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.
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.
Using nanoscale imaging, this study reveals that FUS and TAF15 functionally compensate for the loss of EWSR1 by reorganizing into a similar ribonucleoprotein network to safeguard nascent RNA levels and cellular metabolic activity, highlighting critical functional redundancy within the FET protein family.
This study reveals that Muscleblind-like (MBNL) proteins dimerize via intermolecular disulfide bonds to regulate alternative splicing and maintain the structural integrity of pathogenic RNA foci in Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1.
This study identifies a conserved, transcriptionally quiescent yet functionally mature cellular state characterized by low gene complexity across diverse human tissues, which is often overlooked by standard single-cell analysis but plays a critical role in tissue maintenance and declines with aging.
By combining statistical analysis of 14,000 SNARE transmembrane domains with molecular dynamics simulations, this study reveals that distinct amino acid compositions—specifically bulky phenylalanine in early secretory pathways versus smaller isoleucine in late pathways—have evolved to optimize protein anchoring within the unique biophysical environments of different eukaryotic membranes.
This study provides evidence that the "transertion" mechanism, which couples transcription and translation to physically shift genes from the nucleoid to the plasma membrane, also occurs in the Gram-positive bacterium *Bacillus subtilis*, suggesting conserved principles of cellular regulation across bacterial types.