Smad4 is essential for epiblast scaling and morphogenesis after implantation, but nonessential before implantation.

Bone morphogenic protein (BMP) signaling plays an essential and highly conserved role in embryo axial patterning in animal species. However, in mammalian embryos, which develop inside the mother, early development includes a preimplantation stage, which does not occur in externally developing embryos. During preimplantation, the epiblast is segregated from extra-embryonic lineages that enable implantation and development in utero.

OCT4 is expressed in extraembryonic endoderm stem (XEN) cell progenitors during somatic cell reprogramming.

During development, progenitors of embryonic stem (ES) and extraembryonic endoderm stem (XEN) cells are concomitantly specified within the inner cell mass (ICM) of the mouse blastocyst. Similarly, XEN cells are induced (iXEN cells) alongside induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells following overexpression of , , and (OSKM) during somatic cell reprogramming. It is unclear how or why this cocktail produces both stem cell types, but OCT4 has been associated with non-pluripotent outcomes.

is essential for epiblast scaling and morphogenesis after implantation, but nonessential prior to implantation in the mouse.

Bone Morphogenic Protein (BMP) signaling plays an essential and highly conserved role in axial patterning in embryos of many externally developing animal species. However, in mammalian embryos, which develop inside the mother, early development includes an additional stage known as preimplantation. During preimplantation, the epiblast lineage is segregated from the extraembryonic lineages that enable implantation and development .

Effective Treatment of Intramammary Infection in a Murine Model Using the Bacteriophage Cocktail StaphLyse™.

causes intramammary infections (IMIs), which are refractory to antibiotic treatment and frequently result in chronic mastitis. IMIs are the leading cause of conventional antibiotic use in dairy farms. Phage therapy represents an alternative to antibiotics to help better manage mastitis in cows, reducing the global spread of resistance.

A network-based approach for isolating the chronic inflammation gene signatures underlying complex diseases towards finding new treatment opportunities.

Complex diseases are associated with a wide range of cellular, physiological, and clinical phenotypes. To advance our understanding of disease mechanisms and our ability to treat these diseases, it is critical to delineate the molecular basis and therapeutic avenues of specific disease phenotypes, especially those that are associated with multiple diseases. Inflammatory processes constitute one such prominent phenotype, being involved in a wide range of health problems including ischemic heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions.

Cell cycle expression of polarity genes features Rb targeting of Vang.

Specification of cellular polarity is vital to normal tissue development and function. Pioneering studies in Drosophila and C. elegans have elucidated the composition and dynamics of protein complexes critical for establishment of cell polarity, which is manifest in processes such as cell migration and asymmetric cell division.

Modeling allelic analyte signals for aSTRs in NGS DNA profiles.

We describe an adaption of Bright et al.'s work modeling peak height variability in CE-DNA profiles to the modeling of allelic aSTR (autosomal short tandem repeats) read counts from NGS-DNA profiles, specifically for profiles generated from the ForenSeq™ DNA Signature Prep Kit, DNA Primer Mix B. Bright et al.

Soft repression: Subtle transcriptional regulation with global impact.

Pleiotropically acting eukaryotic corepressors such as retinoblastoma and SIN3 have been found to physically interact with many widely expressed "housekeeping" genes. Evidence suggests that their roles at these loci are not to provide binary on/off switches, as is observed at many highly cell-type specific genes, but rather to serve as governors, directly modulating expression within certain bounds, while not shutting down gene expression. This sort of regulation is challenging to study, as the differential expression levels can be small.

Variability and additivity of read counts for aSTRs in NGS DNA profiles.

There has been an increase in the number of laboratories and researchers adopting new sequencing technologies, known as next-generation sequencing (NGS). An understanding of the behaviour of NGS DNA profiles is needed to enable for the development of probabilistic genotyping methods for the interpretation of such profiles. In this work, we investigate NGS analyte signal variation, specifically heterozygous balance and stutter variability from profiles generated using the ForenSeq™ DNA Signature Prep Kit, DNA Primer Mix B.

Cortical Foxp2 Supports Behavioral Flexibility and Developmental Dopamine D1 Receptor Expression.

Genetic studies have associated FOXP2 variation with speech and language disorders and other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) involving pathology of the cortex. In this brain region, FoxP2 is expressed from development into adulthood, but little is known about its downstream molecular and behavioral functions. Here, we characterized cortex-specific Foxp2 conditional knockout mice and found a major deficit in reversal learning, a form of behavioral flexibility.

Chromatin Decondensation by FOXP2 Promotes Human Neuron Maturation and Expression of Neurodevelopmental Disease Genes.

Forkhead box P2 (FOXP2) is a transcription factor expressed in the human brain that peaks during fetal development, and disruption in its ability to regulate downstream target genes leads to vulnerability to neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the mechanisms by which FOXP2 exerts regulatory control over targets during neuronal maturation have not been fully elucidated. Here, we use genome-wide chromatin accessibility assays and transcriptome-wide expression analyses in differentiating human neurons to show that FOXP2 represses proliferation-promoting genes in a DNA-binding-dependent manner.

Cycling Transcriptional Networks Optimize Energy Utilization on a Genome Scale.

Genes expressing circadian RNA rhythms are enriched for metabolic pathways, but the adaptive significance of cyclic gene expression remains unclear. We estimated the genome-wide synthetic and degradative cost of transcription and translation in three organisms and found that the cost of cycling genes is strikingly higher compared to non-cycling genes. Cycling genes are expressed at high levels and constitute the most costly proteins to synthesize in the genome.