Author: admin123TerRe

Why does the COVID-19 virus make some people sicker than others? For years, scientists have looked to a critical piece of immune system machinery – known as the interferon pathway – for answers. There, when our cells sense an infection, they release a protein known as interferon, which warns other cells to fight the virus. Studies show that when this signaling goes awry and leads the body to under or overreact, people are more likely to develop severe or Long COVID. Glitches in this pathway have also been implicated in autoimmune diseases and cancer. But little is known about what,…

AbstractCompetitive bacteria like the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa can acquire iron from different iron carriers, which are usually internalized via outer membrane TonB-dependent receptors (TBDRs). Production of TBDRs is promoted by the presence of the substrate. This regulation often entails a signal transfer pathway known as cell-surface signaling (CSS) that involves the TBDR itself that also functions as transducer (and is thus referred to as TBDT), a cytoplasmic membrane-bound anti-σ factor, and an extracytoplasmic function σ (σECF) factor. TBDTs contain an extra N-terminal domain known as signaling domain (SD) required for the signal transfer activity of these receptors. In the…

Frontal view of the 3D models of the ribcages belonging to Shanidar 3, Kebara 2, and the Homo sapiens mean. Credit: Journal of Human Evolution (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2024.103629 Researchers at the Department of Paleobiology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid report that analysis of a Neanderthal ribcage from a cave in Iraq exhibits a “bell-shaped” thorax configuration typical of Neanderthals elsewhere, differing from that of modern humans. The findings are published in the Journal of Human Evolution. Neanderthal ribcage configuration is a subject of great interest to paleoanthropologists due to its implications for physiology, climate adaptation, and diet. Previous…

AbstractOrganisms detect temperature signals through peripheral neurons, which relay them to central circadian networks to drive adaptive behaviors. Despite recent advances in Drosophila research, how circadian circuits integrate temperature cues with circadian signals to regulate sleep/wake patterns remains unclear. In this study, we used the FlyWire brain electron microscopy connectome to map neuronal connections, identifying lateral posterior neurons LPNs as key nodes for integrating temperature information into the circadian network. LPNs receive input from both circadian and temperature-sensing neurons, promoting sleep behavior. Through connectome analysis, genetic manipulation, and behavioral assays, we demonstrated that LPNs, downstream of thermo-sensitive anterior cells (ACs),…

Warning – this post is pretty snarky, originally posted at Panda’s Thumb (which, if you don’t follow, you should!) A new article has been published in the illustrious journal BIO-Complexity [sic]: Burgess, S. (2022). Why the Ankle-Foot Complex Is a Masterpiece of Engineering and a Rebuttal of “Bad Design” Arguments. BIO-Complexity, 2022. The foot and ankle of the chimpanzee (A) and human (B). T: axis of transverse tarsal joint; U: axis of upper ankle joint; L: axis of lower ankle joint. Note: All bones are conserved and homologous. Credit: Elftman, H., & Manter, J. (1935). The evolution of the human foot,…

Citation: Werner JM, Gillis J (2024) Meta-analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing co-expression in human neural organoids reveals their high variability in recapitulating primary tissue. PLoS Biol 22(12): e3002912. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002912Academic Editor: Madeline Lancaster, University of Cambridge, UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELANDReceived: November 19, 2023; Accepted: October 24, 2024; Published: December 2, 2024Copyright: © 2024 Werner, Gillis. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Data Availability: The source data and code used for…

It has been a few weeks since the 15th Chinese Symposium on Biodiversity Science and Conservation, where the first “Seminar on Methods in Ecology and Evolution in China” was held. In these blog posts, we hear from some of the winners of the “Outstanding Young Scholar Award in Ecological and Evolutionary Methodology in China”. Here, winner Yu Ren discusses their presentation ‘Discovering and measuring giant trees through the integration of multi-platform lidar data’. Post provided by Yu Ren. Over the past few years, my team and I have been on an exciting expedition to discover and measure Asia’s tallest tree…

AbstractSensorimotor learning is supported by multiple competing processes that operate concurrently, making it a challenge to elucidate their neural underpinnings. Here, using human functional MRI, we identify 3 distinct axes of connectivity between the motor cortex and other brain regions during sensorimotor adaptation. These 3 axes uniquely correspond to subjects’ degree of implicit learning, performance errors and explicit strategy use, and involve different brain networks situated at increasing levels of the cortical hierarchy. We test the generalizability of these neural axes to a separate form of motor learning known to rely mainly on explicit processes and show that it is…

Photo credit: max5128 on Adobe Stock. On a classic episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Canceled Science author and physicist Eric Hedin to discuss Hedin’s book and, in particular, its take on the origin-of-life problem. Hedin says the second law of thermodynamics poses a serious problem for the idea of a mindless origin of the first single-celled organism from prebiotic materials. Such an event would have involved a breathtaking increase in new information, and Hedin says that physics tells us pretty clearly that mindless nature degrades information; it doesn’t create it. Are there workarounds? He explains why he’s…

Citation: Dellicour S, Bastide P, Rocu P, Fargette D, Hardy OJ, Suchard MA, et al. (2024) How fast are viruses spreading in the wild? PLoS Biol 22(12): e3002914. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002914Academic Editor: Jonathan Dushoff, McMaster University, CANADAReceived: April 29, 2024; Accepted: October 27, 2024; Published: December 3, 2024Copyright: © 2024 Dellicour et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Data Availability: R scripts related to the analyses based on simulated and real datasets are all…