Publications

Targeting the MAPK signaling pathway has transformed the treatment of metastatic melanoma. CRISPR‐Cas9 genetic screens provide a genome‐wide approach to uncover novel genetic dependencies that might serve as therapeutic targets. Here, we analyzed recently reported CRISPR‐Cas9 screens comparing data from 28 melanoma cell lines and 313 cell lines of other tumor types in order to […]

In bacteria, RNA polymerases can associate with ribosomes to form transcription-translation units called expressomes. Multiple models based on structural data of in vitro reconstitution assays have been proposed for how the two machineries interface with one another. Understanding this bacteria-specific coupling mechanism offers insight regarding the central dogma of molecular biology and might be leveraged […]

Being the recipient for huge public and private investments, the healthcare sector results to be an interesting target for fraudsters. Nowadays, the availability of a great amount of data makes it possible to tackle this issue with the adoption of data mining techniques. This approach can provide more efficient control of processes in terms of […]

Cells exposed to starvation have to adjust their metabolism to conserve energy and protect themselves. Protein synthesis is one of the major energy-consuming processes and as such has to be tightly controlled. Many mechanistic details about how starved cells regulate the process of protein synthesis are still unknown. Here, we report that the essential translation […]

Selenium is a micronutrient essential for the generation of selenoproteins, which function predominantly by detoxifying cellular reactive oxygen species. In this issue, Carlisle et al. describe a novel mechanism whereby perturbing selenium utilization via inhibition of SEPHS2, a component of the selenocysteine-biosynthesis pathway, results in selenide poisoning and cancer cell death.