Chakravarty et al. (2019) and Itakura et al. (2019) report that the yeast RNA-binding protein Vts1 can convert into the [SMAUG+] prion state and delay meiosis commitment in response to starvation. It enables budding yeast to optimize their sporulation efficiency depending on how quickly nutrient availability fluctuates in their environment.

Glastad et al. (2019) describe a role for the neuronal CoREST corepressor and changes in juvenile hormone (JH) and ecdysone signaling during the reprogramming of social behavioral phenotypes in ants that are reflective of a natural mechanism differentiating “Major” and “Minor” worker ants.

Live-cell RNA imaging is a powerful approach to observe the real-time dynamics of RNA metabolism. Two recent papers describe an optimized fluorescence-based CRISPR-Cas13 approach to image colocalized or repeat-containing RNAs in real time, as well as demonstrate simultaneous RNA-DNA labeling by using Cas13 and Cas9 in tandem.

Genome editing is a method for making targeted sequence changes to the genomes of living cells. Prime editing, recently reported by Anzalone et al. (2019), is a new technology that uses reverse transcription to “write” programmed sequence changes into genomic DNA and thus promises significant technical advances.

In a recent issue of Molecular Cell, Natarajan et al. (2020) showed that unassembled ER membrane proteins diffuse to the INM for degradation. The INM-localized Asi E3 ligase complex is sufficient and necessary for recognition and ubiquitination of unassembled ER membrane proteins.

In this issue of Molecular Cell, Terrell et al. (2019) characterize the interactions of RAS-RAF complexes in live cells. Using bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) technology, they show that individual RAF family members exhibit distinct binding affinities to each RAS family protein, with CRAF exhibiting high binding affinities for all RAS proteins and BRAF exhibiting increased binding affinity for KRAS.

The nucleolus is a phase-separated cell condensate where the initial steps of ribosome biogenesis take place. In this issue of Molecular Cell, Yao et al. (2019) report a super-resolution microscopy analysis of the internal structure of the nucleolus, revealing how nascent precursor ribosomal RNAs are initially partitioned and processed in this multilayered biocondensate.

In this issue of Molecular Cell, Nicholls et al. (2019) show that the oligoribonuclease REXO2 degrades mitochondrial RNA dinucleotides to prevent RNA-primed transcription at non-canonical sites in the mitochondrial genome, shedding new light on the importance of complete RNA degradation for transcriptional integrity.

The study by Tan-Wong et al. (2019) in this issue of Molecular Cell reveals a capacity of R-loops to promote antisense transcription expanding our view of the features that a DNA region may have to act as a promoter.