Advertisement
Table of Contents

October 2020

Cover

Sequence heterochrony led to a gain of functionality in an immature stage of the central complex: A fly–beetle insight
Issue Image

Animal behavior is guided by the brain. Therefore, adaptations of brain structure and function are essential for animal survival, and each species differs in such adaptations. The brain of one individual may even differ between life stages, for instance, as adaptation to the divergent needs of larval and adult life of holometabolous insects. All such differences emerge during development, but the cellular mechanisms behind the diversification of brains between taxa and life stages remain enigmatic. Farnworth et al. investigated holometabolous insects in which larvae differ dramatically from the adult in both behavior and morphology. As a consequence, the central complex, mainly responsible for spatial orientation, is conserved between species at the adult stage but differs between larvae and adults of one species as well as between larvae of different taxa. The authors used genome editing and established transgenic lines to mark homologous genetic neural lineages in both the fly Drosophila melanogaster and the beetle Tribolium castaneum. This approach allowed them to demonstrate the first example of sequence heterochrony in brain development, in which an immature developmental stage of the central complex gains functionality in Tribolium larvae. The image shows beetle and fly brains (left half and right half, respectively); blue is a DNA marker for cell nuclei, the red color represents antibody staining for the retinal homeobox protein.

Image Credit: Max Farnworth

Editorial

We need leaders that believe in scientific evidence

Nonia Pariente, on behalf of the PLOS Biology Staff Editors

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000992

Essay

Expanding conservation culturomics and iEcology from terrestrial to aquatic realms

Ivan Jarić, Uri Roll, Robert Arlinghaus, Jonathan Belmaker, Yan Chen, Victor China, Karel Douda, Franz Essl, Sonja C. Jähnig, Jonathan M. Jeschke, Gregor Kalinkat, Lukáš Kalous, Richard Ladle, Robert J. Lennox, Rui Rosa, Valerio Sbragaglia, Kate Sherren, Marek Šmejkal, Andrea Soriano-Redondo, Allan T. Souza, Christian Wolter, Ricardo A. Correia

PLOS Biology: published October 29, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000935

Perspective

The COVID-19 response illustrates that traditional academic reward structures and metrics do not reflect crucial contributions to modern science

Adam J. Kucharski, Sebastian Funk, Rosalind M. Eggo

PLOS Biology: published October 16, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000913

Primers

A functional context for heterogeneity of the circadian clock in cells

Martha Merrow, Mary Harrington

PLOS Biology: published October 14, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000927

Related Articles

  1. Heritable gene expression variability and stochasticity govern clonal heterogeneity in circadian period

Entraining neurons via noninvasive electric stimulation improves cognition

Mircea van der Plas, Simon Hanslmayr

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000931

Related Articles

  1. Selective enhancement of low-gamma activity by tACS improves phonemic processing and reading accuracy in dyslexia
  2. tACS entrains neural activity while somatosensory input is blocked

Research Articles

Optimising risk-based surveillance for early detection of invasive plant pathogens

Alexander J. Mastin, Timothy R. Gottwald, Frank van den Bosch, Nik J. Cunniffe, Stephen Parnell

PLOS Biology: published October 12, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000863

Adaptive evolution shapes the present-day distribution of the thermal sensitivity of population growth rate

Dimitrios—Georgios Kontopoulos, Thomas P. Smith, Timothy G. Barraclough, Samraat Pawar

PLOS Biology: published October 16, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000894

Frequency-dependent selection can forecast evolution in Streptococcus pneumoniae

Taj Azarian, Pamela P. Martinez, Brian J. Arnold, Xueting Qiu, Lindsay R. Grant, Jukka Corander, Christophe Fraser, Nicholas J. Croucher, Laura L. Hammitt, Raymond Reid, Mathuram Santosham, Robert C. Weatherholtz, Stephen D. Bentley, Katherine L. O’Brien, Marc Lipsitch, William P. Hanage

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000878

Modeling flexible behavior in childhood to adulthood shows age-dependent learning mechanisms and less optimal learning in autism in each age group

Daisy Crawley, Lei Zhang, Emily J. H. Jones, Jumana Ahmad, Bethany Oakley, Antonia San José Cáceres, Tony Charman, Jan K. Buitelaar, Declan G. M. Murphy, Christopher Chatham, Hanneke den Ouden, Eva Loth, the EU-AIMS LEAP group

PLOS Biology: published October 27, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000908

Multiple systems in macaques for tracking prediction errors and other types of surprise

Jan Grohn, Urs Schüffelgen, Franz-Xaver Neubert, Alessandro Bongioanni, Lennart Verhagen, Jerome Sallet, Nils Kolling, Matthew F. S. Rushworth

PLOS Biology: published October 30, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000899

Neural activity during a simple reaching task in macaques is counter to gating and rebound in basal ganglia–thalamic communication

Bettina C. Schwab, Daisuke Kase, Andrew Zimnik, Robert Rosenbaum, Marcello G. Codianni, Jonathan E. Rubin, Robert S. Turner

PLOS Biology: published October 13, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000829

Visual detection is locked to the internal dynamics of cortico-motor control

Alice Tomassini, Eric Maris, Pauline Hilt, Luciano Fadiga, Alessandro D’Ausilio

PLOS Biology: published October 20, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000898

Pharmacological evidence for the implication of noradrenaline in effort

Nicolas Borderies, Pauline Bornert, Sophie Gilardeau, Sebastien Bouret

PLOS Biology: published October 12, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000793

Neural speech restoration at the cocktail party: Auditory cortex recovers masked speech of both attended and ignored speakers

Christian Brodbeck, Alex Jiao, L. Elliot Hong, Jonathan Z. Simon

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000883

Gradient of tactile properties in the rat whisker pad

Erez Gugig, Hariom Sharma, Rony Azouz

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000699

Network analysis of transcriptomic diversity amongst resident tissue macrophages and dendritic cells in the mouse mononuclear phagocyte system

Kim M. Summers, Stephen J. Bush, David A. Hume

PLOS Biology: published October 8, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000859

Sequence heterochrony led to a gain of functionality in an immature stage of the central complex: A fly–beetle insight

Max S. Farnworth, Kolja N. Eckermann, Gregor Bucher

PLOS Biology: published October 26, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000881

Interphase-arrested Drosophila embryos activate zygotic gene expression and initiate mid-blastula transition events at a low nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio

Isaac J. T. Strong, Xiaoyun Lei, Fang Chen, Kai Yuan, Patrick H. O’Farrell

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000891

Notch dimerization and gene dosage are important for normal heart development, intestinal stem cell maintenance, and splenic marginal zone B-cell homeostasis during mite infestation

Francis M. Kobia, Kristina Preusse, Quanhui Dai, Nicholas Weaver, Matthew R. Hass, Praneet Chaturvedi, Sarah J. Stein, Warren S. Pear, Zhenyu Yuan, Rhett A. Kovall, Yi Kuang, Natanel Eafergen, David Sprinzak, Brian Gebelein, Eric W. Brunskill, Raphael Kopan

PLOS Biology: published October 5, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000850

Rational design of balanced dual-targeting antibiotics with limited resistance

Akos Nyerges, Tihomir Tomašič, Martina Durcik, Tamas Revesz, Petra Szili, Gabor Draskovits, Ferenc Bogar, Žiga Skok, Nace Zidar, Janez Ilaš, Anamarija Zega, Danijel Kikelj, Lejla Daruka, Balint Kintses, Balint Vasarhelyi, Imre Foldesi, Diána Kata, Martin Welin, Raymond Kimbung, Dorota Focht, Lucija Peterlin Mašič, Csaba Pal

PLOS Biology: published October 5, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000819

High-throughput mapping of the phage resistance landscape in E. coli

Vivek K. Mutalik, Benjamin A. Adler, Harneet S. Rishi, Denish Piya, Crystal Zhong, Britt Koskella, Elizabeth M. Kutter, Richard Calendar, Pavel S. Novichkov, Morgan N. Price, Adam M. Deutschbauer, Adam P. Arkin

PLOS Biology: published October 13, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000877

A novel function for CDK2 activity at meiotic crossover sites

Nathan Palmer, S. Zakiah A. Talib, Priti Singh, Christine M. F. Goh, Kui Liu, John C. Schimenti, Philipp Kaldis

PLOS Biology: published October 19, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000903

Short Reports

Differences in structure and hibernation mechanism highlight diversification of the microsporidian ribosome

Kai Ehrenbolger, Nathan Jespersen, Himanshu Sharma, Yuliya Y. Sokolova, Yuri S. Tokarev, Charles R. Vossbrinck, Jonas Barandun

PLOS Biology: published October 30, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000958

Neurobiological origins of individual differences in mathematical ability

Michael A. Skeide, Katharina Wehrmann, Zahra Emami, Holger Kirsten, Annette M. Hartmann, Dan Rujescu, Legascreen Consortium

PLOS Biology: published October 22, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000871

Mental operations in rhythm: Motor-to-sensory transformation mediates imagined singing

Yanzhu Li, Huan Luo, Xing Tian

PLOS Biology: published October 5, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000504

Peli1 impairs microglial Aβ phagocytosis through promoting C/EBPβ degradation

Jing Xu, Tao Yu, Enrica Caterina Pietronigro, Jia Yuan, Jessica Arioli, Yifei Pei, Xuan Luo, Jialin Ye, Gabriela Constantin, Chaoming Mao, Yichuan Xiao

PLOS Biology: published October 5, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000837

Methods and Resources

tACS entrains neural activity while somatosensory input is blocked

Pedro G. Vieira, Matthew R. Krause, Christopher C. Pack

PLOS Biology: published October 1, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000834

Related Articles

  1. Entraining neurons via noninvasive electric stimulation improves cognition

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA by multiplex RT-qPCR

Eriko Kudo, Benjamin Israelow, Chantal B. F. Vogels, Peiwen Lu, Anne L. Wyllie, Maria Tokuyama, Arvind Venkataraman, Doug E. Brackney, Isabel M. Ott, Mary E. Petrone, Rebecca Earnest, Sarah Lapidus, M. Catherine Muenker, Adam J. Moore, Arnau Casanovas-Massana, Yale IMPACT Research Team, Saad B. Omer, Charles S. Dela Cruz, Shelli F. Farhadian, Albert I. Ko, Nathan D. Grubaugh, Akiko Iwasaki

PLOS Biology: published October 7, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000867

Direct RT-qPCR detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from patient nasopharyngeal swabs without an RNA extraction step

Emily A. Bruce, Meei-Li Huang, Garrett A. Perchetti, Scott Tighe, Pheobe Laaguiby, Jessica J. Hoffman, Diana L. Gerrard, Arun K. Nalla, Yulun Wei, Alexander L. Greninger, Sean A. Diehl, David J. Shirley, Debra G. B. Leonard, Christopher D. Huston, Beth D. Kirkpatrick, Julie A. Dragon, Jessica W. Crothers, Keith R. Jerome, Jason W. Botten

PLOS Biology: published October 2, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000896

Formal Comment

Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators

John P. A. Ioannidis, Kevin W. Boyack, Jeroen Baas

PLOS Biology: published October 16, 2020 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918

Related Articles

  1. A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field