z-appendage" variant from the collagen IV α3 chain to the α5 chain in Alport syndrome mice shifts the pathology from glomerular basement membrane defects to marked thickening of Bowman's capsule, thereby revealing a critical bioactive role for the collagen IV α565-α121 scaffold in maintaining the structural integrity of Bowman's capsule.