October 19, 2021
Image credit: unsplash user v2osk and pbio.0030127
10/21/2021
Short Reports
Joao Barbosa, Diego Lozano-Soldevilla and Albert Compte show that visual pinging of the brain triggers EEG responses selective to unattended memories by enhancing active neural signals, not by reactivating activity-silent traces as previously proposed. This finding questions key evidence for the activity-silent theory of working memory.
Image credit: pbio.3001436
Current Issue September 2021
10/21/2021
Research Article
Malaria parasites face two bottlenecks in their life cycle: their two transmission events. Kevin Hart, Scott Lindner and co-workers show that Plasmodium has taken the unorthodox approach of duplicating the gene for the NOT1 RNA regulatory scaffold protein, allowing it to dedicate one paralog to functions that are essential for transmission from mammalian hosts to the mosquito vector.
Image credit: pbio.3001434
10/20/2021
Research Article
Understanding speech in background noise is critical to human communication. Heivet Hernández-Pérez, Jessica Monaghan, Catherine McMahon and colleagues highlight a critical role for neural feedback circuits that modulate the activity of the inner ear, enabling effective listening to degraded speech.
Image credit: pbio.3001439
10/20/2021
Methods and Resources
Reference datasets help to define canonical biological features and are essential for benchmarking studies. Jiorgos Kourelis, Sophien Kamoun and co-authors present RefPlantNLR, a comprehensive reference dataset of 481 experimentally validated NLR immune receptors from 31 genera of flowering plants.
Image credit: pbio.3001124
10/20/2021
Research Article
Male germ cell production is a metabolically-driven and apoptosis-prone process. Patrick Carroll, Robert Eisenman and co-workers show that MLX, a nutrient-sensing transcription factor and member of the MYC network, is not required for embryonic development but is necessary for male murine fertility and male germ cell tumor survival; loss of MLX results in altered metabolism, activation of stress pathways and germ cell apoptosis in the testes.
Image credit: pbio.3001085
10/19/2021
Methods and Resources
Enzymes' affinities for their substrates (KM) are difficult to measure experimentally. Alexander Kroll, Martin Engqvist, David Heckmann and Martin Lercher show that a deep learning model that can predict them from structural features of the enzyme and substrate, providing KM predictions for all enzymes across 47 model organisms. Also read the accompanying Primer by Albert Antolin and Marta Cascante.
Image credit: pbio.3001402
10/14/2021
Short Reports
The Cenozoic marked a period of new ecological opportunities; this phylogenetic natural history study offers new insights into the dietary evolution of snake ecological diversity after the K-Pg mass extinction.
Image credit: Flickr user USFWS Mountain Prairie
10/13/2021
Research Article
A novel CRISPR-Cas9 inhibitor derived from phage has an unexpected mechanism; instead of binding Cas9 itself, this “anti-CRISPR” relaxes plasmid DNA and enables Cas9 evasion, suggesting that DNA topology is an underappreciated battleground in phage-bacterial conflicts.
Image credit: pbio.3001428
10/13/2021
Research Article
Specific gene interactions are principally responsible for the fitness costs that plasmids impose. The propensity of such conflicts to be resolved by single compensatory mutations may help to explain why plasmids are so widespread.
Image credit: Edward Ross
10/12/2021
Research Article
This study shows that in the presence of spatial refuges, genetic resistance to phage is less of a problem than commonly assumed, but that eradicating bacterial pathogens may require combined phage-antibiotic therapies.
Image credit: pbio.3001406
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.
October 26-29
Meet associate editor Luke Smith
November 2-4
Meet senior editor Roli Roberts
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