Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Genetics & Development in 2016"

TL;DR: Understanding how pioneer factors initiate chromatin dynamics and how such can be blocked at heterochromatic sites provides insights into controlling cell fate transitions at will.

TL;DR: Understanding the mechanisms by which TADs form and control long-range chromatin interactions will provide insights into the mechanism of gene regulation in general, but will also reveal how genomic rearrangements and mutations in cancer genomes can lead to misregulation of oncogenes and tumor suppressors.

TL;DR: Recent advances and future directions in retina regeneration research using zebrafish as a model system are described.

TL;DR: New technological advances illuminated subtler nuances of the complex relationship between retrotransposons and the host genome, clarifying the role of retroelements in evolution, development and impact on human disease.

TL;DR: It is proposed that AD is fundamentally a disorder of ER-mitochondrial hyperconnectivity, which may help explain not only the aberrant Aβ production, but also many of the 'other' biochemical and morphological features of the disease.

TL;DR: The current literature regarding human mtDNA replication and heritable disorders caused by genetic changes of the POLG, POLG2, Twinkle, RNASEH1, DNA2, and MGME1 genes are reviewed.

TL;DR: Analysis of thousands of genomes shows that humans and great apes have more genetic differences in content and structure over recent segmental duplications than any other euchromatic region.

TL;DR: The liquid-like behavior of chromatin is discussed and its physical and biological relevance is discussed, which contributes to various genome functions including gene expression and DNA replication, repair, and recombination.

TL;DR: Recent advances in genetic and epigenetic heterogeneity and clonal dynamics in AML and their relevance to biology, clinical outcomes and therapeutic implications are reviewed.

TL;DR: CTCF plays a prominent role in establishing chromatin loops (between pairs of CTCF binding sites) through recruiting cohesin, integral for a multitude of topological features of interphase chromatin, such as the formation of topologically associated domains, domain insulation, enhancer blocking and even enhancer function.

TL;DR: There is good evidence for a slowdown in mean mutation rate during great ape evolution, but not for a more recent change within the timescale of human genetic diversity, so it is reasonable to use a present-day rate of approximately 0.5×10-9bp-1year-1 in all human or hominin demographic analyses.

TL;DR: It is shown that during the Holocene, new migrations from Asia introduced the Saqqaq/Dorset Paleoeskimo population to the North American Arctic ∼4500 years ago, ancestry that is potentially connected with ancestry found in Athabaskan-speakers today.

TL;DR: The biochemical and mechanistic proprieties of P cG proteins with respect to recent advances that link the genetic alterations of PcG activity to cancer development are analyzed.

TL;DR: It is argued that when statistics more directly related to load are used, the results of different studies and data sets consistently reveal little or no difference in the load of non-synonymous mutations among human populations.

TL;DR: The roles of lysine 27 demethylases, JMJD3 and UTX, in cancer and potential therapeutic avenues targeting these enzymes are discussed to aid in the development of improved inhibitors to treat cancers affected by demethylase mutations and aberrant gene activation.

TL;DR: Tissue repair is not limited to regulating ISC proliferation, as emerging evidence demonstrates that the Drosophila intestine uses multiple strategies to ensure proper tissue homeostasis that may also extend to other tissues.

TL;DR: The admixture history of Latin America, and the resulting extensive diversity of the region, represents a natural experiment offering an advantageous setting for genetic association studies.

TL;DR: These findings set the stage for future intervention, by targeting directly their intrinsic catalytic activities, or indirectly, pathways that differentially regulate tumor suppressor/oncogenic isoform-expression.

TL;DR: This work reexamine the widely held tenet that extensive somatic pairing of homologous sequences cannot occur in mammals and suggests that pairing may be a widespread and significant potential that has gone unnoticed in mammals because they expend considerable effort to prevent it.

TL;DR: Current understanding on the function of human/mammalian histone variants and their regulatory networks are summarized and their roles in cancer development are highlighted.

TL;DR: Together, neoblast lineage development, subclasses, and cell hierarchies are becoming elucidated, showing the complex regulation required for proper tissue homeostasis and regeneration in planarians.

TL;DR: Molecular work on inter-generation epigenetic effects in animals and some principles of epigenetic transmission are reviewed, arguing that the need to stably repress repetitive DNA facilitated the evolution of mechanisms conferring long-term epigenetic memory, and that feedback between different epigenetic mechanisms - for example between chromatin and small RNAs - could contribute to more stable long- term inheritance.

TL;DR: The phylogenetic distribution of neoblast cells is reviewed and their anatomical locations, transcriptional profiles, and roles during regeneration in flatworms and acoels are compared to understand the evolution of whole-body regeneration.

TL;DR: Current knowledge on cohesin's involvement in gene expression is presented, highlighting molecular and mechanistic consequences of pathogenic mutations in the Cornelia de Lange syndrome.

TL;DR: A series of recent studies have revealed aspects of the multi-pronged strategy that mammalian genomes use to identify and silence retroelements as mentioned in this paper, including the use of small RNA-guides, specialized DNA-binding protein adaptors and proteins that repair chromatin discontinuities caused by retroelement insertions.

TL;DR: Genomic studies have identified several genes that underlie high-altitude adaptive phenotypes, many of which are central components of the Hypoxia Inducible Factor (HIF) pathway and will contribute to understanding of the molecular basis of evolutionary change and assist in the functional annotation of the human genome.

TL;DR: Recent studies on intercellular mitochondrial transfer in organs and cells are reviewed to shed light on the current understanding of the known mechanisms and conditions that lead to intercellULAR mitochondrial transfer.

TL;DR: Zebrafish robustly regenerate hair cells in the sensory lateral line and ear and recent gene expression and time-lapse analyses of cell behaviors at the single cell level have greatly advanced understanding of the mechanisms responsible for hair cell regeneration.

TL;DR: Evidence that mitochondrial DNA transfer occurs in vivo has now been published and it is possible that intercellular mitochondrial transfer is a fundamental physiological process with a role in development and tissue homeostasis.

TL;DR: The heart has been added to those organs that require a nerve supply to regenerate, and a trade-off between regeneration and tumor suppression has been proposed to help explain why mammals regenerate poorly.