10/01/2026
Research Article
How does ACE2 receptor usage shape sarbecovirus host range and antigenicity? In a sarbecovirus screen against 34 ACE2 receptors, Nazia Thakur, Dalan Bailey and co-workers identify viruses with generalist and specialist tropism, and assess the consequences for antigenicity.
Image credit: pbio.3003944
Current Issue August 2026
10/01/2026
Research Article
The increasing spillover risk of sarbecoviruses into humans stresses the urgent need to identify cross-reactive antibodies with therapeutic potential. Ayush Upadhyay, Peter Cherepanov, Katie Doores and co-authors reveal the mechanisms of sarbecovirus cross-reactivity of three human antibodies to inform design of pan-coronavirus vaccines.
Image credit: pbio.3003882
09/29/2026
Research Article
Intrinsic timescale reflects the temporal window of neural processing, but how does it mature across the human cortex during development? Golia Shafiei, Theodore Satterthwaite and colleagues show that intrinsic timescale develops hierarchically from sensorimotor to association cortices across youth, recapitulating major cortical organization axes before stabilizing in adulthood.
Image credit: pbio.3004037
09/29/2026
Research Article
Mounting an immune response is energetically costly, and so host defenses are often influenced by internal metabolic states. Jie Ren, Yu Sang, Alejandro Aballay and co-workers identify a gut-brain signaling mechanism in C. elegans wherein intestinal NHR-68 coordinates fatty acid homeostasis to shape pathogen avoidance and molecular immune responses.
Image credit: pbio.3004026
09/28/2026
Methods and Resources
Glial cells are essential for proper nervous system development and function, but a high resolution view of glial development is lacking. Amanda Ferreira, Sergio Córdoba, Claude Desplan and co-authors analyse longitudinal single-cell RNA sequencing data of the fruit fly visual system, revealing how glial diversity arises during development.
Image credit: pbio.3004015
09/28/2026
Research Article
Vertebrate organs undergo massive growth during the post-embryonic period, but it remains unclear how organs are organized at single-cell resolution. Hsiao-Yuh Roan, Xuejiao Tian, Wei-Chen Chu and colleagues develop whole adult-organ expansion microscopy (WAO-ExM) to visualize every single hepatocyte in the zebrafish liver during post-embryonic growth.
Image credit: Xuejiao Tian, Hsiao-Yuh Roan, Hsin Chen
09/22/2026
Community Page
Citizen science photographs contain a vast and underused record of species interactions. This Community Page introduces "Who Eats Whom," an interactive, searchable food web created from photographs uploaded to iNaturalist.
Image credit: pbio.3003988
09/15/2026
Unsolved Mystery
Acute infections are linked to cancer progression in experimental systems, but they can elicit anti-tumor immune responses. This Unsolved Mystery highlights gaps in our understanding of how infections differentially skew immune programs during cancer progression.
Image credit: pbio.3003962
09/08/2026
Essay
Seaweed forests are widely viewed as natural climate solutions, yet warming oceans are driving their rapid decline. This Essay reveals that losses are outpacing restoration efforts by orders of magnitude, raising urgent concerns.
Image credit: Jonas Thomar
09/01/2026
Community Page
This Community Page describes the 100 Diatom Genomes Project, which aims to provide a scalable framework for understanding diatom biodiversity, ecology and evolution, and for investigating their use in biotechnology.
Image credit: Oliver Skibbe
Aging affects us all, but we still do not know how the process evolves or if we can modulate its pace. This issue of PLOS Biology presents a Collection of articles that explores different aspects of aging, discussing what challenges still need to be overcome.
This PLOS Biology collection aims to shine a light on the many facets of immunometabolism, highlighting how molecular and cellular mechanisms impact diverse tissue and organismal functions and the exciting potential for leveraging immunometabolism for therapeutic interventions.
Recent technological advancements in omics have unveiled the mechanisms governing tumor progression across spatial and temporal scales. This collection reveals the complexities of the crosstalk between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment.
Neurotechnology offers unprecedented opportunities to treat neural disorders, restore brain function and enhance cognitive abilities. This collection explores the present and possible futures of neurotechnology to improve human health and cognition.
Translating conservation and biodiversity research from the field into the real world is a complex problem. This collection discusses issues around economics, policy, and how to do research that answers questions that decision makers have.
October 5 - 8
Meet Senior Editor Christian Schnell (cschnell@plos.org)
October 6 - 9
Meet Senior Editor Roli Roberts (rroberts@plos.org)
October 19 - 23
Meet Senior Editor Melissa Vazquez Hernandez (mvazquezhernandez@plos.org)
November 12 - 15
Meet Senior Editor Ines Alvarez-Garcia (ialvarez-garcia@plos.org)
November 17 - 20
Meet Magazine Section Senior Editor Joanna Clarke (jclarke@plos.org).
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