Systematic identification of silencers in human cells | Nature Genetics
The majority of the human genome does not encode proteins. Many of these noncoding regions contain important regulatory sequences that control gene expression. To date, most studies have focused on activators such as enhancers, but regions that repress gene expression—silencers—have not been systematically studied. Researchers have developed a system that identifies silencer regions in a genome-wide fashion on the basis of silencer-mediated transcriptional repression of caspase 9. Overall, this study demonstrates that tissue-specific silencing is widespread throughout the human genome and probably contributes substantially to the regulation of gene expression and human biology.
Maternal gut microbiota in pregnancy influences offspring metabolic phenotype in mice | Science
Obesity and metabolic diseases tend to go together, and humans who become obese are also prone to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems. Starting with the observation that offspring of germ-free mice tended to become obese on high-fat diets, researchers investigated how the presence of the microbiota might be protective in mice.
Proline: an efficient and user-friendly software suite for large-scale proteomics | Bioinformatics
The proteomics field requires the production and publication of reliable mass spectrometry-based identification and quantification results. Proline is a robust software suite for analysis of MS-based proteomics data which collects, processes, allows visualization and publication of proteomics datasets.