Front cover: Morning glories bloom on an August morning. The pattern of the fl owers is reminiscent of paraspeckles, which are nonmembranous organelles formed by lncRNA Neat1. Also, the tendril extending right-upwards looks like Hero proteins, which are intrinsically disordered. A review article on nondomain biopolymers, including Neat1 and Hero proteins, appears in this issue of this journal (Arakawa et al. (2023) Genes Cells 28: 539-552, DOI: 10.1111/gtc.13050).

This review challenges the long-held belief in molecular biology that the functionality of biomolecules solely hinges on conserved sequences and their resultant structures. Instead, we explore the roles and molecular mechanisms of “nondomain biomolecules,” which lack conserved functional domains and utilize inherent flexibility for their functional roles. Our hypothesis suggests that both domain and nondomain biopolymers cooperate to facilitate flexible and efficient molecular processes in the highly crowded intracellular milieu.

Molecular mechanisms underlying the widely accepted Seamless Ligation Cloning Extract method were elucidated. A novel protocol was developed for quick and affordable seamless DNA cloning. Commercial kits will be replaced by the presented method.

Methotorexate impairs neuronal survival, dendrite development, and synapse formation.

High expression of G-CSF in the tumor tissues of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients correlated with poor prognosis. Deletion of G-CSF in murine tumor cells mitigated tumor growth and metastasis to lymph node and lung of subcutaneous NR-S1M tumors in the mice. Mechanistically, G-CSF facilitates tumor progression in mice through bi-functional effects to promote neutrophil recruitment and tumor cell proliferation, which may render poor prognosis to the ESCC patients with high G-CSF expression.

• Adig is highly expressed in the fatty liver of ob/ob and other mice models.
• ADIG expression is reduced upon liver-specific PPARγ knockout in ob/ob mice.
• PPARγ enhances Adig transcription by binding to the PPARγ-responsive element.

Meiosis-specific chromosomal axis-loop structures are important for meiotic recombination reactions and control to ensure accurate chromosome segregation. Here, we showed that protein phosphatase 4 (PP4) is required to promote the assembly of a chromosomal axis component Hop1 and Red1 onto meiotic chromatin via direct interaction with Hop1 in budding yeast. These results indicate phosphorylation-mediated regulation of Hop1 recruitment onto chromatin during chromosome axis construction before meiotic double-strand break formation.

This study uncovered that RNPS1 is involved in the alternative splice site activation of the HIV-1 substrate and endogenous apoptotic transcripts. We show that the serine-rich domain is required for exon inclusion of the HIV-1 based pre-mRNA and apoptotic genes.