Chromatin-associated lncRNA-splicing factor condensates regulate hypoxia responsive RNA processing of genes pre-positioned near nuclear speckles.

Hypoxia-induced alternative splicing (AS) regulates tumor progression and metastasis. Little is known about how such AS is controlled and whether higher-order genome and nuclear domain (ND) organizations dictate these processes. We observe that hypoxia-responsive alternatively spliced genes position near nuclear speckle (NS), the ND that enhances splicing efficiency.

Characteristics and Health Care Utilization of Patients With Housing Insecurity in the ED.

Importance: Unstable housing and homelessness can exacerbate adverse health outcomes leading to increased risk of chronic disease, injury, and disability. However, emergency departments (EDs) have no universal method to identify those at risk of or currently experiencing homelessness.

Objective: To describe the extent of housing insecurity among patients who seek care in an urban ED, including chief concerns, demographics, and patterns of health care utilization.

Phantom oscillations in principal component analysis.

Principal component analysis (PCA) is a dimensionality reduction method that is known for being simple and easy to interpret. Principal components are often interpreted as low-dimensional patterns in high-dimensional space. However, this simple interpretation fails for timeseries, spatial maps, and other continuous data.

A disordered region controls cBAF activity via condensation and partner recruitment.

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) represent a large percentage of overall nuclear protein content. The prevailing dogma is that IDRs engage in non-specific interactions because they are poorly constrained by evolutionary selection. Here, we demonstrate that condensate formation and heterotypic interactions are distinct and separable features of an IDR within the ARID1A/B subunits of the mSWI/SNF chromatin remodeler, cBAF, and establish distinct "sequence grammars" underlying each contribution.

Soaping up transcriptional condensates.

The condensate-forming ability of transcription factors (TFs) has received considerable attention, although how condensates function in transcription remains unclear. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Wang et al. show that target DNA and transcriptional regulators work as soap-like surfactants to adsorb on condensates, affecting the activities of transcriptional condensates.