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 paper presents an engineered RNA-fragment end joining (REJ) platform that utilizes structured modular RNA segments to efficiently splice separate RNA units into functional mRNAs, enabling robust gene complementation, intersectional cell labeling, and the expression of large proteins without the need for extensive screening.
This study reveals that CTCF dimerization drives the cooperative oligomerization of nucleosomes into higher-order assemblies, a chromatin-dependent mechanism essential for stabilizing genome-wide loop anchors and supporting cell-type-specific gene expression.
This study demonstrates that the nucleoid-associated protein H-NS acts as a master regulator of bacterial antiviral immunity by silencing AT-rich defense loci through 3D chromatin compaction, thereby suppressing anti-phage activity in native hosts until its removal reveals potent defense mechanisms, including the novel Madara system.
This study reveals that ATAC-seq and MNase-seq detect distinct chromatin accessibility states rather than equivalent nucleosome-depleted regions, with ATAC-seq specifically capturing dynamic nucleosomes associated with transcriptional co-regulators like SWI/SNF, while MNase-seq identifies more static promoter regions.
This study provides the first direct experimental evidence that ultrashort cell-free DNA in human blood plasma contains folded G-quadruplex structures, confirming previous computational predictions through a combination of in silico analysis, circular dichroism, and specific ligand and antibody detection.
This study reveals that while the DAF-12 nuclear receptor pathway is conserved in plant-parasitic nematodes, these species often utilize structurally distinct endogenous ligands rather than the canonical dafachronic acids found in *C. elegans*, suggesting a diversification of hormonal signaling that could be targeted for new crop protection strategies.
This study validates a highly sensitive and reproducible probe-based qPCR assay for the detection and quantification of *Litylenchus crenatae* in various matrices, demonstrating its reliability across independent laboratories and its suitability for monitoring and managing Beech leaf disease.
This study demonstrates that chemically targeting the LRRK2 Roc-COR GTPase domain offers a viable alternative therapeutic strategy to partially downregulate kinase activity and potentially mitigate the on-target toxicities associated with full kinase inhibition in Parkinson's disease.
This study demonstrates that inhibiting the positively selected microRNA miR-128-3p reverses age-related and disease-associated muscle decline in mice and pigs by activating mitochondrial programs and suppressing inflammation, thereby restoring tissue function across multiple striated muscle pathologies.
In response to starvation stress, the kinase RIOK3 recruits TUT7 and DIS3L2 to add oligo(uridine) tails to 18S rRNA, thereby triggering its 3'-5' exonucleolytic decay and facilitating the degradation of mature 40S ribosomes.