Genes are encoded in DNA and need to be copied into an intermediate mRNA molecule that contains the instructions to allow synthesis of protein. Almost every mRNA has a repetitive sequence at one end called a poly(A) tail. The length of this tail specifies the amount of time that the mRNA is present in the […]
How the poly(A) tail is added to the end of mRNAs
Fundamental rules for how the brain controls movements
Using the nematode as one test system, scientists at CCNR have spent the past several years understanding how a network controls itself—for instance, which individual neurons in the worm’s brain are in charge of a backward wiggle. In research published in Nature, they describe for the first time their ability to predict, test, and confirm with […]
Researchers “drug the undruggable”
A new approach to targeting key cancer-linked proteins, thought to be ‘undruggable’, has been discovered through an alliance between industry and academia created by Cancer Research UK. David Komander’s group in the LMB is one of the groups involved in this unique collaboration, that shows that two novel and specific small-molecule inhibitors developed by the alliance […]
Network control principles predict neuron function in the C. elegans connectome
The connectome of an animal is the comprehensive map, or wiring diagram, of all the neural connections in the brain. However, an important challenge is how to make sense of this information. The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, still the only animal for which the entire connectome has been described, illustrates the problem. Although it has […]
The birth of the cool
Super cool microscopy wins the 2017 Nobel prize in chemistry: includes interview with LMB’s Richard Henderson. More…
Xiaochen Bai – first atomic structure from UTSW’s Cryo-EM facility
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have published a 3-D atomic structure of the ion channel found in mammals that is implicated in a rare, inherited neurodegenerative disease in humans. The work marks the first such structure determined using the university’s $17 million electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) facility that opened last year. Xiaochen Bai, an Assistant Professor […]