Uncovering fungal pathogens and skin microbiota in rural Malaysia.

The rise of emerging fungal pathogens suggests a need for global surveillance and a deeper understanding of drug resistance and modes of transmission. In a recent Cell article, Er et al. investigated an understudied fungal pathogen, Trichophyton concentricum, by analyzing the skin microbiota of Indigenous peninsular Malaysians with tinea imbricata.

A massively parallel reporter assay library to screen short synthetic promoters in mammalian cells.

Cellular responses to stimuli underpin discoveries in drug development, synthetic biology, and general life sciences. We introduce a library comprising 6144 synthetic promoters, each shorter than 250 bp, designed as transcriptional readouts of cellular stimulus responses in massively parallel reporter assay format. This library facilitates precise detection and amplification of transcriptional activity from our promoters, enabling the systematic development of tunable reporters with dynamic ranges of 50-100 fold.

Discovery and Validation of Context-Dependent Synthetic Mammalian Promoters.

Cellular transcription enables cells to adapt to various stimuli and maintain homeostasis. Transcription factors bind to transcription response elements (TREs) in gene promoters, initiating transcription. Synthetic promoters, derived from natural TREs, can be engineered to control exogenous gene expression using endogenous transcription machinery.