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Exact genomic locations of prophages and phage-to-host ratios in gut microbial strains
A "Microbiome" paper describes how the Sunagawa lab developed and experimentally tested an analytical framework to (i) use DNA sequencing to exactly locate inducible prophages in bacterial genomes and (ii) quantify their activity in vitro and ex vivo in bacterial strains and communities.
Detection of clustered circulating tumor cells in early breast cancer
A recent "British Journal of Cancer" paper by the Aceto lab (IMHS) demonstrates the presence of highly metastatic circulating tumor cell clusters in patients with early breast cancer. These results highlight an important aspect of metastasis biology and the possibility to intervene early with anti-cluster therapeutics.
Epithelium-autonomous NAIP/NLRC4 prevents TNF-driven inflammatory destruction of the gut epithelial barrier in Salmonella infected mice
A recent published paper in "Mucosal Immunology" by Fattinger et al. from the Sellin and Hardt lab demonstrates that the first line defense by epithelial NAIP/NLRC4 is crucial to avoid a TNF driven destruction of the epithelial barrier at late stage Salmonella infection.
A method to study alternative splicing using solution NMR spectroscopy
A recent "Nucleic Acid Research" paper by the Allain group (IBC) in collaboration with the Cryo-EM hub (CEMK) and PSI shows that it is possible to reconstitute U1 snRNP in vitro, study its dynamic parts in solution and interactions with protein partners controlling alternative splicing.
PnB Designer: a web application to design prime and base editor guide RNAs for animals and plants
In a recent "BMC Bioinformatics" paper the Corn group (IMHS) in collaboration with the Genome Engineering & Measurement Lab (GEML) developed PnB Designer, a web-based application for the design of guide RNAs for prime and base editing.