{"title":"Reconstructing generation intervals over time","authors":"Pablo Librado","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00766-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00766-2","url":null,"abstract":"In this Tools of the Trade article, Pablo Librado describes a novel computational method to infer the time between successive generations from genomic data, including ancient genomes, which offers new insights into the timing of evolutionary and demographic events.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 11","pages":"745-746"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141891852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Xuelan Chen, Albert S. Agustinus, Jun Li, Melody DiBona, Samuel F. Bakhoum
{"title":"Chromosomal instability as a driver of cancer progression","authors":"Xuelan Chen, Albert S. Agustinus, Jun Li, Melody DiBona, Samuel F. Bakhoum","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00761-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00761-7","url":null,"abstract":"Chromosomal instability (CIN) refers to an increased propensity of cells to acquire structural and numerical chromosomal abnormalities during cell division, which contributes to tumour genetic heterogeneity. CIN has long been recognized as a hallmark of cancer, and evidence over the past decade has strongly linked CIN to tumour evolution, metastasis, immune evasion and treatment resistance. Until recently, the mechanisms by which CIN propels cancer progression have remained elusive. Beyond the generation of genomic copy number heterogeneity, recent work has unveiled additional tumour-promoting consequences of abnormal chromosome segregation. These mechanisms include complex chromosomal rearrangements, epigenetic reprogramming and the induction of cancer cell-intrinsic inflammation, emphasizing the multifaceted role of CIN in cancer. Chromosomal instability (CIN) drives cancer progression through diverse mechanisms. The authors review the molecular consequences of CIN in advanced cancer, such as genomic and phenotypic heterogeneity and cancer cell-intrinsic inflammation.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"26 1","pages":"31-46"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141791103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epigenetic editing works like a CHARM","authors":"Kirsty Minton","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00765-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00765-3","url":null,"abstract":"Neumann, Bertozzi et al. describe a novel epigenetic editor termed CHARM and report its use to silence prion protein expression in the brain.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 9","pages":"600-600"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141737017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Evolution and regulation of animal sex chromosomes","authors":"Zexian Zhu, Lubna Younas, Qi Zhou","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00757-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00757-3","url":null,"abstract":"Animal sex chromosomes typically carry the upstream sex-determining gene that triggers testis or ovary development and, in some species, are regulated by global dosage compensation in response to functional decay of the Y chromosome. Despite the importance of these pathways, they exhibit striking differences across species, raising fundamental questions regarding the mechanisms underlying their evolutionary turnover. Recent studies of non-model organisms, including insects, reptiles and teleosts, have yielded a broad view of the diversity of sex chromosomes that challenges established theories. Moreover, continued studies in model organisms with recently developed technologies have characterized the dynamics of sex determination and dosage compensation in three-dimensional nuclear space and at single-cell resolution. Here, we synthesize recent insights into sex chromosomes from a variety of species to review their evolutionary dynamics with respect to the canonical model, as well as their diverse mechanisms of regulation. Advances in genomic technologies have enabled investigations into a wide range of species. In this Review, the authors describe recent studies in both non-model and model organisms that illustrate the diversity of animal sex chromosomes with respect to their evolutionary histories and mechanistic roles in sex-determination systems.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"26 1","pages":"59-74"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141724029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Programmable DNA rearrangements using bridge RNAs","authors":"Henry Ertl","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00763-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00763-5","url":null,"abstract":"Two studies in Nature reveal the mechanistic and structural properties of a family of mobile genetic elements that can be reprogrammed to engineer genome modifications.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 9","pages":"599-599"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141597639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joy S. Xiang, Danielle M. Schafer, Katherine L. Rothamel, Gene W. Yeo
{"title":"Decoding protein–RNA interactions using CLIP-based methodologies","authors":"Joy S. Xiang, Danielle M. Schafer, Katherine L. Rothamel, Gene W. Yeo","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00749-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00749-3","url":null,"abstract":"Protein–RNA interactions are central to all RNA processing events, with pivotal roles in the regulation of gene expression and cellular functions. Dysregulation of these interactions has been increasingly linked to the pathogenesis of human diseases. High-throughput approaches to identify RNA-binding proteins and their binding sites on RNA — in particular, ultraviolet crosslinking followed by immunoprecipitation (CLIP) — have helped to map the RNA interactome, yielding transcriptome-wide protein–RNA atlases that have contributed to key mechanistic insights into gene expression and gene-regulatory networks. Here, we review these recent advances, explore the effects of cellular context on RNA binding, and discuss how these insights are shaping our understanding of cellular biology. We also review the potential therapeutic applications arising from new knowledge of protein–RNA interactions. RNA-binding proteins regulate the lifecycle of RNA, and their dysregulation is associated with diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Using methods based on ultraviolet crosslinking followed by immunoprecipitation (CLIP), we can now begin to decode the mechanisms of the interactions between RNA-binding proteins and RNA. This Review discusses recent insights from and future applications of these methodologies.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 12","pages":"879-895"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141561351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decoding the language of chromatin modifications with MARCS","authors":"Andrey Tvardovskiy, Saulius Lukauskas","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00758-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00758-2","url":null,"abstract":"In this Tools of the Trade article, Andrey Tvardovskiy and Saulius Lukauskas introduce the web resource MARCS, which offers a set of visualization tools to explore chromatin regulatory circuits from either a protein- or modification-centred perspective.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 10","pages":"673-674"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141538283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revealing gene function with statistical inference at single-cell resolution","authors":"Cole Trapnell","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00750-w","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00750-w","url":null,"abstract":"Single-cell and spatial molecular profiling assays have shown large gains in sensitivity, resolution and throughput. Applying these technologies to specimens from human and model organisms promises to comprehensively catalogue cell types, reveal their lineage origins in development and discern their contributions to disease pathogenesis. Moreover, rapidly dropping costs have made well-controlled perturbation experiments and cohort studies widely accessible, illuminating mechanisms that give rise to phenotypes at the scale of the cell, the tissue and the whole organism. Interpreting the coming flood of single-cell data, much of which will be spatially resolved, will place a tremendous burden on existing computational pipelines. However, statistical concepts, models, tools and algorithms can be repurposed to solve problems now arising in genetic and molecular biology studies of development and disease. Here, I review how the questions that recent technological innovations promise to answer can be addressed by the major classes of statistical tools. Single-cell, spatial and multi-omic profiling technologies generate large-scale data that reveal the output of genome-scale experiments across diverse cells, tissues and organisms. Cole Trapnell reviews the underlying core statistical challenges that need to be tackled to harness the power of these technologies and advance our understanding of gene function in health and disease.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 9","pages":"623-638"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141477026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Charting the evolutionary history of malaria","authors":"Linda Koch","doi":"10.1038/s41576-024-00756-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41576-024-00756-4","url":null,"abstract":"A study in Nature charts the history of malaria in the Americas from ancient Plasmodium parasite genomes.","PeriodicalId":19067,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Genetics","volume":"25 8","pages":"530-530"},"PeriodicalIF":39.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141453119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}