Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Genetics & Development in 2018"

TL;DR: This review describes general advances in the field regarding circRNA biogenesis and functions in relationship with cancer and summarizes some necessary precautions to work with circRNAs that are particularly relevant to cancer-related studies.

TL;DR: Evidence is emerging that m6A modification and its regulatory proteins also play critical roles in various cancers including leukemia, brain tumor, breast cancer and lung cancer, etc.

TL;DR: A unifying conceptual framework and a set of testable hypotheses based on this model are proposed, relating genome size, the proximity of transposable elements to genes, epigenetic reprogramming, chromatin accessibility, and gene expression.

TL;DR: The most recent findings on the role of miRNAs in modulating cancer biology are discussed with a specific focus on their role as modulators of the biology of the tumor microenvironment both as cargo of extracellular vesicles and as extra-vesicular mi RNAs.

TL;DR: Advances in computational tools and sequencing technologies now enable identification and quantification of satellite sequences genome-wide and how their applications are furthering knowledge of satellite evolution and function is described.

TL;DR: The crucial roles of lncRNAs in cancer initiation and development, as well as their possible clinical applications are reinforced, in a next-generation sequencing study of long noncoding RNAs.

TL;DR: Interestingly the biochemical features of lipodystrophies are far more closely aligned to what is seen in prevalent forms of insulin resistance than those of primary insulin signalling defects, suggesting that lipodystrophy could be a relevant model for common disease.

TL;DR: This work has shown that downregulating gene expression by apparently selecting for mutations causing destruction of key tumor-suppressor mRNAs in NMD patients results in downregulation in the quality of transcripts and fine-tune transcript abundance.

TL;DR: It is argued that horizontal inheritance has had a more profound impact in eukaryotic evolution than is commonly appreciated and a list of examples, including some previously unrecognized, whereby new host functions and phenotypes can be directly attributed to horizontally acquired TE or viral sequences is compiled.

TL;DR: Pinpointing the causal gene within each locus remains challenging, but is a critical step towards translation of genome-wide association study (GWAS) loci into new biology.

TL;DR: It is proposed that a similar approach may be successfully adapted to combat cancer therapy resistance, in cases where alternative splicing is known to be the mechanism that contributes to the resistance.

TL;DR: A review of the recent literature characterizing introgressed DNA and the likely biological consequences for their modern human carriers focuses particularly on archaic human haplotypes that were beneficial to modern humans as they expanded across the globe, and on ways to understand how populations harboring these haplotypes evolved over time.

TL;DR: Emerging findings that highlight hitherto unappreciated aspects of signaling to the translation apparatus with the particular focus on emerging connections between protein synthesis, autophagy and energy homeostasis in cancer are discussed.

TL;DR: The rich diversity of the TE repertoire and its potential role in adaptive evolution is discussed and some of the most recent examples of TE-related impacts on gene expression at the locus or the genome level are reviewed.

TL;DR: The current state of knowledge on key A-to-I RNA editing events in coding and non-coding regions for their roles in cancer development are reviewed and their potential clinical utility is discussed.

TL;DR: The mutational landscape of splicing factors in cancer and associated splicing consequences, along with the most important examples of the therapeutic approaches targeting the spliceosome currently being investigated in oncology are reviewed.

TL;DR: This review highlights the physical quantities that can be spatiotemporally tuned at supracellular scales to sculpt tissues and organs during embryonic development of animal species, and connects them to the cellular and molecular mechanisms controlling them.

TL;DR: Four possible models for the origins of Homo sapiens in Africa based on published literature from paleoanthropology and human genetics are described, with a special focus on genetic data.

TL;DR: It is proposed that both genetic and environmental factors attributed to type 1 and type 2 diabetes may contribute to beta-cell death through multiple mechanisms, leading to the clinical outcome of type 1 diabetes.

TL;DR: To facilitate the understanding of how TE coding sequences may become exapted, the findings of recent publications are incorporated into a framework and six-step model.

TL;DR: This review will summarize the main developments and pending challenges in ribosome biogenesis, including RiBi-associated vulnerabilities and tumor suppressor pathways to design new therapeutic avenues.

TL;DR: Cross-reference of the complement of RBPs recently identified by RNA interactome capture with cancer-associated genes and biological processes led to the identification of a set of 411 proteins with potential implications in cancer biology.

TL;DR: The advantages, challenges, and examples of genetic architecture studies of complex traits and diseases in Africa are reviewed and a call is made for methodological development that will accelerate studies important for all populations, especially those currently underrepresented in genetics.

TL;DR: This review evaluates primary patient derived-tumor organoid technology as a new tool for colorectal cancer research and treatment and addresses the exciting recent results that show that tumor organoids technology is highly predictive for drug response in metastatic coloreCTal cancer.

TL;DR: Abiotic and biotic factors were shown to release different types of seed and fruit coat-mediated constraints to water uptake and germination.

TL;DR: Present-day Europeans are largely the product of this Bronze Age collision of steppe pastoralists with Neolithic farmers, ignoring the long-distance migrations of the modern era.

TL;DR: Novel insights are outlined into the molecular mechanisms underlying iPSC formation, focusing on how the core reprogramming factors OCT4, KLF4, SOX2 and MYC (OKSM) drive changes in gene expression, chromatin state and 3D genome topology.

TL;DR: RNA regulons demonstrated to coordinate global post-transcriptional mechanisms in carcinogenesis and inflammation are discussed.

TL;DR: The most recently established roles of initiation factors in cancer development and progression, as well as unique methods used to study translational regulation are reviewed.

TL;DR: A number of statistical methods have been developed to infer population demographic histories using whole-genome sequence data, with recent advances focusing on allowing for more flexible modeling choices, scaling to larger data sets, and increasing statistical power as mentioned in this paper.