Since the discovery of RNA splicing in the mid-1970s, splicing regulation has remained a central focus in molecular biology. Approximately 50% of human diseases are associated with splicing abnormalities. In eukaryotes, 70% to 90% of genes complete splicing during transcription, a process termed co-transcriptional splicing. However, the precise mechanisms coupling splicing with transcription remain incompletely understood. Moreover, the conceptual and functional boundaries between co-transcriptional and alternative splicing continue to confuse many researchers. Elucidating the molecular mechanisms and downstream functions of co-transcriptional splicing thus stands as a key frontier in the field.

Recently, a team led by Yajing Hao (China National Center for Bioinformation / Beijing Institute of Genomics, CAS) and Xiang-Dong Fu (Westlake University) published a review entitled "Hierarchical regulation and molecular functions of co-transcriptional splicing" in Science Bulletin. The article covers detection technologies, quantitative metrics, regulatory mechanisms, functional consequences, and disease associations, highlighting that co-transcriptional splicing is an active and hierarchically regulated hub of gene expression. The review also notes that many mechanisms remain debated, and systematic elucidation will open new opportunities for translational research.

The left‑right asymmetry of South African butterfly lilies (genus Wachendorfia) has been regarded as a classic evolutionary puzzle for more than a century. Due to the mirror-image arrangement of the floral parts, the plants achieve efficient cross pollination. The molecular basis of this arrangement has now been uncovered by an international team led by the University of Potsdam. Their study in collaboration with the University of Cape Town and Wageningen University has been published in “Science”.

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology today announced the activation of The QUANTUM Trial (Alliance A062401), a clinical study designed to test a novel, immune-targeting approach for patients newly diagnosed with primary plasma cell leukemia (PCL).

Biologists thought that before the Panamanian land bridge formed 3 million years ago, mammals in North and South America were isolated from one another. Based on new fossils, UC Berkeley paleontologists suggest that mammals from today’s U.S. migrated into Mexico by about 10 million years ago, where they waited in a kind of holding pen until opportunities arose for some of them to cross to the south starting about 7 million years ago.

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have recovered and analysed the first ancient smallpox virus genomes ever identified in the Americas, providing the strongest direct evidence to date that the disease was introduced through European colonisation.

Smallpox, caused by variola virus, played a major role in the catastrophic population decline experienced by Indigenous peoples after European arrival. Such was the extent of those declines, that many claim smallpox and other introduced diseases entirely reshaped societies, killing hundreds of millions of people.

Until now, however, there had been no direct genetic evidence linking colonial-era outbreaks in the Americas to strains circulating in the Old World.

The study, just published in leading international journal Science, analysed ancient viral DNA recovered from two individuals from a local community buried in northern Chile between the late 15th and early 17th centuries. The researchers found that the viruses belonged to a now-extinct lineage of variola virus that sits evolutionarily between medieval European strains and the strains that circulated in later centuries.