Downregulation of transposable elements extends lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Mobility of transposable elements (TEs) frequently leads to insertional mutations in functional DNA regions. In the potentially immortal germline, TEs are effectively suppressed by the Piwi-piRNA pathway. However, in the genomes of ageing somatic cells lacking the effects of the pathway, TEs become increasingly mobile during the adult lifespan, and their activity is associated with genomic instability.

How does maternal age affect genomic stability in the offspring?

In high-income countries, women tend to give birth at increasingly advanced ages. Despite its physiological, developmental, and medical consequences, why this tendency significantly affects genetic stability of the offspring remains largely unresolved. Accumulating evidence indicates that the higher the age of the mother at fertilization, the more intense the activity of transposable elements causing insertional mutations in functional DNA stretches in her oocyte involved in zygote formation.

Highly efficient RNAi and Cas9-based auto-cloning systems for C. elegans research.

RNA interference (RNAi) technology used for the functional analysis of Caenorhabditis elegans genes frequently leads to phenotypes with low penetrance or even proves completely ineffective. The methods previously developed to solve this problem were built on mutant genetic backgrounds, such as those defective for rrf-3, in which endogenous RNAi pathways are overexpressed. These mutations, however, interferes with many other genetic pathways so that the detected phenotype cannot always be clearly linked to the RNAi-exposed gene.

Prediction and characterization of human ageing-related proteins by using machine learning.

Ageing has a huge impact on human health and economy, but its molecular basis - regulation and mechanism - is still poorly understood. By today, more than three hundred genes (almost all of them function as protein-coding genes) have been related to human ageing. Although individual ageing-related genes or some small subsets of these genes have been intensively studied, their analysis as a whole has been highly limited.

A convenient method to pre-screen candidate guide RNAs for CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing by NHEJ-mediated integration of a 'self-cleaving' GFP-expression plasmid.

The efficacies of guide RNAs (gRNAs), the short RNA molecules that bind to and determine the sequence specificity of the Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 nuclease, to mediate DNA cleavage vary dramatically. Thus, the selection of appropriate target sites, and hence spacer sequence, is critical for most applications. Here, we describe a simple, unparalleled method for experimentally pre-testing the efficiencies of various gRNAs targeting a gene.

The Piwi-piRNA pathway: road to immortality.

Despite its medical, social, and economic significance, understanding what primarily causes aging, that is, the mechanisms of the aging process, remains a fundamental and fascinating problem in biology. Accumulating evidence indicates that a small RNA-based gene regulatory machinery, the Piwi-piRNA pathway, represents a shared feature of nonaging (potentially immortal) biological systems, including the germline, somatic cancer stem cells, and certain 'lower' eukaryotic organisms like the planarian flatworm and freshwater hydra. The pathway primarily functions to repress the activity of mobile genetic elements, also called transposable elements (TEs) or 'jumping genes', which are capable of moving from one genomic locus to another, thereby causing insertional mutations.

The mechanism of ageing: primary role of transposable elements in genome disintegration.

Understanding the molecular basis of ageing remains a fundamental problem in biology. In multicellular organisms, while the soma undergoes a progressive deterioration over the lifespan, the germ line is essentially immortal as it interconnects the subsequent generations. Genomic instability in somatic cells increases with age, and accumulating evidence indicates that the disintegration of somatic genomes is accompanied by the mobilisation of transposable elements (TEs) that, when mobilised, can be mutagenic by disrupting coding or regulatory sequences.