Publications by authors named "H Ashe"
Live imaging of transcription in the Drosophila embryo using the MS2 or PP7 systems is transforming our understanding of transcriptional regulation. However, insertion of MS2/PP7 stem-loops into endogenous genes requires laborious CRISPR genome editing. Here, we exploit the previously described Minos-mediated integration cassette (MiMIC) transposon system in Drosophila to establish a method for simply and rapidly inserting MS2/PP7 cassettes into any of the thousands of genes carrying a MiMIC insertion.
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- Twisted gastrulation (TWSG1) is a key protein that regulates Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) signaling, which is important for various biological processes like embryonic development, kidney regeneration, and cancer.
- Researchers determined the crystal structures of TWSG1 both alone and with a BMP ligand, illustrating how TWSG1's distinct domains interact with BMPs and their antagonist Chordin.
- TWSG1 inhibits BMP signaling in lab experiments, and mutations affecting its BMP-binding ability disrupt this inhibition, demonstrating the crucial role of TWSG1 in regulating BMP activity and its evolutionary conservation across species.
Article Synopsis
- - The study investigates how genomic context affects gene regulation, focusing on the Igf2/H19 locus in mice, where CTCF binds to a control region that determines which gene is activated based on enhancers.
- - By using synthetic regulatory genomics to replace the native genetic locus with 157-kb payloads, researchers discovered new long-range regulatory relationships and how enhancers interact with their environment.
- - The research found that while the H19 enhancers depend on their native location, the Sox2 locus control region operates independently, suggesting that the context of enhancers is crucial for their function across different cell types.
Pervasive transcriptional activity is observed across diverse species. The genomes of extant organisms have undergone billions of years of evolution, making it unclear whether these genomic activities represent effects of selection or 'noise'. Characterizing default genome states could help understand whether pervasive transcriptional activity has biological meaning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe loss of the tail is among the most notable anatomical changes to have occurred along the evolutionary lineage leading to humans and to the 'anthropomorphous apes', with a proposed role in contributing to human bipedalism. Yet, the genetic mechanism that facilitated tail-loss evolution in hominoids remains unknown. Here we present evidence that an individual insertion of an Alu element in the genome of the hominoid ancestor may have contributed to tail-loss evolution.
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