Genetics

Early moderate prenatal alcohol exposure and maternal diet impact offspring DNA methylation across species

1. Mitchell Bestry
2. Alexander N Larcombe
3. Nina Kresoje
4. Emily K Chivers
5. Chloe Bakker
6. James P Fitzpatrick
7. Elizabeth J Elliott
8. Jeffrey M Craig
9. Evelyne Muggli
10. Jane Halliday
11. Delyse Hutchinson
12. Sam Buckberry
13. Ryan Lister
14. Martyn Symons
15. David Martino

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study unveils the significant impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on epigenetic patterns, offering new insights into its adverse health outcomes through solid evidence from both mouse models and human data. The findings, which reveal how a high-methyl diet can mitigate these epigenetic alterations, present a promising prenatal care strategy. Despite its solid data overall, the study's small sample size and unaccounted confounders suggest the need for further research to confirm these findings and explore their practical implications.

Reviewed by eLife

Elimination of subtelomeric repeat sequences exerts little effect on telomere essential functions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

1. Can Hu
2. Xue-Ting Zhu
3. Ming-Hong He
4. Yangyang Shao
5. Zhongjun Qin
6. Zhi-Jing Wu
7. Jin-Qiu Zhou

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study advances our understanding of the biological significance of the DNA sequence adjacent to telomeres. The data presented convincingly demonstrate that subtelomeric repeats are non-essential and have a minimal, if any, role in maintaining telomere integrity of budding yeast. The work will be of interest to the telomere community specifically and the genome integrity community more broadly.

Reviewed by eLife

Haplotype function score improves biological interpretation and cross-ancestry polygenic prediction of human complex traits

1. Weichen Song
2. Yongyong Shi
3. Guan Ning Lin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable paper presents a new approach for association testing, using the output of neural networks that have been trained to predict functional changes from DNA sequences. As such, the approach is an interesting addition to statistical genetics, and the evidence for the presented method being able to identify trait-associations in regions where GWASs are typically underpowered is solid. A limitation is, however, that it is unclear how the quality of these associations compares to those detected using conventional methods. Additional work assessing this method's power and characterizing false positives / false negative regions would be critical to ensure that the method is broadly adopted by the field.

Reviewed by eLife

Allelic and Gene Dosage Effects Involving Uromodulin Aggregates Drive Autosomal Dominant Tubulointerstitial Kidney Disease

1. Guglielmo Schiano
2. Jennifer Lake
3. Marta Mariniello
4. Céline Schaeffer
5. Marianne Harvent
6. Luca Rampoldi
7. Eric Olinger
8. Olivier Devuyst

Reviewed by Review Commons

An adapted MS2-MCP system to visualize endogenous cytoplasmic mRNA with live imaging in Caenorhabditis elegans

1. Cristina Tocchini
2. Susan E. Mango

Reviewed by Review Commons

A population modification gene drive targeting both Saglin and Lipophorin impairs Plasmodium transmission in Anopheles mosquitoes

1. Emily I Green
2. Etienne Jaouen
3. Dennis Klug
4. Roenick Proveti Olmo
5. Amandine Gautier
6. Stéphanie Blandin
7. Eric Marois

Reviewed by Review Commons

Regional random mutagenesis driven by multiple sgRNAs and diverse on-target genome editing events to identify functionally important elements in non-coding regions

1. Kento Morimoto
2. Hayate Suzuki
3. Akihiro Kuno
4. Yoko Daitoku
5. Yoko Tanimoto
6. Kanako Kato
7. Kazuya Murata
8. Fumihiro Sugiyama
9. Seiya Mizuno

Reviewed by Review Commons

Copy number variation and population-specific immune genes in the model vertebrate zebrafish

1. Yannick Schäfer
2. Katja Palitzsch
3. Maria Leptin
4. Andrew R Whiteley
5. Thomas Wiehe
6. Jaanus Suurväli

Reviewed by Review Commons

ER procollagen storage defect without coupled unfolded protein response drives precocious arthritis

1. Kathryn M Yammine
2. Sophia Mirda Abularach
3. Seo-yeon Kim
4. Agata A Bikovtseva
5. Jinia Lilianty
6. Vincent L Butty
7. Richard P Schiavoni
8. John F Bateman
9. Shireen R Lamandé
10. Matthew D Shoulders

Reviewed by Review Commons

The BTB-ZF gene Bm-mamo regulates pigmentation in silkworm caterpillars

1. Songyuan Wu
2. Xiaoling Tong
3. Chenxing Peng
4. Jiangwen Luo
5. Chenghao Zhang
6. Kunpeng Lu
7. Chunlin Li
8. Xin Ding
9. Xiaohui Duan
10. Yaru Lu
11. Hai Hu
12. Duan Tan
13. Fangyin Dai

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study identifies the gene mamo as a new regulator of pigmentation in the silkworm Bombyx mori, a function that was previously unsuspected based on extensive work on Drosophila where the mamo gene is involved in gamete production. The evidence supporting the role of Bm-nano in pigmentation is convincing, including high-resolution linkage mapping of two mutant strains, expression profiling, and reproduction of the mutant phenotypes with state-of-the-art RNAi and CRISPR knock-out assays. The work will be of interest to evolutionary biologists and geneticists studying color patterns and evolution of gene networks.

Reviewed by eLife