Adaptive Spo11 RNA editing gate optimizes meiosis I pace and mitotic proliferation while preserving ascospore formation
Mengchun Wu, Junfeng Liu, Jiahui Han, Junqi Huang, Chanjing Feng, Cong Jiang, Jin-Rong Xu, Qinhu Wang, Huiquan Liu · 2026
Read Adaptive Spo11 RNA editing gate optimizes meiosis I pace and mitotic proliferation while preserving ascospore formation by Mengchun Wu, Junfeng Liu, Jiahui Han, Junqi Huang, Chanjing Feng, Cong Jiang, Jin-Rong Xu, Qinhu Wang, Huiquan Liu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13251820.txt.
Description
Mengchun Wu and co-authors uncover a single-letter edit switch in a crop fungus in this 2026 study. The fungus causes head blight in cereals, and a protein called Spo11, which cuts DNA to start sexual shuffling, turned out to have a second job holding back the first division.
A stop signal inside the Spo11 message is corrected to a working code only during sexual reproduction, through RNA editing. Without the protein, division speeds up and spores fail. A version born already corrected keeps spores fine but harms growth and division timing. The edit acts as a dial for protein dose, and family history shows it has been gained and lost over time.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Mengchun Wu, Junfeng Liu, Jiahui Han, Junqi Huang, Chanjing Feng, Cong Jiang, Jin-Rong Xu, Qinhu Wang, Huiquan Liu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 74540 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |