Here Schwämmle et al. develop CRISPR reporter screens to map transcription-factor-regulatory element interactions at the Xist locus, revealing a two-step mechanism integrating developmental and X-dosage signals to initiate X-chromosome inactivation.

Prokaryotes and eukaryotes use diverse strategies to cope with invading mobile genetic elements, including programmed DNA elimination (PDE). In the ciliate Paramecium , elimination of transposable ele...

Professor Azim Surani is the Director of Epigenomics and Germline Imprinting at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, UK. He is this year's recipient of both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Paul Ehrl...

imageimagePaternal environmental exposures have been linked with modulation of phenotype and disease risk in offspring via largely unclear mechanisms. This study employs in vitro fertilization and sin...

In mammals, repression of germline-specific gene expression is essential for preserving somatic cell identity and preventing disease. Germline gene silencing is often dependent on the presence of prom...

Proteins operate through a few critical residues, yet most proteins remain uncharacterized at the deep molecular resolution, particularly within essential genes, where functional dissection is obstructed by lethality. Here, we establish a platform for mutational scanning of essential genes at their endogenous locus, combining a repressible complementation system with multiplexed CRISPR-based genome editing in budding yeast. Our approach provides a generalizable framework for dissecting essential protein function in vivo, expanding the capacity to map critical residues underlying essential cellular processes. We applied this strategy to NRD1, encoding an essential RNA Polymerase II (RNAPII) termination factor and performed a systematic alanine scanning with near-saturation coverage. We discovered novel and unexpected lethal mutations in the CTD-interacting domain (CID), thus revealing an unanticipated importance for this domain. Overall, our results demonstrate the power of our mutation scanning platform to map critical residues underlying essential cellular processes. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Molecular Biology Organization, https://ror.org/04wfr2810, ALTF 889-2022

Chromatin is the complex of DNA, RNA and protein that is found making up the chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. Chromatin is essential for proper genome function and is involved in chromosome segregati…

Kawamura et al. show that H3K36me2 removal by the KDM2A and KDM2B histone demethylases restricts DNMT3A in establishing global DNA methylation in oocytes. Maternal Kdm2a/Kdm2b knockout embryos die dur...

Obligate endosymbiosis between the bacteria Blochmannia and ants of the Camponotini tribe originated through co-option of pre-existing molecular capacities and rewiring of developmental gene regulator...

A newly discovered mode of reproduction in ants results in males being chimeras of haploid cells from two divergent lineages.