OnScience

Research Article Title: G-quadruplex structures within the 3’ UTR of LINE-1 elements stimulate retrotransposition. Journal: Nature Str. Mol. Biol., 2017, aop. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.3367 Simple Short Explanation of the Work for Everyone:    Approximately half of our genome is originated from mobile DNA elements, which are DNA segments that insert themselves at different positions in a “host” genome they infiltrate. Some mobile DNA elements increase their genomic copy numbers via a copy-and-paste mechanism, extending the length of our genome in an evolutionary timescale. In this study, we present an evidence that a specific guanine(G)-reach region in LINE-1 retrotransposons, type of mobile DNA elements that played a significant role in shaping mammalian genome architecture, has functional role in LINE-1 mobility.    By a thorough dusting of the low-complexity G-rich regions in ancient LINE-1 remnants, dead at different time epochs, we revealed the or...

Research Article Title: Single genome retrieval of context-dependent variability in mutation rates for human germline. Journal: BMC Genomics, 2017, 18, 81. http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-016-3440-5 (first deposited in bioRxiv on 10 August 2015) Simple Short Explanation of the Work for Everyone:    Our genome is a very long DNA strand holding a sequence of nucleobases. Those nucleobases are of four types - letters A, T, G and C - and there are ~3.5 billion such letters in our genome. However, the letters do not stay the same over evolutionary timescale (millions to billions of years), and very slowly change/swap (or, as we call it, mutate) in our genome, driving the evolution of life. The work presents a technique to retrieve the speed with which those letters change/swap by accounting the full extent on how the neighbouring letters tune the speed. We use only a single genome, rather than requiring thousands of genomes as needed for such ...

M y childhood was full of adventures, though mostly happening within the walls of our apartment. I have tried all the professions imaginable, enthusiastically sampling them one at a time. I was a cartographer, making detailed maps of the areas surrounding our building, giving mysterious Latin names to its different bits and extending the map towards the terra incognita around. I was a nature explorer, zoologist and botanist who, besides extending the corresponding collections through regular "expeditions" to the playing grounds, was also a humble observer, logging hourly observations on the activities of different types of birds linked to the temperature, humidity (a single long hair regularly donated by my cousin was serving for this purpose, see here ), precipitation, atmospheric pressure (a milk bottle with a rubber membrane from balloons on its opening that had a clock hand attached to the centre of the membrane) etc. I was an ecologist, thoroughly surveying and...