October 22, 2020
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10/22/2020
Editorial
In a world beset by attempts to undermine scientific evidence and evidence-based policy, Nonia Pariente and the PLOS Biology staff editors emphasize the important role that these should play in helping humanity rise to the challenges of our time.
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Current Issue September 2020
10/22/2020
Primer
Mircea van der Plas and Simon Hanslmayr explore the implications of two recent studies, one showing that transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) entrains single neurons in the brain, and the other that 30 Hz stimulation (via tACS) improves reading abilities in individuals with dyslexia. These studies show how tACS can affect neural processing in the brain in order to improve cognition in humans.
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10/22/2020
Research Article
How do humans focus on one speaker when several are talking? Christian Brodbeck, Jonathan Simon and colleagues find that MEG responses to a continuous two-talker mixture suggest that, even though listeners attend only to one of the talkers, their auditory cortex tracks acoustic features from both speakers. This occurs even when those features are locally masked by the other speaker.
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10/22/2020
Research Article
Predicting how pathogen populations will change over time is challenging. Taj Azarian, Pamela Martinez, Marc Lipsitch, William Hanage and co-authors predict population changes in human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae after vaccination, using a model of negative frequency-dependent selection acting on accessory gene products.
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10/22/2020
Short Reports
How does genetic variation give rise to differences in mathematical ability? Combining genotyping with brain imaging in children, Michael Skeide, the Legascreen Consortium and co-workers show that math performance can be predicted before school entry from individual volume differences of the right parietal cortex that are associated with variations in the cortical growth gene ROBO1.
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10/22/2020
Research Article
Facial whiskers are found in many mammalian species. Erez Gugig, Hariom Sharma and Rony Azouz examine the functional significance of their ordered structure, which is represented in a rostral-to-caudal gradient of mechanical, muscular, and neuronal response characteristics, for tactile exploration in rodents.
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10/20/2020
Research Article
Movements overtly sample sensory information. This study shows that visual information sampling is not just synchronized to the (overt) movement dynamics, but to the internal (covert) dynamics of cortico-motor control.
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10/19/2020
Research Article
CDK2 is essential for fertility and regulates several stages of meiosis. This study reveals that increased CDK2 activity leads to elevated numbers of meiotic crossovers, whereas lower CDK2 activity prevents crossovers.
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10/13/2020
Research Article
To map the landscape of genetic determinants important in host-phage interactions, this study applies unbiased high-throughput loss-of-function and gain-of-function screening methods to two different strains of E. coli confronted by a panel of 13 dsDNA phages.
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10/16/2020
perspective
The pandemic has revealed the importance of open and collaborative research projects, generally overlooked by traditional metrics. How can we ensure that these outputs – and the people who do them – are valued in academia?
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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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