Parental egg-care in fish traps them in an evolutionary dead-end through the loss of the chorion-hardening system, find scientists from the Institute of Science Tokyo. Fish have diverse egg-caring strategies that have independently emerged multiple times across lineages. Comparative whole genome analysis of 240 fish species revealed a strong correlation between loss of the chorion-hardening system and parental egg-care, revealing the mechanisms behind the evolutionary bias that restricts egg-caring fish from becoming non-egg-carers.

A molecular dynamics study reveals that nymphaeol A, a propolis compound with therapeutic properties, spontaneously inserts into cell membranes. These findings help explain the biological activity of nymphaeol A and support its potential use in developing new biomedical compounds.

Designed proteins are anticipated to have groundbreaking impact on a range of issues from treating disease to tackling environmental problems. With a DKK 700 million grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation and headed by Professor Dek Woolfson, a new Center for Protein Design (CPD) at the University of Copenhagen has ambitions to match this potential. The CPD will spearhead developments in protein design and its applications through strong interdisciplinary collaborations across the university and partnerships in Denmark and internationally.

In a paper published in Molecular Biomedicine, researchers Xia Peng and Juan Du present a comprehensive review of lysine lactylation (Kla), a post-translational modification discovered in 2019. The study highlights Kla's role in linking cellular metabolism to epigenetic and signaling pathways by transferring a lactyl moiety to lysine residues, regulated by enzymes (writers/erasers) and metabolites like lactate, affecting both histone (e.g., H3K18la, H4K12la) and non-histone proteins (e.g., AARS1, ACSS2). In the review, the authors also elaborate on the mechanisms by which aberrant Kla triggers multiple disease processes. Meanwhile, the authors introduce the potential target sites of Kla.