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AbstractOutbreaks of fungal diseases have devastated plants and animals throughout history. Over the past century, the repeated emergence of coffee wilt disease caused by the fungal pathogen Fusarium xylarioides severely impacted coffee production across sub-Saharan Africa. To improve the disease management of such pathogens, it is crucial to understand their genetic structure and evolutionary potential. We compared the genomes of 13 historic strains spanning 6 decades and multiple disease outbreaks to investigate population structure and host specialisation. We found that F. xylarioides comprised at least 4 distinct lineages: 1 host-specific to Coffea arabica, 1 to C. canephora var. robusta, and…

Post provided by Coralie Williams Have you ever wondered if your simulation study could be replicated? The replication crisis has been a hot topic in empirical research for years, but it’s only recently that we’ve started discussing it in statistical method research (Boulesteix et al., 2020; Luijken et al., 2024). Methodological research often relies on simulations – computer experiments that assess how well statistical methods perform under predefined conditions. Simulations are a valuable tool for evaluation and comparison, but just like any scientific experiment, they face challenges with reproducibility. These challenges could be due to two key issues: (1) selective…

Newsletter Signup – Under Article / In Page”*” indicates required fields The clinical development process is long, often exceeding 10 years from discovery through regulatory approval for a drug candidate. Whereas established companies have experience in all clinical trial phases, in-house regulatory expertise, and are equipped to run large, standardized trials, smaller biotechs have limited financing, fewer established processes, and may outsource parts of their drug development process to specialized vendors. In this article, we’ll explore challenges in clinical trial design and show how choosing the right software solution can drastically improve the probability of clinical trial success.Challenges in clinical trial…

Citation: Plastrik AR, Zaher HS (2024) Not just a garbage truck: No-go decay plays a role during embryo development in zebrafish. PLoS Biol 22(12): e3002925. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002925Published: December 6, 2024Copyright: © 2024 Plastrik, Zaher. 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.Funding: Work in the Zaher Lab is supported by the NIH grants R01GM112641 to HSZ and R01GM141474 to HSZ. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish,…

Photo credit: Butterfly mimicry, by Antony Trivet, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. I have been reviewing a new collection from Cambridge University Press, Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods. (See my earlier posts here and here.) James G. Lennox opens his essay about Darwin’s views on teleology with Friedrich Engels’s statement in a letter to Karl Marx. Engels exulted that Darwin had demolished teleology. This is a view that is commonplace among many Darwinian biologists, as well as historians. Lennox, however, calls it a myth that Darwin banished teleology from nature. Lennox defines teleology thus: “A teleological explanation is…

Newsletter Signup – Under Article / In Page”*” indicates required fields As 2024 comes to a close, and while we will soon be thinking about 2025 and the trends that will shape the biotech industry, now is a good time to look back at what happened this year. Earlier this year, we collected expert insight into what the year 2024 would look like for biotech – from AI reshaping the industry, and CRISPR’s growth potential to strong merger and acquisition (M&A) activity – which of those predicted trends became a reality in 2024?According to Artem Trotsyuk, operating partner at LongeVC, “the…

Citation: Couce A (2024) Regulatory networks may evolve to favor adaptive foresight. PLoS Biol 22(12): e3002922. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002922Published: December 6, 2024Copyright: © 2024 Alejandro Couce. 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.Funding: A.C. acknowledges support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Proyectos de I+D+i, PID2022-142857NB-I00; Centros de Excelencia “Severo Ochoa”, CEX2020-000999-S), and a Comunidad de Madrid “Talento” Fellowship (2019-T1/BIO-12882, 2023-5A/BIO-28940). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to…

A groundbreaking study evaluates the feasibility, risks, and ethical considerations of creating mirror bacteria with reversed chirality, highlighting potential threats to health and ecosystems. ​​​​​​​Study: Confronting risks of mirror life. Image Credit: Volha_R/Shutterstock.com In a recent study published in Science, a team of researchers investigated and discussed the potential roadblocks to and risks of “mirror life,” where life forms are synthesized using biomolecules with reversed chirality compared to natural life. The researchers assessed the feasibility, safety concerns, and governance strategies to address the unprecedented risks posed by these synthetic life forms. Background Natural life is characterized by specific molecular chirality, with ribonucleic…

Newsletter Signup – Under Article / In Page”*” indicates required fields As the biotech industry always searches for new types of therapies that can improve on current standard-of-care treatments, glycobiology is now emerging as an area that could potentially lead to a new type of cancer immunotherapy and become an alternative approach to using conventional immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of drug that continues to face numerous challenges. In this article, we take a look at what glycobiology is, how it can be applied to cancer immunotherapy, and which companies are currently operating in the up-and-coming field of glyco-immunology. Finding new…

Citation: Wingfield BD, Wingfield MJ (2024) Gene transfer between fungal species triggers repeated coffee wilt disease outbreaks. PLoS Biol 22(12): e3002901. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002901Published: December 6, 2024Copyright: © 2024 Wingfield, Wingfield. 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.Funding: BDW holds a research chair which is funded by the South African Dept of Science and Innovation. MJW received no specific funding for this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis,…