Multivariate indicators of disease severity in COVID-19.

The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality around the world. Diverse clinical presentations prompted numerous attempts to predict disease severity to improve care and patient outcomes. Equally important is understanding the mechanisms underlying such divergent disease outcomes.

Adenovirus E1A Activation Domain Regulates H3 Acetylation Affecting Varied Steps in Transcription at Different Viral Promoters.

How histone acetylation promotes transcription is not clearly understood. Here, we confirm an interaction between p300 and the adenovirus 2 large E1A activation domain (AD) and map the interacting regions in E1A by observing colocalization at an integrated array of fusions of LacI-mCherry to E1A fragments with YFP-p300. Viruses with mutations in E1A subdomains were constructed and analyzed for kinetics of early viral RNA expression and association of acetylated H3K9, K18, K27, TBP, and RNA polymerase II (Pol II) across the viral genome.

Nanolock-Nanopore Facilitated Digital Diagnostics of Cancer Driver Mutation in Tumor Tissue.

Cancer driver mutations are clinically significant biomarkers. In precision medicine, accurate detection of these oncogenic changes in patients would enable early diagnostics of cancer, individually tailored targeted therapy, and precise monitoring of treatment response. Here we investigated a novel nanolock-nanopore method for single-molecule detection of a serine/threonine protein kinase gene BRAF V600E mutation in tumor tissues of thyroid cancer patients.

Polycationic Probe-Guided Nanopore Single-Molecule Counter for Selective miRNA Detection.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of noncoding RNAs that are being explored as a new type of disease biomarkers. The nanopore single-molecule sensor offers a potential noninvasive tool to detect miRNAs for diagnostics and prognosis applications. However, one of the challenges that limits its clinical applications is the presence of a large variety of nontarget nucleic acids in the biofluid extracts.

Preparation of ribosomes for smFRET studies: A simplified approach.

During the past decade, single-molecule studies of the ribosome have significantly advanced our understanding of protein synthesis. The broadest application of these methods has been towards the investigation of ribosome conformational dynamics using single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (smFRET). The recent advances in fluorescently labeled ribosomes and translation components have resulted in success of smFRET experiments.