A new paper just published by Duharcourt Team in Genome Research! GC content, but not nucleosome positioning, directly contributes to intron splicing efficiency in Paramecium   Abstract Eukaryotic genes are interrupted by introns that must be accurately spliced from mRNA precursors. With an average length of 25 nt, the more than 90,000 introns of Paramecium tetraurelia stand among the…

The Azimzadeh Lab has just published a new study in elife : Evolutionary conservation of centriole rotational asymmetry in the human centrosome   Abstract Centrioles are formed by microtubule triplets in a nine-fold symmetric arrangement. In flagellated protists and in animal multiciliated cells, accessory structures tethered to specific triplets render the centrioles rotationally asymmetric, a property that…

The Pintard Team has just published a new paper in eLife : Cortical microtubule pulling forces contribute to the union of the parental genomes in the Caenorhabditis elegans zygote   Abstract Previously, we reported that the Polo-like kinase PLK-1 phosphorylates the single Caenorhabditis elegans lamin (LMN-1) to trigger lamina depolymerization during mitosis. We showed that this event is required to form…

The Minc Team has just published a new paper in PNAS : Contribution of cytoplasm viscoelastic properties to mitotic spindle positioning   Abstract Cells are filled with macromolecules and polymer networks that set scale-dependent viscous and elastic properties to the cytoplasm. Although the role of these parameters in molecular diffusion, reaction kinetics, and cellular biochemistry is being increasingly…