Period: 2025-3-31 ~ 2025-4-07

The Life Sciences Library will be closed on April 3 (Thursday) to April 4, 2025, Children's Day and the Qingming Festival.

3/14-IPA: Multi-Omics Data Interpretation and Machine Learning Pathway Exploration(In Chinese)
3/27-EndNote Essentials (In Chinese)

Topic：The strigolactone pathway is a target for modifying shoot architecture in plants
Speaker：Dr. Ljudmilla Timofejeva (Senior Research Scientist, Department of Plant Biotechnology, Centre of Estonian Rural Research and Knowledge, Estonia)
Date：2025-04-01 11:00 - 12:00
Place：1F Auditorium, Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica

Topic：The Role of SUPT4H in Neurogenesis, Fear Memory, and Repeat Expansion Disorders
Speaker：Senior Vice President Tzu-Hao Cheng (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung Universiy)
Date：2025-04-02 10:30 - 12:00
Place：3F Meeting Room, Genomics Research Center

Topic：Gene function prediction challenge: ensemble co-expression and knowledge graphs to the rescue!
Speaker：Dr. Marek Mutwil (Associate Professor, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Date：2025-04-08 11:00 - 13:00
Place：Auditorium A134, Agricultural Technology Building, Academia Sinica

Topic：The Gene Balance Hypothesis: How regulatory gene stoichiometries affect expression, the phenotype, evolutionary processes and heterosis
Speaker：Dr. James Birchler (Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, USA)
Date：2025-04-09 15:00 - 17:00
Place：Auditorium A134 & A133 (Synchronous Broadcasting), Agricultural Technology Building, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica

Topic：Biogenesis of Structural Diversity in Plant Terpenoids
Speaker：Mr. Jack Liu (Stanford University, USA)
Date：2025-04-10 11:00 - 12:00
Place：IBC R209

Topic：Developing a novel scar reduction therapeutic: From bench to bedside
Speaker：Chia Soo, MD, FACS (UCLA Operation Mend)
Date：2025-04-11 11:00 - 12:00
Place：B1B Lecture Room, IBMS

Topic：Extracellular Digestion of Aggregated LDL and Its Role in Foam Cell Formation
Speaker：Dr. Cheng-I Jonathan Ma
Date：2025-04-14 10:00 - 11:00
Place：GRC 3F Meeting Room

Topic：Developing novel optogenetic tools for controlling gene expression & monitoring cellular metabolism
Speaker：Dr. Yazawa, Masayuki (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
Date：2025-04-16 11:00 - 12:00
Place：B1C Auditorium, IBMS

Topic：Endothelial GNAZ signaling disruption caused by blue light exposure leads to retinal electrophysiological impairment and inflammation
Speaker：
Date：2025-04-17 16:00 - 17:00
Place：B1B Lecture Room, IBMS

Viruses are widespread infectious agents, but we know little about their origin times due to the general absence of fossil records. The research team of Chuan Ku, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, developed a host-calibrated dating method and inferred the evolutionary timescale of giant viruses (Nucleocytoviricota), which cause important diseases (e.g., Mpox, African swine fever) and infect various eukaryotes. The team found that giant viruses are much younger than eukaryotes, originated in an era with significantly higher oxygen levels than before (consistent with their high demand for mitochondria and energy), and spread across all major lineages of eukaryotes through extensive host shifts within the last hundreds of millions of years. This study was published on February 20, 2025 in Molecular Biology and Evolution, and was funded by Academia Sinica Career Development Award and National Science and Technology Council. The first author is Hwee Sze Tee, a postdoctoral research fellow.

Bacteria in polymicrobial environments face threats from phages, competing bacteria, and predatory eukaryotes. While bacterial defenses protect against these threats, their tradeoffs remain underexplored. Here, we investigated the fitness costs of phage resistance in Salmonella enterica, showing that phage-resistant variants suffer competitive disadvantages when co-cultured with rival bacteria. These strains exhibit lipopolysaccharide (LPS) deficiencies, increasing their susceptibility to type VI secretion system (T6SS)-mediated attacks. Mutational analysis and atomic force microscopy revealed that the long O-antigen of LPS acts as a protective shield against T6SS intoxication. Additionally, phages with LPS-targeting endoglycosidases can cleave the O-antigen, independently weakening bacterial competitiveness. Our findings highlight two distinct mechanisms by which phage-driven LPS modifications influence bacterial interactions, revealing tradeoffs that shape microbial competition in polymicrobial communities.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) is a master transcriptional regulator of systemic insulin sensitivity and energy balance.

Cancer, a major global killer, claimed 9.7 million lives among 20 million new cases in 2022, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Led by Dr. Chi-Huey Wong and Dr. Che Ma at Academia Sinica’s Genomics Research Center, the researchersexplore β-1,3-galactosyltransferase 5 (β3GalT5). This enzyme drives production of cancer-linked glycans (e.g., Globo-H), fueling tumor growth and metastasis—making it a prime therapeutic target. Using X-ray crystallography, the team mapped β3GalT5’s structure and mechanism, revealing its broad substrate specificity. They engineered an S66A variant, boosting glycan synthesis efficiency tenfold, aiding vaccine production for cancers like triple-negative breast cancer.

During meiosis, programmed DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are formed at hotspots to initiate homologous recombination, which is vital for reassorting genetic material.

In this study, the role of phosphorylation in the liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of tau, the underlying driving forces, and the potential implications of this separation on protein conformation and subsequent protein aggregation were investigated.

Translation is one of the multiple complementary steps that orchestrates gene activity.