Molecular Biology

A SUMO E3 ligase promotes long non-coding RNA transcription to regulate small RNA-directed DNA elimination

1. Salman Shehzada
2. Tomoko Noto
3. Julie Saksouk
4. Kazufumi Mochizuki

Reviewed by Review Commons

Conserved and repetitive motifs in an intrinsically disordered protein drive ⍺-carboxysome assembly

1. Julia B. Turnšek
2. Luke M. Oltrogge
3. David F. Savage

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Hibernating ribosomes tether to mitochondria as an adaptive response to cellular stress during glucose depletion

1. Olivier Gemin
2. Maciej Gluc
3. Michael Purdy
4. Higor Rosa
5. Moritz Niemann
6. Yelena Peskova
7. Simone Mattei
8. Ahmad Jomaa

Reviewed by preLights

RIOK2 phosphorylation by RSK promotes synthesis of the human small ribosomal subunit

1. Emilie L. Cerezo
2. Thibault Houles
3. Oriane Lié
4. Marie-Kerguelen Sarthou
5. Charlotte Audoynaud
6. Geneviève Lavoie
7. Maral Halladjian
8. Sylvain Cantaloube
9. Carine Froment
10. Odile Burlet-Schiltz
11. Yves Henry
12. Philippe P. Roux
13. Anthony K. Henras
14. Yves Romeo

Reviewed by Review Commons

SUMOylation of Bonus, the Drosophila homolog of Transcription Intermediary Factor 1, safeguards germline identity by recruiting repressive chromatin complexes to silence tissue-specific genes

1. Baira Godneeva
2. Maria Ninova
3. Katalin Fejes-Toth
4. Alexei Aravin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study advances our knowledge of Drosophila Bonus, the sole ortholog of the mammalian transcriptional regulator Tif1. Solid evidence, both in vivo and in vitro, shows how SUMOylation controls the function of the Bonus protein and what the impact of SUMOylation on the function of Bonus protein in the ovary is.

Reviewed by eLife

Enrichment of rare codons at 5' ends of genes is a spandrel caused by evolutionary sequence turnover and does not improve translation

1. Richard Sejour
2. Janet Leatherwood
3. Alisa Yurovsky
4. Bruce Futcher

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an important contribution to the origins and translational consequences of the relatively low rate of translation elongation in the first ∼30-50 codons of genes in most organisms. The authors provide convincing evidence that the prevalence of rare codons in the first ~40 codons in yeast is due to the relatively recent evolution of these coding sequences, or of lower purifying selection operating on them, and that a preponderance of codons encoded by rare tRNAs near the N-terminus is not associated with higher translational efficiency in the manner proposed by the "translational ramp" hypothesis. The work is incomplete in that the results of reporter assays may have been confounded by alterations of mRNA sequence or structure that could have influenced their translation or mRNA stability; that the work cannot fully account for a greater enrichment of slowly translated codons in N-terminal vs. C-terminal regions; and that the work does not resolve whether translation elongation through N-terminal coding is truly slow.

Reviewed by eLife

Scaling of an antibody validation procedure enables quantification of antibody performance in major research applications

1. Riham Ayoubi
2. Joel Ryan
3. Michael S Biddle
4. Walaa Alshafie
5. Maryam Fotouhi
6. Sara Gonzalez Bolivar
7. Vera Ruiz Moleon
8. Peter Eckmann
9. Donovan Worrall
10. Ian McDowell
11. Kathleen Southern
12. Wolfgang Reintsch
13. Thomas M Durcan
14. Claire Brown
15. Anita Bandrowski
16. Harvinder Virk
17. Aled M Edwards
18. Peter McPherson
19. Carl Laflamme

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Antibodies are some of the most critical tools in biomedical research. However, their quality and specificity vary significantly. This fundamental study provides guidelines for how the quality of an antibody should be assessed and recorded and provides compelling data on the selected antibodies. This paper will be of interest to researchers working in experimental cell biology.

Reviewed by eLife

Rapid cloning-free mutagenesis of new SARS-CoV-2 variants using a novel reverse genetics platform

1. Enja Tatjana Kipfer
2. David Hauser
3. Martin J Lett
4. Fabian Otte
5. Lorena Urda
6. Yuepeng Zhang
7. Christopher MR Lang
8. Mohamed Chami
9. Christian Mittelholzer
10. Thomas Klimkait

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study describes CLEVER, an improved method for fast and efficient rescue and mutagenesis of SARS-CoV2. While the principle of this method is not new, this work significantly improves upon existing protocols, providing an important advancement in the field of viral infectious clones. Convincing proof-of-concept experiments were performed that demonstrate the utility and efficiency of the method.

Reviewed by eLife

Inhibiting Glutamine Metabolism Blocks Coronavirus Replication in Mammalian Cells

1. Kai Su Greene
2. Annette Choi
3. Matthew Chen
4. Nianhui Yang
5. Ruizhi Li
6. Yijian Qiu
7. Michael J Lukey
8. Katherine S Rojas
9. Jonathan Shen
10. Kristin F Wilson
11. William P Katt
12. Gary R Whittaker
13. Richard A Cerione

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

The long non-coding RNA LINC00941 modulates MTA2/NuRD occupancy to suppress premature human epidermal differentiation

1. Eva Morgenstern
2. Uwe Schwartz
3. Johannes Graf
4. Astrid Bruckmann
5. Markus Kretz

Reviewed by Review Commons