Cavanaugh et al. show that embryos from aged mice have increased contractility and tissue viscosity on embryonic day 4.5, which leads to poor spreading and attachment. Similar age-associated mechanica...

Lebrec et al. present a FRET-based cGAS reporter and show that cGAS activation by genotoxic stress is rare and uncoupled from micronuclei. The study implicates R-loop structures and subtypes of chroma...

CENP-B escapes the centromere and plays a surprising role in gene regulation

Li et al. obtain high-resolution, native structures revealing that cytoplasmic lattices in mammalian eggs organize and store degradative and cytoskeletal complexes for early embryonic development.

This study uses a precise and efficient clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) prime editing system to substitute lysine residues in histone H3, individually or in combinat...

This study uses a precise and efficient clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) prime editing system to substitute lysine residues in histone H3, individually or in combinat...

Tetraploidy, resulting from a single whole-genome duplication (WGD) event, contributes to tumorigenesis by promoting genomic instability and functional diversity. In general, WGD beyond tetraploidy limits proliferative and tumorigenic potential, but an increasing number of studies suggest that polyploid giant cancer cells (PGCCs)—large, highly polyploid (≥8N) cells formed in response to chemotherapy—produce daughter cells with reduced DNA content that drive cancer progression. In this opinion article, we examine the literature on tetraploid cells and PGCCs from a cell biology perspective. It is our opinion that the role of tetraploidy in cancer is supported by findings from cell lines, animal models, and tumor sequencing data, while definitive evidence that viable progeny from PGCCs can promote cancer progression in human tumors is lacking.

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41594-025-01708-0Kim, Wang, Clow and colleagues show that long-range chromatin loops bringing distal enhancers or super-enhancers together with promoters are cohesin dependent and cell type specific, whereas most short-range and promoter-centric transcriptional loops are cohesin independent and constitutive.

During eukaryotic transcription, Pol II must overcome nucleosome obstacles and, because of DNA’s helical structure, must also rotate relative to DNA, generating torsional stress. However, there is lim...

Integration of genome-wide association data with epigenomic and chromatin interaction data identifies target genes mediating clear cell renal cell carcinoma risk, implicating disrupted hypoxia signall...

Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments.

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) drive virtually all biological processes, yet most PPIs have not been identified and even more remain structurally unresolved. We developed a two-step computational...

Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine—Basic Sciences

Department of Biochemistry, School of Medicine—Basic Sciences

This protocol describes a method for carrying out CUT&Tag-Direct in 96 well microplates for high-throughput processing of samples by a single operator with only standard lab...

Genome-wide and targeted perturbation of DNA methylation at centromeres affects CENP-A positioning and centromere structure, resulting in aneuploidy and reduced cell viability.

In the presence of cell division errors, mammalian cells can pause in mitosis for tens of hours with little to no transcription, while still requiring continued translation for viability. These unique...

The nuclear lamins are extremely long-lived proteins in most cell types. As a consequence, lamin function cannot be effectively dissected with temporal precision using standard knock-down approaches. ...

Merigliano et al. identified a non-canonical, “off-pore” role for nucleoporins in genome stability and in the spatial regulation of homologous recombination in multicellular eukaryotes. Nup98 condensates form at DNA breaks within pericentromeric heterochromatin to prevent aberrant recombination by excluding Rad51, while promoting the mobilization of repair sites through immiscibility with heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) condensates.

ARID1A is a subunit of the BAF chromatin remodelling complex that is frequently mutated in cancer. It is challenging to predict how ARID1A loss impacts cancer therapy response because it participates ...

Centromere fragility can drive tumourigenesis, so protective mechanisms are important. Here, the authors suggest that the PBAF chromatin remodelling complex, which is frequently misregulated in cancer...