Persistent epigenetic changes in adult daughters of older mothers.

Women of advanced maternal age account for an increasing proportion of live births in many developed countries across the globe. Offspring of older mothers are at an increased risk for a variety of subsequent health outcomes, including outcomes that do not manifest until childhood or adulthood. The molecular underpinnings of the association between maternal aging and offspring morbidity remain elusive.

Total synthesis of a functional designer eukaryotic chromosome.

Rapid advances in DNA synthesis techniques have made it possible to engineer viruses, biochemical pathways and assemble bacterial genomes. Here, we report the synthesis of a functional 272,871-base pair designer eukaryotic chromosome, synIII, which is based on the 316,617-base pair native Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome III. Changes to synIII include TAG/TAA stop-codon replacements, deletion of subtelomeric regions, introns, transfer RNAs, transposons, and silent mating loci as well as insertion of loxPsym sites to enable genome scrambling.

Measurement of response regulator autodephosphorylation rates spanning six orders of magnitude.

Two-component regulatory systems, comprising sensor kinase and response regulator proteins, carry out signal transduction in prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, as well as plants. Response regulators act as phosphorylation-mediated switches, turning on and off cellular responses to environmental stimuli. Self-catalyzed dephosphorylation is an important determinant of the duration of the response regulator activated state.