Publications by authors named "Sophia Arana"

Transcriptional effectors are protein domains known to activate or repress gene expression; however, a systematic understanding of which effector domains regulate transcription across genomic, cell type and DNA-binding domain (DBD) contexts is lacking. Here we develop dCas9-mediated high-throughput recruitment (HT-recruit), a pooled screening method for quantifying effector function at endogenous target genes and test effector function for a library containing 5,092 nuclear protein Pfam domains across varied contexts. We also map context dependencies of effectors drawn from unannotated protein regions using a larger library tiling chromatin regulators and transcription factors.

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Ammonia is a ubiquitous, toxic by-product of cell metabolism. Its high membrane permeability and proton affinity cause ammonia to accumulate inside acidic lysosomes in its poorly membrane-permeant form: ammonium (NH). Ammonium buildup compromises lysosomal function, suggesting the existence of mechanisms that protect cells from ammonium toxicity.

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Article Synopsis
  • Regulatory proteins use specific repressor domains (RDs) to control gene expression, but how variations in their sequences affect this function is not well understood.
  • Researchers created a dataset from 115,000 variant sequences to study repressor activity in human cells, identifying clinical variants that alter repression functions, including those linked to certain genetic disorders.
  • They developed a deep learning model called TENet to predict repressor activity based on sequence and structure, aiming to enhance the design of synthetic regulatory proteins and improve how we prioritize functional variants in future research.
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High-grade gliomas are malignant brain tumors that are characteristically hard to treat because of their nature; they grow quickly and invasively through the brain tissue and develop chemoradiation resistance in adults. There is also a distinct lack of targeted treatment options in the pediatric population for this tumor type to date. Several approaches to overcome therapeutic resistance have been explored, including targeted therapy to growth pathways (ie.

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