2020 Breakthrough Articles

A Polycomb repressive complex is required for RNAi-mediated heterochromatin formation and dynamic distribution of nuclear bodies

Jing Xu, Xiaolu Zhao, Fengbiao Mao, Venkatesha Basrur, Beatrix Ueberheide, Brian T Chait, C David Allis, Sean D Taverna, Shan Gao, Wei Wang, and Yifan Liu

Nucleic Acids Research, gkaa1262, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa1262

A pan-cancer atlas of somatic mutations in miRNA biogenesis genes

Paulina Galka-Marciniak, Martyna Olga Urbanek-Trzeciak, Paulina Maria Nawrocka, and Piotr Kozlowski

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 49, Issue 2, 25 January 2021, Pages 601–620, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa1223

Regulation of ex-translational activities is the primary function of the multi-tRNA synthetase complex

Haissi Cui, Mridu Kapur, Jolene K Diedrich, John R Yates III, Susan L Ackerman, and Paul Schimmel

Nucleic Acids Research, gkaa1183, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa1183

High-resolution visualization and quantification of nucleic acid–based therapeutics in cells and tissues using Nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS)

Cuiwen He, Michael T Migawa, Kai Chen, Thomas A Weston, Michael Tanowitz, Wenxin Song, Paul Guagliardo, K Swaminathan Iyer, C Frank Bennett, Loren G Fong, Punit P Seth, Stephen G Young, and Haibo Jiang

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 49, Issue 1, 11 January 2021, Pages 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa1112

Secondary structure determination of conserved SARS-CoV-2 RNA elements by NMR spectroscopy

Anna Wacker, Julia E Weigand, Sabine R Akabayov, …, Maria A Wirtz Martin, Jens Wöhnert, and Heidi Zetzsche

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 22, 16 December 2020, Pages 12415–12435, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa1013

Genome-wide mapping of SARS-CoV-2 RNA structures identifies therapeutically-relevant elements

Ilaria Manfredonia, Chandran Nithin, Almudena Ponce-Salvatierra, Pritha Ghosh, Tomasz K Wirecki, Tycho Marinus, Natacha S Ogando, Eric J Snijder, Martijn J van Hemert, Janusz M Bujnicki, and Danny Incarnato

Nucleic Acids Research, gkaa1183, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa1183

Construction of a highly error-prone DNA polymerase for developing organelle mutation systems

Junwei Ji, and Anil Day

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 21, 2 December 2020, Pages 11868–11879, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa929

Contribution of DNA adenine methylation to gene expression heterogeneity in Salmonella enterica

María A Sánchez-Romero, David R Olivenza, Gabriel Gutiérrez, and Josep Casadesús

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 21, 2 December 2020, Pages 11857–11867, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa730

Rational design of minimal synthetic promoters for plants

Yao-Min Cai, Kalyani Kallam, Henry Tidd, Giovanni Gendarini, Amanda Salzman, and Nicola J Patron

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 21, 2 December 2020, Pages 11845–11856, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa682

Investigating the pharmacodynamic durability of GalNAc–siRNA conjugates

Christopher R Brown, Swati Gupta, June Qin, Timothy Racie, Guo He, Scott Lentini, Ryan Malone, Mikyung Yu, Shigeo Matsuda, Svetlana Shulga-Morskaya, Anil V Nair, Christopher S Theile, Karyn Schmidt, Azar Shahraz, Varun Goel, Rubina G Parmar, Ivan Zlatev, Mark K Schlegel, Jayaprakash K Nair, Muthusamy Jayaraman, Muthiah Manoharan, Dennis Brown, Martin A Maier, and Vasant Jadhav

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 21, 2 December 2020, Pages 11827–11844, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa670

Pentatricopeptide repeats of protein-only RNase P use a distinct mode to recognize conserved bases and structural elements of pre-tRNA

Takamasa Teramoto, Kipchumba J Kaitany, Yoshimitsu Kakuta, Makoto Kimura, Carol A Fierke, and Traci M Tanaka Hall

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 21, 2 December 2020, Pages 11815–11826, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa627

Alignment and quantification of ChIP-exo crosslinking patterns reveal the spatial organization of protein–DNA complexes

Naomi Yamada, Matthew J Rossi, Nina Farrell, B Franklin Pugh, Shaun Mahony

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 20, 18 November 2020, Pages 11215–11226, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa618

Prion protein lowering is a disease-modifying therapy across prion disease stages, strains and endpoints

Eric Vallabh Minikel, Hien T Zhao, Jason Le, Jill O’Moore, Rose Pitstick, Samantha Graffam, George A Carlson, Michael P Kavanaugh, Jasna Kriz, Jae Beom Kim Jiyan Ma, Holger Wille, Judd Aiken, Deborah McKenzie, Katsumi Doh-ura, Matthew Beck, Rhonda O’Keefe, Jacquelyn Stathopoulos, Tyler Caron, Stuart L Schreiber, Jeffrey B Carroll, Holly B Kordasiewicz, Deborah E Cabin, and Sonia M Vallabh

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 19, 4 November 2020, Pages 10615–10631, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa616

PARP1 catalytic variants reveal branching and chain length-specific functions of poly(ADP-ribose) in cellular physiology and stress response

Lisa Aberle, Annika Krüger, Julia M Reber, Michelle Lippmann, Matthias Hufnagel, Michael Schmalz, Irmela R E. A. Trussina, Sarah Schlesiger, Tabea Zubel, Karina Schütz, Andreas Marx, Andrea Hartwig, Elisa Ferrando-May, Alexander Bürkle, and Aswin Mangerich

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 18, 09 October 2020, Pages 10015–10033, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa590

Comprehensive nucleosome interactome screen establishes fundamental principles of nucleosome binding

Aleksandra Skrajna, Dennis Goldfarb, Katarzyna M Kedziora, Emily M Cousins, Gavin D Grant, Cathy J Spangler, Emily H Barbour, Xiaokang Yan, Nathaniel A Hathaway, Nicholas G Brown, Jeanette G Cook, Michael B Major, and Robert K McGinty

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 17, 25 September 2020, Pages 9415–9432, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa544

IncC conjugative plasmids and SXT/R391 elements repair double-strand breaks caused by CRISPR–Cas during conjugation

David Roy, Kevin T Huguet, Frédéric Grenier, and Vincent Burrus

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 16, 18 September 2020, Pages 8815–8827, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa518

5′-fluoro(di)phosphate-labeled oligonucleotides are versatile molecular probes for studying nucleic acid secondary structure and interactions by 19F NMR

Marek R Baranowski, Marcin Warminski, Jacek Jemielity, and Joanna Kowalska

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 15, 04 September 2020, Pages 8209–8224, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa470

Reconstitution of the human tRNA splicing endonuclease complex: insight into the regulation of pre-tRNA cleavage

Cassandra K Hayne, Casey A Schmidt, Maira I Haque, A Gregory Matera, and Robin E Stanley

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 14, 20 August 2020, Pages 7609–7622, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa438

Synthetic promoter design in Escherichia coli based on a deep generative network

Ye Wang, Haochen Wang, Lei Wei, Shuailin Li, Liyang Liu, and Xiaowo Wang

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 12, 09 July 2020, Pages 6403–6412, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa325

Escherichia coli YcaQ is a DNA glycosylase that unhooks DNA interstrand crosslinks

Noah P Bradley, Lauren A Washburn, Plamen P Christov, Coran M H Watanabe, and Brandt F Eichman

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 13, 27 July 2020, Pages 7005–7017, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa346

Prp5−Spt8/Spt3 interaction mediates a reciprocal coupling between splicing and transcription

Wei Shao, Zhan Ding, Zeng-Zhang Zheng, Ji-Jia Shen, Yu-Xian Shen, Jia Pu, Yu-Jie Fan, Charles C Query, and Yong-Zhen Xu

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 11, 19 June 2020, Pages 5799–5813, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa311

Ribosome profiling in archaea reveals leaderless translation, novel translational initiation sites, and ribosome pausing at single codon resolution

Diego Rivera Gelsinger, Emma Dallon, Rahul Reddy, Fuad Mohammad, Allen R Buskirk, and Jocelyne DiRuggiero

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 10, 04 June 2020, Pages 5201–5216, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa304

H2A.Z is dispensable for both basal and activated transcription in post-mitotic mouse muscles

Edwige Belotti, Nicolas Lacoste, Thomas Simonet, Christophe Papin, Kiran Padmanabhan, Isabella Scionti, Yann-Gaël Gangloff, Lorrie Ramos, Defne Dalkara, Ali Hamiche, Stefan Dimitrov, and Laurent Schaeffer

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 13, 27 July 2020, Pages 7005–7017, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa346

Spatially regulated editing of genetic information within a neuron

Isabel C Vallecillo-Viejo, Noa Liscovitch-Brauer, Juan F Diaz Quiroz, Maria F Montiel-Gonzalez, Sonya E Nemes, Kavita J Rangan, Simon R Levinson, Eli Eisenberg, and Joshua J C Rosenthal

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 8, 07 May 2020, Pages 3999–4012, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa172

Biphasic unbinding of a metalloregulator from DNA for transcription (de)repression in Live Bacteria

Won Jung, Kushal Sengupta, Brian M Wendel, John D Helmann, and Peng Chen

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 5, 18 March 2020, Pages 2199–2208, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa056

The identity and methylation status of the first transcribed nucleotide in eukaryotic mRNA 5′ cap modulates protein expression in living cells

Pawel J. Sikorski, Marcin Warminski, Dorota Kubacka, Tomasz Ratajczak, Dominika Nowis, Joanna Kowalska, and Jacek Jemielity

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 4, 28 February 2020, Pages 1607–1626, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa032

Structural basis of non-canonical transcriptional regulation by the σA-bound iron-sulfur protein WhiB1 in M. tuberculosis

Tao Wan, Shanren Li, Daisy Guiza Beltran, Andrew Schacht, Lu Zhang, Donald F Becker, and LiMei Zhang

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue 2, 24 January 2020, Pages 501–516, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz1133

Alliance of Genome Resources Portal: unified model organism research platform

The Alliance of Genome Resources Consortium

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue D1, 08 January 2020, Pages D650–D658, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz813

The SCOP database in 2020: expanded classification of representative family and superfamily domains of known protein structures

Antonina Andreeva, Eugene Kulesha, Julian Gough, and Alexey G Murzin

Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 48, Issue D1, 08 January 2020, Pages D376–D382, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz1064