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Scientists have long been interested in exploring the unlimited self-renewal abilities of stem cells, which can differentiate into all the cells in our bodies. A research team led by Dr. Jean Lu, an associate researcher at the Genome Research Center, Academia Sinica, found that a membrane protein called "PODXL" (Podocalyxin-Like Protein 1) can regulate the biosynthesis pathway of cholesterol. Through this research,  the research team  demonstrated that overexpressing PODXL in human embryonic stem cells (hEPSCs) can increase the developmental ability of human-mouse chimeras from 30% to 57% when the cells are aggregated with mouse embryos at the 8-cell stage. These results have been published in the journal Advanced Science.

The newest issue of Academia Economic Papers has just been published by the Institute of Economics.

Membrane protein FtsB-FtsL-FtsQ (FtsBLQ) complex are essential component of divisome, which play important roles in the divisome assembling and the division-mediated peptidoglycan synthesis regulation, yet with the unclear mechanism. In the latest publication in Nature Communications, a crystal structure of the trimeric FtsB-FtsL-FtsQ complex was revealed for the first time, from a fruitful collaboration between Dr. Che Alex Ma’s lab in the Genomics Research Center and Dr. Yu-Ling Shih’s lab in the Institute of Biological Chemistry. A structure-based model that delineates the mechanism of the regulation of peptidoglycan synthases by the FtsBLQ complex were also proposed accordingly in this study.  

This issue has a total of three research articles.

The type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a widespread antibacterial weapon used by many pathogenic bacteria for interbacterial competition. However, knowledge regarding the effects of the T6SS antagonism in pathogenesis and shaping microbiota in complex microbial community is limited. By establishing a soil inoculation method mimicking natural infection of phytopathogenic agrobacteria coupled with optimized bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, the research team led by Dr.  Erh-Min Lai and Dr. Chih-Horng Kuo at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica provided evidence that the T6SS promotes disease occurrence and influences crown gall microbiota composition. This work is recently published online in the premier ASM journal mBio.

The issue contains 3 articles and 2 book review.

A collaborative study by Dr. Jun-An Chen’s group at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, and Dr. Yuh-Jyh Jong’s group at Kaohsiung Medical University has uncovered that a family of small regulatory RNAs, namely microRNA-34 or MiR34, is associated with disease progression of Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and could potentially be applied as a clinical biomarker to assess the efficacy of medical treatments. This discovery provides new insights into how small RNAs participate in SMA pathology and represents a novel way to assist a new SMA treatment protocol. The study has been published in Molecular Therapy – Nucleic Acids. 

Researchers from the Institute of Physics identified a novel concept of using “afterglows” of supernova explosions due to Dark Matter (DM) interactions in detectors as new experimental signatures to Direct DM searches. The conventional approach of DM detection via its elastic scattering with the nucleus is restricted by small observable energies and the lack of complementary information. Supernova neutrinos (SNν) can transfer their kinetic energy to the DM in the cosmos. Upon arrival on Earth, these boosted-DM (BDM) would produce distinctive observables in large detectors. In addition, the Time-of-Flight distribution of the BDM events relative to the initial SNs neutrino burst are smoking-gun signatures for DM. A positive detection of SNνBDM can provide powerful constraints to DM masses and interaction cross-sections.

Abnormally high circulating androgen levels have been considered a causative factor for benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostate cancer in men. Thauera sp. strain GDN1 is an unusual betaproteobacterium capable of catabolizing androgens. The collaborative team led by Research Fellow Yin-Ru Chiang from the Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, and Professor Mei-Jou Chen from National Taiwan University Hospital and College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, administered C57BL/6 mice with strain GDN1 through oral gavage. The team found that the administered strain GDN1 regulated mouse serum androgen levels, possibly because it blocked androgen recycling through enterohepatic circulation. The team’s data thus indicate the possible applicability of androgen-catabolic gut bacteria as potent probiotics in alternative therapy of hyperandrogenism.This study was published in Gut Microbes in February 2023.

This book is a political history of global attempts to reduce politics to science and the results of such an attempt in modern China. The book follows the discourses and activities of a special group of local officials in China’s Nationalist government (1928-1949). These officials had been students or faculty at the Central Politics School (CPS): the only national university in modern Chinese history that trained professional bureaucrats according to the blueprint of American science of public administration conceived by Frank Goodnow. Through its accounts of how these officials handled land administrative reforms, the battlefront state-building during World War II, and rebellions of ethnic minorities, the book discusses why some of the most talented CPS officials resorted to non-modern humanistic political techniques and achieved a Chinese statecraft more efficient and sustainable than science. As such, the book invites readers to think whether science and the rational-legal authority proposed by Woodrow Wilson and Max Weber, is a proper conceptual framework for und

A new study led by Dr. Yen-Ping Hsueh’s group at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, has uncovered that the oyster mushroom develops a lollipop-like structure (toxocyst) on the mycelium that stores a volatile compound, 3-octanone, to kill nematodes. This study “A carnivorous mushroom paralyzes and kills nematodes via a volatile ketone” has been published in Science Advance.  

The discipline of art history, especially following its exposure to material and visual culture in the 1980s and 1990s, has noticed that any man-made object or image—beyond written text and the so-called “works of art”—can weave together (whether consciously or unconsciously) numerous important threads concerning their cultural space and time at the moment of their production, retaining richer—and often conflicting—messages than those carried by written texts. By deciphering the form and materiality of these objects, it is thus possible to achieve a more substantial and multi-layered understanding of a past that has already been to fading.