Redox is related to tumor initiation, progression and treatment. Aberrant elevated reactive oxygen species and antioxidant systems maintain a high setpoint of redox homeostasis and confer cancer cells with a proliferative advantage. Parturition of the cellular redox balance provides promising therapy for eliminating cancer cells.

Proteins that regulate transcription are highly intrinsically disordered, which is strongly linked to multivalent binding and liquid–liquid phase separation. The biological relevance of widespread phase separation is controversial, but many transcriptional proteins co-cluster with other factors, forming multiprotein–DNA complexes and multivalent dynamic hubs to target DNA and initiate transcription. Nucleic acids and other biopolymers (green, purple) and transcription factors (blue) form multivalent networks. TFs (blue) make direct interactions with DNA (orange). Multiple TFs (multiple colours) interact with DNA (orange) to initiate transcription. Dark green indicates concentrated liquid droplets surrounded by a low concentration liquid phase.

Johannes Gutenberg is widely regarded as the father of printing through his contribution to the invention and development of the printing press and associated technologies such as the chemistry of metal type and printing ink. His work has had a major impact on the development and culture of science and on the language of printing in today’s world.

Data-independent acquisition (DIA) has developed into an important method for quantitative proteomics, to capture the depth and dynamics of biological systems, and to perform large-scale protein quantification. To celebrate the > 10 years of DIA, we interviewed some of the scientific leaders who have provided crucial improvements to the DIA workflow.

Hippo signaling plays critical roles in cancer initiation and progression. Chemicals targeting the YAP/TAZ–TEAD complex (e.g. verteporfin, K975, DC-TEADin02, VGLL4, etc.), or the upstream regulators of YAP/TAZ (e.g. latrunculin A, cytochalasin D, losartan, dihydrexidine, erlotinib, etc.), or the downstream effectors of YAP/TAZ (e.g. A37, TP0903, etc.) can be potential anticancer agents.

The peptide epitope derived from Group A Streptococcus M-protein upon conjugation with a lipidated polyphenylalanine moiety adopted a helical conformation, was able to self-assemble into nanoparticles and induced production of a high level of opsonic antibodies in immunized mice.

The rapid production of high-throughput cancer omics data and biomedical texts provide valuable data resources for revealing the pathogenesis, prognosis prediction and treatment strategies of cancer. However, it brings great challenges to data analysis. This study applies the representation learning method to the joint analysis of knowledge graph and omics data. The results show that our method can realize the seamless connection between omics data and knowledge graph, help to mine biological knowledge contained in omics data and provide a new perspective for further explanation of molecular mechanism.

Chemically directed dimerisation of antimicrobial peptides via a disulfide bond represents a generally useful means of producing antimicrobial agents with potentially improved bacterial selectivity.

Freezer-induced patient urine sediments were used to phenotype patients with CHST3-related skeletal dysplasia by sequentially profiling the glycosaminoglycans and identifying their potential protein carriers.

The membrane binding of two peptides designed to exhibit enhanced membrane permeability to allow cell entry and engagement of Bcl-2 family members shows that an RRR motif significantly enhances peptide binding and insertion into a mitochondrial membrane mimic and provides insights into selective membrane targeting of peptides.

Based on the unique affinity between autoantigens (autoAgs) and dermatan sulfate (DS), this paper reports 140 candidate autoAgs identified from proteome extracts of Jurkat T-cells, with at least 105 (75%) being known targets of autoantibodies in various autoimmune diseases and cancer. Comparison with currently available multi-omic COVID-19 data shows that 125 (89%) DS-affinity proteins are altered in SARS-CoV-2-infected cells or patients. AutoAgs, such as LCP1 and NACA, that are altered in the T cells of COVID-19 patients may provide insight into T-cell responses during viral infection.

This paper investigates the autoantigenic proteome (‘autoantigen-ome’) of human B cells and shows that a large fraction of these DS-binding autoantigens is affected during SARS-CoV-2 infection, giving rise to a diverse pool of autoAgs that may lead to infection-induced autoimmune diseases. The COVID autoantigen-ome provided in this paper may serve as a molecular map and resource for investigating autoimmune phenomena of SARS-CoV-2 infection and its long-term sequelae. Understanding immunogenic proteins of COVID may also enhance vaccine target design.