Salinity exerts a major constraint on global crop production while seawater intrusion impacts coastal aquifers and surface waters. Using a blueprint from nature, we produced highly salt tolerant Arabidopsis and rice. Endodermal-like barriers, duplicated to the root epidermis and distally expanded to protect sensitive regions, provide salt tolerance to 600 mM NaCl, levels comparable to […]
Dynamic CTCF bridges drive genome organization
Human CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) is a crucial factor in genome organization, regulating chromatin looping and gene expression. The loop extrusion model (LEM) designates cohesin as the sole active player and limits CTCF to a passive barrier, though emerging evidence suggests a more dynamic role. Using complementary single-molecule techniques, combining dual- and quad-trap optical tweezers, fluorescence […]
Nanoscale Organization of Membrane Tension during Neutrophil Extracellular Trap Formation Revealed by Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging
Cells continuously generate and respond to mechanical forces across compartments, with the plasma membrane acting as a nanoscale interface for sensing and transmitting tension. How intracellular forces are translated into membrane tension during dynamic processes such as neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation remains unclear. Here, we combine the mechanosensitive fluorescent probe Flipper-TR with fluorescence lifetime […]
TolC is required for a Mixed-Linkage β-Glucan (MLG) biosynthesis: Engineering bacteria for MLG overproduction
Mixed-linkage beta-glucans (MLGs) are emerging as promising biopolymers with significant biotechnological potential due to their unique structural and rheological properties. In rhizobia, MLG biosynthesis is controlled by the second messenger cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) and mediated by the bicistronic operon bgsBA. However, the full composition of the biosynthetic machinery and strategies for enhanced production remain incompletely […]
Alternative respiratory electron transport pathways drive differential aminoglycoside susceptibility
The bacterial electron transport system (ETS), a highly branched and modular network that interfaces directly with the proton motive force (PMF) to drive ATP synthesis, solute transport, and cellular homeostasis. Distinct ETS branches differ in their capacities for proton translocation, redox balancing, and membrane polarization The rewiring of cellular energetics has emerged as a recurrent […]
Targeting IL-6-STAT3/STAT4 Signaling Restores FOXP3 Expression in Pulmonary Arterial Endothelium and Reveals Novel Biomarkers for PAH
Background. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is a central driver of pulmonary vascular remodeling in idiopathic, heritable, and connective tissue disease-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Elevated IL-6 correlates with right ventricular (RV) dysfunction and poor survival. However, the specific downstream mechanisms by which IL-6 drives pathogenesis remain poorly defined. We investigated the therapeutic impact of direct IL-6 neutralization […]
NeuroCDS: Integrating Local and Global Neural Network Representations via Structural Constrained Viterbi Decoding for Robust CDS Annotation
Motivation: Robust annotation of Coding Sequences (CDS) is critical for downstream transcriptomics, yet heavily fragmented de novo RNA-Seq assemblies pose a severe challenge. Traditional computational tools rely on fixed, hand-crafted features that are prone to fail when canonical sequence signals are truncated. While recent deep learning models excel at automatically extracting complex representations, they predominantly […]
Differences in substrate engagement and Retinoblastoma protein (RB) binding of human KDM5A and KDM5B
Trimethylation of lysine 4 of histone H3 (H3K4me3) is a post-translational modification (PTM) enriched at promoters of actively transcribed genes. H3K4me3 is removed by the human histone demethylases of the KDM5 family. KDM5 demethylases act as transcriptional repressors through their catalytic activity in addition to more complex roles that depend on their interactions with other […]
Convergent gliding, divergent ecology: Environmental drivers of gliding vertebrates in Southeast Asia
Gliding has evolved repeatedly across vertebrates and is often regarded as a classic example of convergent evolution associated with arboreal habitats. However, it remains unclear whether convergent locomotion corresponds to shared ecological responses across taxa. In this study, we investigated the distribution patterns and environmental drivers of gliding vertebrates in Southeast Asia using occurrence records […]
Deafness rapidly reorganizes functional brain networks in adult mice
Sensory loss triggers crossmodal reorganization across sensory modalities, and accumulating evidence indicates that this adaptive capacity persists into adulthood. However, the global organizing principles of such plasticity remain poorly understood, as conventional animal model approaches do not permit longitudinal, whole-brain measurements. Here, we use ultra-high-field (15.2T) BOLD fMRI to map deafening-induced functional reorganization across the […]
Aging Impairs Temporal Integration in Supragranular but Not Thalamorecipient Layers of Primary Auditory Cortex
Speech has harmonic features and speech perception is impaired in aging. Imaging of auditory cortex (A1) in aged mice shows reduced selectivity to harmonic sounds and impaired temporal integration of component frequencies especially in layers 2/3 but not layer 4, suggesting that age-related changes in intracortical processing contribute to the hearing deficits. Since complex sounds […]
Thalamic Nuclei Functional Controllability Accounts for Cognitive Impairment in Multiple Sclerosis Over and Above Structural Damage
Background: The thalamus has emerged as a key region involved in cognitive dysfunction in multiple sclerosis (MS). While previous studies have identified associations between thalamic structural damage, altered functional connectivity, and cognitive performance, the specific contributions of individual thalamic nuclei and the added value of integrating structural and functional metrics remain poorly understood. Methods: T1-weighted […]