Latest Research
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01 Jun
Nature | Scientists at Tsinghua Discov…
Water is fundamental to life. For plants, many environmental stresses, including drought, salinity, and heat, ultimately converge on a single problem: cells lose access to usable water. Although scientists have long known that cells can sense osmotic stress and activate downstream signaling pathways, one fundamental question has remained unanswered: can cells directly sense water itself?On May ...
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30 Mar
Newly Identified Neural Stem Cells Sus…
The cerebral cortex underlies the brain’s highest cognitive functions. Its extraordinary structural and functional complexity depends on both the total number of neurons and the diversity of neuronal cell types. The human cerebral cortex contains approximately 16 billion neurons, broadly classified into glutamatergic excitatory neurons and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)–ergic inhibitory neurons....
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03 Mar
Wei Xie/Shuyan Ji’s joint team publis…
In early mammalian development, oocytes accumulate large amounts of maternal proteins and RNAs prior to maturation, providing the molecular foundation for the maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) and subsequent zygotic genome activation (ZGA) after fertilization. Maternal effect genes (MEGs) are expressed in oocytes, of which the products are not necessarily required during oocyte maturation, b...
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11 Jan
Anming Meng's lab develops zebrafis…
The rapidly advancing genome editing technologies have served as important tools for deciphering gene functions in complicated developmental processes. However, the application of these technologies in zebrafish still has some limitations. For example, the whole-embryo gene knockout with CRISPR/Cas9 technology often leads to early embryonic lethality, whereas the Cre/loxP conditional knockout s...
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07 Jan
Qiangfeng Cliff Zhang at the School of…
In recent years, RNA has rapidly emerged as an important target in drug discovery. Accumulating evidence indicates that RNA is not merely a carrier of genetic information, but can also fold into complex and well-defined three-dimensional structures and engage in highly specific “lock-and-key” interactions with small molecules, thereby regulating critical biological processes. The successful a...
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29 Nov
A joint team led by Wei Xie, Xukun Lu …
A joint team led by Prof. Wei Xie from the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University, Dr. Xukun Lu from Institute of Women, Children and Reproductive Health at Shandong University, and Dr. Yu Zhang from Institute of Reproduction and Development at Fudan University unraveled how DNA methylation is re-established after implantation in mammals. Their study, titled “Reprogramming of H3K36me2 ...
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27 Oct
Wei Xie's group uncovers EZHIP's cr…
Epigenetic information, particularly heterochromatin modifications, can be stably transmitted across cell generations, thereby maintaining cell fate stability. This phenomenon is known as "epigenetic memory." During the transition from mammalian gametes to early embryos, cell fate undergoes drastic resetting, accompanied by extensive epigenetic reprogramming. Although the reprogramming landscap...
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29 Sep
Plants that fight back: scientists eng…
Plants that fight back: scientists engineer disease-resistant cropsA modification to plant proteins helps them recognize and attack pathogens such as viruses.Crop diseases are a huge drain on our food supply. The soybean mosaic disease, for example, is a highly destructive infection that leads to billions of dollars in losses on soybean yields every year around the world. For decades, farmers h...
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15 Sep
Wei Xie’s group reports on the esta…
During early animal embryonic development, the parental genomes undergo extensive three-dimensional chromatin restructuring after fertilization. Topologically associating domains (TADs) and compartments rapidly dissolve, leaving chromatin in a highly relaxed state. The gradual reestablishment of higher-order chromatin architecture coincides with zygotic genome activation (ZGA), a highly conserv...
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06 Aug
Wei Xie’s group and Liu Lin’s group …
A joint team led by Prof. Wei Xie from the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University and Prof. Lin Liu from the School of Life Sciences at Nankai University uncovered a novel mechanism by which Usp17l, a gene family activated during minor zygotic genome activation (ZGA), regulates the 2-cell-like program at both the transcriptional and post-translational levels. Their study, titled "USP17L...