446: Cilia, Synuclein, and Survival: G51D Mice Reveal a Shared Parkinson’s Pathway
Lin Y‑E et al., PNAS - Knock‑in SncaG51D/G51D mice show selective loss of primary cilia in specific striatal interneurons, astrocytes, piriform cortex PV cells and olfactory basal stem cells, with con...
23 Aug 28min
445: Why Thymine Survived the UV: Photodamage Pathways Explained
Khosh Abady K et al., PNAS - Spectroscopic comparison of thymine and uracil under 265 nm UVC shows thymine is more photoreactive and absorbs more primordial UVC, yet channels damage into reversible CP...
22 Aug 26min
444: Many-eyes or Sentinels? How Cost Curvature Shapes Collective Vigilance
Pilgrim C et al., PNAS - A minimal analytical model shows that whether animal groups adopt distributed low-level vigilance (many-eyes) or concentrated high-vigilance roles (sentinels) depends on how i...
19 Aug 24min
443: 5D‑ASO boosts exon 51 skipping and restores dystrophin in DMD models
Feng P et al., PNAS - This paper describes a bipartite antisense oligonucleotide (5D‑ASO) design that appends a short 5′ splice site decoy tail to improve exon skipping, demonstrating robust efficacy ...
18 Aug 19min
442: When pumps go missing: Ca2+ control of PMCA2 in Tmc1 deafness mutants
Rolseth AB et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) - This study links reduced Ca2+ entry through mutant TMC1 mechanotransducer channels to decreased PMCA2 pump density in outer ...
17 Aug 22min
441: Evolutionary mapping of Cav1.3 functional sites
Tang X et al., PNAS - The authors apply an evolutionary sequence-covariation model to the Cav1.3 (CACNA1D) α1-subunit, map predicted pathogenicity onto structural models, and validate five predicted s...
14 Aug 24min
440: DENV-4: Suppressing DNA Repair and Causing Genome Damage
Lamkina EN et al., PNAS - This episode reviews a PNAS brief report showing that DENV-4 infection induces marked DNA damage in infected cells while broadly suppressing transcription of DNA repair pathw...
12 Aug 23min
439: Coembedding Sequence and Structure: CLSS Maps the Protein Universe
Longo LM et al., PNAS - This episode summarizes a PNAS study introducing CLSS, a contrastive two-tower protein language model that coembeds domain sequences, structures, and subsequences into a shared...
11 Aug 23min
