Center for Life Sciences

The ER–Golgi intermediate compartment: a central hub integrating membrane trafficking and stress responses

Abstract The endoplasmic reticulum–Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC) is a dynamic membrane system at the ER–Golgi interface, traditionally viewed as a transient station for COPII- and COPI-dependent trafficking. Emerging evidence redefines the ERGIC as a stress-responsive re...

Fructose directly remodels the translocase of the outer membrane to impair oxidative phosphorylation in podocytes

Excessive dietary fructose consumption contributes to the rapidly increasing prevalence of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and chronic kidney disease worldwide, and accumulating preclinical evidence has confirmed that excess fructose exposure provokes severe mitochondrial dysfunctio...

EBV-driven Gate–License–Amplify circuit in multiple sclerosis pathogenesis

Five recent publications establish a “Gate–License–Amplify” circuit that mechanistically links Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) infection and genetic risk (HLA-DR15) to the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS). 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 This new model reveals how EBV reprograms immunopeptidom...

Endothelial cell-microglia crosstalk mediates heart failure-associated synaptic loss and cognitive impairment in male mice

Cognitive impairment affects 30%–80% of patients with heart failure, yet the mechanisms beyond reduced brain blood flow remain poorly defined. Here we show that circulating factors released during heart failure trigger senescence of brain blood-vessel endothelial cells, which in...

Phosphoantigen-driven dissociation of butyrophilin oligomers activates γδ T cells

γδ T cells represent a promising avenue for cancer immunotherapy. The Vγ9Vδ2 T-cell receptor (TCR), which is expressed by the predominant subset of γδ T cells, responds to phosphoantigen (pAg)-engaged butyrophilins (BTNs) on various cancer cells. However, the molecular mechanism...

Integrated inference of cellular compositions and gene expression programs by deconvolution

While computational deconvolution is routinely used to estimate cell-type proportions from tissue mixtures, reconstructing cell-type-specific transcriptomes at single-sample resolution remains a fundamentally underdetermined algorithmic challenge. Consequently, accurate single-sa...

Discoveryof High-Affinity Peptide Ligands Targetingthe SPIN1 Tudor 3 Domain Via a Minimalist Pruning Strategy

Abstract Spindlin1 (SPIN1) is an epigenetic reader involved in oncology, whose third Tudor domain remains largely underexplored. Here, we applied a minimalist pruning strategy to the 26-mer peptide DOCpep3 to identify the core pharmacophore for SPIN1 Tudor 3 domain binding. This...

Longitudinal dynamics of the maternal gut virome associate with metabolic features of preterm birth

Preterm birth (PTB) remains a major pregnancy complication, yet the role of the maternal gut virome in its etiology is largely unknown. Here we show that the maternal gut virome undergoes ecological destabilization prior to PTB, coupled with distinct host metabolic remodeling. Ne...

Differential genomic architecture of a ligand-receptor pair in humans and commonly used model organisms

The neuropeptide signaling pathway is vital for the physiology and behavior of multicellular organisms. This pathway is mediated by ligand-receptor binding, wherein neuropeptides (NPs) are often released from neurons, while their receptors (NPRs) are ubiquitously expressed in bot...