Biology subjects

Donovan, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Donovan, A..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Purinergic signaling promotes gliomagenesis through nuclear calcium transients

Intracellular Ca2+ transients drive key developmental and physiological processes, yet their role in oncogenesis remains incompletely understood. In glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive brain malignancy, tumor cellular networks exhibit self-sustaining Ca2+ transients that promote tumor growth through unclear mechanisms. Using patient-derived GBM models, we show that these transients depend primarily on intracellular Ca2+ stores and extend to the nucleus to drive tumorigenesis. A neuromodulator screen identified extracellular purines ATP and ADP as potent inducers of both nuclear and cytosolic Ca2+ transients via activation of metabotropic purinergic P2RY1 receptors, whose knockdown attenuates tumorigenicity in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, Ca2+ transients promote tumorigenesis via the nuclear Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent kinase CAMK4, which regulates transcriptional and epigenetic programs, as well as ribosomal DNA transcription. From the therapeutic perspective, pharmacologic P2RY1 inhibition suppresses tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. Collectively, these findings reveal a pharmacologically targetable oncogenic mechanism in GBM and possibly other malignancies.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2026

Modeling mitochondrial inheritance enables high-precision single-cell lineage tracing in humans

Somatic mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) provide natural barcodes that enable engineering-free lineage tracing in human tissues, but the complex dynamics of mtDNA inheritance across cell divisions and incomplete sampling of mtDNA introduce uncertainty in reconstructed lineages. Here, we present MitoDrift, a probabilistic framework that integrates Wright-Fisher drift dynamics with sparse single-cell measurements to produce confidence-refined lineage trees enriched for accurate clonal relationships. Validation with gold-standard lentiviral barcoding and whole-genome sequencing demonstrates that MitoDrift outperforms existing tree reconstruction methods in precision while maintaining high clonal recovery, enabling robust analyses linking lineage to cell state. Applying MitoDrift to human hematopoiesis reveals an age-associated decline in clonal diversity with differential impact across cell types and identifies heritable regulatory programs in hematopoietic stem cells in vivo, linking AP-1/stress-associated programs to clonal expansions. In multiple myeloma, MitoDrift captures therapy-associated clonal remodeling undetectable by copy number analysis, revealing phenotypic transitions and linking gene regulatory programs to differential drug sensitivity. Collectively, MitoDrift enables high-precision lineage tracing at scale and establishes quantitative lineage-state analysis in primary human tissues, linking clonal history to transcriptional and epigenetic programs in tissue homeostasis, aging, and disease.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2025

Assigning Targetable Molecular Pathways to Transdiagnostic Subgroups Across Autism and Related Neurodevelopmental Disorders

The heterogeneity of autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions has impeded accurate prognoses and treatment discovery. Using translational neuroimaging across 135 mouse models (3,515 mice) and two human MRI datasets (n = 1,234 and n = 1,015), we derived participant subgroups from shared neuroanatomical features. These subgroups did not distinguish autism, ADHD, or OCD diagnoses and only modestly differentiated cognitive and behavioural phenotypes. Instead, they mapped onto four molecular pathways: (1) synaptic function; (2) MAPK and Wnt signalling; (3) chromatin modification and cellular stress responses; and (4) broader chromatin, immune, and second-messenger signalling pathways. This framework bridges preclinical models and idiopathic human neurodevelopmental conditions, linking patients to biologically relevant molecular mechanisms.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

The effect of circulating neutralizing antibodies on the replication of SARS-CoV-2 variants following post-vaccination infections.

The impact of pre-existing neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) titers on SARS-CoV-2 viral shedding dynamics in post-vaccination infection (PVI) are not well understood. We characterized viral shedding longitudinally in nasal specimens in relation to baseline (pre/peri-infection) serum neutralizing antibody titers in 125 participants infected with distinct SARS-CoV-2 variants. Among 68 participants who had received vaccinations, we quantified the effect of baseline serum NAb titers on maximum viral RNA titers and on the duration of infectivity. Baseline NAb titers were higher and efficiently targeted a broader range of variants in participants who received one or two monovalent ancestral booster vaccinations compared to those with a full primary vaccine series. In participants with Delta variant infections, baseline NAb titers targeting Delta were negatively correlated with maximum viral RNA copies. Per log10 increase in baseline NAb IC50, maximum viral load was reduced -2.43 (95% confidence interval [CI] -3.76, -1.11) log10 N copies and days of infectious viral shedding were reduced -2.79 [95% CI: -4.99, -0.60] days. By contrast, in those with Omicron infections (BA.1, BA.2, BA.4 or BA.5 lineages) baseline NAb responses against Omicron lineages did not predict viral outcomes. Our results provide robust estimates of the effect of baseline NAbs on the magnitude and duration of nasal viral replication after PVI (albeit with an unclear effect on transmission) and show how immune escape variants efficiently evade these modulating effects.

immunology↗