A novel copy number variant in the murine Cdh23 gene gives rise to profound deafness and vestibular dysfunction.

Hearing loss is the most common congenital sensory deficit worldwide and exhibits high genetic heterogeneity, making molecular diagnoses elusive for most individuals. Detecting novel mutations that contribute to hearing loss is crucial to providing accurate personalized diagnoses, tailored interventions, and improving prognosis. Copy number variants (CNVs) are structural mutations that are understudied, potential contributors to hearing loss.

Death of a Protein: The Role of E3 Ubiquitin Ligases in Circadian Rhythms of Mice and Flies.

Circadian clocks evolved to enable organisms to anticipate and prepare for periodic environmental changes driven by the day-night cycle. This internal timekeeping mechanism is built on autoregulatory transcription-translation feedback loops that control the rhythmic expression of core clock genes and their protein products. The levels of clock proteins rise and ebb throughout a 24-h period through their rhythmic synthesis and destruction.

Protracted neuronal maturation in a long-lived, highly social rodent.

Naked mole-rats are a long-lived rodent species (current lifespan >37 years) and an increasingly popular biomedical model. Naked mole-rats exhibit neuroplasticity across their long lifespan. Previous studies have begun to investigate their neurogenic patterns.