08/06/2020
Community Page
David Goodsell, Maria Voigt, Christine Zardecki and Stephen Burley describes how visually striking illustrations of SARS coronaviruses can capture the state of knowledge of the field and provide a touchstone for outreach and education about these pathogens.
Image credit: David Goodsell
Current Issue July 2020
08/06/2020
Short Reports
Radiotherapy is a commonly used conditioning regimen for bone marrow transplantation; cytotoxicity limits the use of this life-saving therapy, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly defined. Jianqiu Xiao, Chun Wang, Gabriel Mbalaviele and co-workers reveal a continuum of the effects of radiation, relayed by the inflammasome–gasdermin D axis, initially affecting host cells and, ultimately, harming transplanted cells.
Image credit: pbio.3000807
08/06/2020
Research Article
Centrosomes contain an older ‘mother’ and a younger ‘daughter’ centriole, but the mechanisms regulating centrosome asymmetry and biased centrosome segregation are unclear. Emmanuel Gallaud, Anjana Ramdas Nair, Clemens Cabernard and co-authors show that in fly neural stem cells the centrosomes become molecularly asymmetric during mitosis, aiding in spindle orientation and biased centrosome segregation.
Image credit: pbio.3000762
08/03/2020
Research Article
How do genetically identical cells exhibit a different circadian phenotype? KL Nikhil, Sandra Korge and Achim Kramer reveal that a single parent clone can produce progeny with a wide distribution of circadian periods and that this heterogeneity, in addition to being stochastically driven, has a heritable component, likely via heritable epigenetic variation in gene expression regulation.
Image credit: pbio.3000792
08/03/2020
Research Article
In the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, mating type determination requires complex DNA rearrangements to produce a type-specific MAT gene pair for each of seven possible mating types. I-Ting Lin and Meng-Chao Yao show that DNA recombination produces a large number of unusual MAT gene pairs, but a KU-dependent process ensures only one normal pair is retained in a mature cell.
Image credit: pbio.3000756
08/03/2020
Research Article
Hungry animals are often better off looking for food than sleeping. Deniz Ertekin, Bruno van Swinderen and co-workers show that attention is indeed sharpened while sleep is decreased in flies that have been genetically starved. A starvation cue from the peripheral fat stores to insulin-expressing cells in the brain seems responsible for sharpening attention in the face of decreased sleep.
Image credit: pbio.3000548
07/31/2020
short report
This study shows that eggs from diverse species release zinc upon fertilization, suggesting that this strategy to protect eggs from multiple fertilizations may have evolved more than 650 million years ago.
Image credit: pbio.3000811
07/31/2020
Research Article
A comparison of the organization of connections in the temporal association cortex sheds light on specializations underlying the unique behavioral abilities of monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans.
Image credit: pbio.3000810
07/30/2020
methods and resources
CLEVER-seq delineates the 5-formylcytosine landscape of human early embryos at single-cell resolution, enhancing our understanding of active demethylation processes during human embryogenesis.
Image credit: pbio.3000799
07/30/2020
methods and resources
This article presents a low-cost, open-source culture platform, Chi.Bio, which allows biologists to automate experimental protocols with unparalleled precision.
Image credit: pbio.3000794
Raquel Lieberman discusses her work on the protein myocilin, implicated in glaucoma, but whose normal function remains unclear after over 20 years.
Susanna Bidgood explores the future of using poxviruses as versatile tools for cell biology research.
Rachel Harding proposes that open notebooks present an opportunity for researchers to showcase their work and rapidly advance science in their field
On the eve of the UN General Assembly meeting on TB, Christoph Grundner urged the need to consider basic research as an essential component of any future anti-TB strategy.
Norman Pace remembers the early days of what became known as "metagenomics," as experienced by the author during his development as a scientist.
Normal service will resume after Covid-19 crisis ends.
Normal service will resume after Covid-19 crisis ends.
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