Stochastic offspring distributions amplify selection bias in mutation accumulation experiments.

Mutation accumulation (MA) experiments play an important role in understanding evolution. For microbial populations, such experiments often involve periods of population growth, such that a single individual can make a visible colony, followed by severe bottlenecks. Previous work has quantified the effect of positive and negative selection on MA experiments, demonstrating for example that with 20 generations of growth between bottlenecks, big-benefit mutations can be over-represented by a factor of five or more (Wahl and Agashe, 2022).

Multiparametric Assays Capture Sex- and Environment-Dependent Modifiers of Behavioral Phenotypes in Autism Mouse Models.

Background: Current phenotyping approaches for murine autism models often focus on one selected behavioral feature, making the translation onto a spectrum of autistic characteristics in humans challenging. Furthermore, sex and environmental factors are rarely considered. Here, we aimed to capture the full spectrum of behavioral manifestations in 3 autism mouse models to develop a "behavioral fingerprint" that takes environmental and sex influences under consideration.

Synthesis and evaluation of chemical linchpins for highly selective CK2α targeting.

Casein kinase-2 (CK2) are serine/threonine kinases with dual co-factor (ATP and GTP) specificity, that are involved in the regulation of a wide variety of cellular functions. Small molecules targeting CK2 have been described in the literature targeting different binding pockets of the kinase with a focus on type I inhibitors such as the recently published chemical probe SGC-CK2-1. In this study, we investigated whether known allosteric inhibitors binding to a pocket adjacent to helix αD could be combined with ATP mimetic moieties defining a novel class of ATP competitive compounds with a unique binding mode.