Publications by authors named "William Press"

Predefined sets of short DNA sequences are commonly used as barcodes to identify individual biomolecules in pooled populations. Such use requires either sufficiently small DNA error rates, or else an error-correction methodology. Most existing DNA error-correcting codes (ECCs) correct only one or two errors per barcode in sets of typically ≲10 barcodes.

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Engineered SpCas9s and AsCas12a cleave fewer off-target genomic sites than wild-type (wt) Cas9. However, understanding their fidelity, mechanisms and cleavage outcomes requires systematic profiling across mispaired target DNAs. Here we describe NucleaSeq-nuclease digestion and deep sequencing-a massively parallel platform that measures the cleavage kinetics and time-resolved cleavage products for over 10,000 targets containing mismatches, insertions and deletions relative to the guide RNA.

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Synthetic DNA is rapidly emerging as a durable, high-density information storage platform. A major challenge for DNA-based information encoding strategies is the high rate of errors that arise during DNA synthesis and sequencing. Here, we describe the HEDGES (Hash Encoded, Decoded by Greedy Exhaustive Search) error-correcting code that repairs all three basic types of DNA errors: insertions, deletions, and substitutions.

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Long thought to be dispensable after establishing X chromosome inactivation (XCI), Xist RNA is now known to also maintain the inactive X (Xi). To what extent somatic X reactivation causes physiological abnormalities is an active area of inquiry. Here, we use multiple mouse models to investigate in vivo consequences.

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Article Synopsis
  • A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of 18 bat species was conducted using 1,107 orthologous gene alignments, integrating new transcriptome sequences with existing genomic data.
  • The study highlights the lack of consensus on the best methods for curating quality multiple sequence alignments from diverse datasets, necessitating a new systematic approach.
  • The research identified 181 genes under positive natural selection, primarily related to immune responses and collagen production, enhancing our understanding of bat evolution.
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Animal cloning can be achieved through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), although the live birth rate is relatively low. Recent studies have identified H3K9me3 in donor cells and abnormal Xist activation as epigenetic barriers that impede SCNT. Here we overcome these barriers using a combination of Xist knockout donor cells and overexpression of Kdm4 to achieve more than 20% efficiency of mouse SCNT.

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Many large-scale, high-throughput experiments use DNA barcodes, short DNA sequences prepended to DNA libraries, for identification of individuals in pooled biomolecule populations. However, DNA synthesis and sequencing errors confound the correct interpretation of observed barcodes and can lead to significant data loss or spurious results. Widely used error-correcting codes borrowed from computer science (e.

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The X-chromosome harbors hundreds of disease genes whose associated diseases predominantly affect males. However, a subset, including neurodevelopmental disorders, Rett syndrome (RTT), fragile X syndrome, and CDKL5 syndrome, also affects females. These disorders lack disease-specific treatment.

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CRISPR-Cas nucleoproteins target foreign DNA via base pairing with a crRNA. However, a quantitative description of protein binding and nuclease activation at off-target DNA sequences remains elusive. Here, we describe a chip-hybridized association-mapping platform (CHAMP) that repurposes next-generation sequencing chips to simultaneously measure the interactions between proteins and ∼10 unique DNA sequences.

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Schlafen11 (encoded by the SLFN11 gene) has been shown to inhibit the accumulation of HIV-1 proteins. We show that the SLFN11 gene is under positive selection in simian primates and is species-specific in its activity against HIV-1. The activity of human Schlafen11 is relatively weak compared to that of some other primate versions of this protein, with the versions encoded by chimpanzee, orangutan, gibbon, and marmoset being particularly potent inhibitors of HIV-1 protein production.

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Ribosome profiling produces snapshots of the locations of actively translating ribosomes on messenger RNAs. These snapshots can be used to make inferences about translation dynamics. Recent ribosome profiling studies in yeast, however, have reached contradictory conclusions regarding the average translation rate of each codon.

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The long noncoding X-inactivation-specific transcript (Xist gene) is responsible for mammalian X-chromosome dosage compensation between the sexes, the process by which one of the two X chromosomes is inactivated in the female soma. Xist is essential for both the random and imprinted forms of X-chromosome inactivation. In the imprinted form, Xist is paternally marked to be expressed in female embryos.

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It has been proposed that patterns in the usage of synonymous codons provide evidence that individual tRNA molecules are recycled through the ribosome, translating several occurrences of the same amino acid before diffusing away. The claimed evidence is based on counting the frequency with which pairs of synonymous codons are used at nearby occurrences of the same amino acid, as compared to the frequency expected if each codon were chosen independently from a single genome-wide distribution. We show that such statistics simply measure variation in codon preferences across a genome.

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A major limitation of high-throughput DNA sequencing is the high rate of erroneous base calls produced. For instance, Illumina sequencing machines produce errors at a rate of ~0.1-1 × 10(-2) per base sequenced.

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The two-player Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game is a model for both sentient and evolutionary behaviors, especially including the emergence of cooperation. It is generally assumed that there exists no simple ultimatum strategy whereby one player can enforce a unilateral claim to an unfair share of rewards. Here, we show that such strategies unexpectedly do exist.

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As electronic medical records enable increasingly ambitious studies of treatment outcomes, ethical issues previously important only to limited clinical trials become relevant to unlimited whole populations. For randomized clinical trials, adaptive assignment strategies are known to expose substantially fewer patients to avoidable treatment failures than strategies with fixed assignments (e.g.

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Article Synopsis
  • Using ethnicity or nationality to decide who gets extra security checks is a big debate and might not even be the best method.
  • The research shows that stronger profiling doesn't work better than randomly checking everyone, because it can waste time on checking innocent people who just look more suspicious.
  • A smarter way to do screenings is called "square-root biased sampling," which balances between profiling and random checks to be more efficient.
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Götz, Druckmüller, and, independently, Brady have defined a discrete Radon transform (DRT) that sums an image's pixel values along a set of aptly chosen discrete lines, complete in slope and intercept. The transform is fast, O(N2log N) for an N x N image; it uses only addition, not multiplication or interpolation, and it admits a fast, exact algorithm for the adjoint operation, namely backprojection. This paper shows that the transform additionally has a fast, exact (although iterative) inverse.

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