CRISRP-associated transpososon (CAST) systems can be used as genetic engineering tools to insert site-specifically large DNA sequences. Of the CAST systems, the type 1 systems have favourable properties to be used for genetic engineering. For their…

In wild-type conditions, the Argonaute protein ALG-1 takes care of most miRNA-mediated functions with a small contribution by the Argonaute protein ALG-2. If ALG-1 is genetically ablated, the worm cells try to compensate the loss by transcribing more…

The human non-coding RNA vtRNA1-1 modulates several processes which are important for cancer cells. However, how the levels of vtRNA1-1 are regulated in cells as so far been unknown. The Polacek lab identified the proteins TRIM21 and TRIM25 as…

The Jinek lab in collaboration with the Martinez lab and the Leitner group elucidated the mechanism how the human tRNA ligase complex is protected from oxidation which inactivates this essential complex for tRNA biogenesis and the unfolded protein…

The Sequence Read Archive is an important repository for sequencing data. Metadata for sequencing datasets need to entered manually which makes the process prone to error and incomplete entry. The Zavolan lab created the tool HTSinfer which extracts…

A recent “Nature” paper by the groups of Jacob Corn (IMHS, D-BIOL) and Jeffrey Bode (D-CHAB) reveals how cells remove chemically damaged proteins. They discovered that the human SCF–FBXO31 complex scans proteins for C-terminal amidation, a sign of…