Nature Communications: Saturation mutagenesis enables RAD51D clinical variant interpretation and identifies distinct biochemical functions (Sung/Olsen)

October 6, 2026

 Kristie E. Darrah, Shelby L. Hemker, Yashpal Rawal, Noah J. Goff, Phoebe S. Parker, Gayatri S. Ganesan, Caleb M. Stratton, Katherine G. Oppenheimer, Ella Roberts, Elena Glick, Nicole Banks, Arjun K. Kumar, Silvia Casadei, Matthew W. Snyder, Kara J. Milliron, Sofia D. Merajver, Ana M. Dias, Katherine L. Nathanson, Susan M. Domchek, Lea M. Starita, [...]

Biomolecular NMR Assignments : The 1H, 15N and 13C backbone resonance assignments of an intrinsically disordered region (467–696) of breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein (BRCA1) (Sung, Libich)

October 1, 2026

 Hoang H. Dinh, Angela M. Jasper, Antoine Baudin, Patrick Sung & David S. Libich The tumor suppressor protein breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein (BRCA1) plays a central role in maintaining genome stability through its involvement in DNA damage repair, transcriptional regulation, and cell-cycle control. BRCA1 functions as an obligate heterodimer with its binding partner, [...]

Cell Reports: EWSR1::FLI1 promotes neocentromere formation in Ewing sarcoma cells (Kitagawa, Zheng, & Sung Labs)

September 30, 2026

 EWSR1::FLI1 promotes neocentromere formation in ewing sarcoma cells Risa Kitagawa1,2 ∙ Ediri E. Metitiri1,2 ∙ Bin Yu1,2 ∙ Changxian Shen1,2,6 ∙ Alexander J.R. Bishop1,3,5 ∙ Siyuan Zheng1,4 ∙ Peter J. Houghton1,2 ∙ Katsumi Kitagawa1,2,7  Highlights • EWSR1::FLI1 upregulates CENP-A levels • EWSR1::FLI1 recruits CENP-A to an EWSR1::FLI1 binding site, where a neocentromere often forms • [...]

Cell Reports: EWSR1::FLI1 promotes neocentromere formation in Ewing sarcoma cells (Zheng, Sung Lab, Kitagawa Lab)

August 17, 2026

 Risa Kitagawa1,2 ∙ Ediri E. Metitiri1,2 ∙ Bin Yu1,2 ∙ Changxian Shen1,2,6 ∙ Alexander J.R. Bishop1,3,5 ∙ Siyuan Zheng1,4 ∙ Peter J. Houghton1,2 ∙ Katsumi Kitagawa1,2,7 Send email to kitagawak@uthscsa.edu Highlights Summary Ewing sarcoma (EwS) is characterized by chimeric fusions such as EWSR1::FLI1. Chromosome gain or loss is prevalent in EwS, and this chromosome instability (CIN) phenotype correlates with poor treatment outcomes. We previously showed that CENP-A, a centromere-specific histone H3 variant, interacts with EWSR1 via its SYGQ2 motif, an [...]

Nature Communications: HELZ-BRCA2 complex resolves R-loops to drive transcription-coupled homologous recombination (Wasmuth, Zheng, Sung Lab, Zhao)

August 12, 2026

 Wenjing Li, Bo Wu, Boya Gao, Elizabeth M. Irvin, Arijit Ghosh, Lillian Eliaz, Yuxin Huang, Youngho Kwon, Clara M. Stiefel, Tram Thi Ngoc Nguyen, David Zhao, Humberto Javier Suarez, Tengyang Ni, Salvador Alejo, O’Taveon Fitzgerald, Xuemei Song, Sandip Kumar Rath, Elizabeth V. Wasmuth, David S. Yu, Siyuan Zheng, Justin Leung, Xiaoyu Xue, Hong Wang, Jae-Hoon [...]

Function: Constitutive mTORC1 Activation in Skeletal Muscle Increases Inflammation but is not Sufficient to Impair Glucose Tolerance (Lai Lab)

July 23, 2026

 Erik D. Marchant, Hanna Kalenta, Sean P. Kilroe, Jacquelyn May, Wenjun Z. Martini, Korri S. Weldon, Zhao Lai, and Blake B. Rasmussen  Abstract Aberrant mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) signaling in skeletal muscle has been implicated in aging and insulin resistance; however, it is not known whether chronic mTORC1 activation directly causes glucose intolerance. We tested the hypothesis that constitutive mTORC1 activation in mouse skeletal muscle impairs glucose [...]

Nature Communications: Multifaceted roles of PDS5B in RAD51-dependent homology-directed DNA repair and replication fork protection (Sung Lab, Libich, Olsen, Wasmuth, Rao, et al)

July 22, 2026

 Jeffrey N. Katz, Lorena Samentar, Qingming Fang, Jae-Hoon Ji, Wenjing Li, Qiongmei Gao, Sahiti Kuppa, Boya Gao, Cody M. Rogers, Hardeep Kaur, Aida Badamchi Shabestari, Arijit Dutta, Shahrez Syed, Miriam Tovar, Nozomi Tomimatsu, Bipasha Mukherjee, Elizabeth M. Irvin, Shuo Zhou, Amyn A. Habib, David S. Libich, Robert Hromas, Alexander V. Mazin, Manjeet K. Rao, Shaun [...]

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology: CST complex promotes second-strand synthesis in break-induced replication (Sung Lab, Malkova, et al)

July 21, 2026

 Pilendra Thakre, Jeff Wang, Liping Liu, Sameer Shah, Zhenxin Yan, Nhung Pham, Meng-Chia Tsai, Yuqin Zhao, Cody M. Rogers, Zhitong Feng, Hengyao Niu, Youngho Kwon, Xiaohua Wu, Anna Malkova, Patrick Sung & Grzegorz Ira Abstract Break-induced DNA replication (BIR) is a highly mutagenic recombination pathway used by eukaryotic cells to repair single-ended DNA breaks, mediate mitotic [...]

Nature Communications: Break-induced replication forms long mutable single-strand DNA during meiosis (Malkova)

June 22, 2026

 Thanks to advances in treatment, more than 85% of children diagnosed with cancer now survive into adulthood. However, many survivors face long-term health challenges caused by their cancer treatments, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, and reduced quality of life. In this study, researchers followed more than 18,000 childhood cancer survivors over [...]