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Question and Answer
Human language is unique among all forms of animal communication. It is unlikely that any other species, including our close genetic cousins the Neanderthals, ever had language, and so-called sign ‘language’ i...
BMC Biology 2017 15:64
Published on: 24 July 2017
Research article
Transmembrane helices (TMHs) frequently occur amongst protein architectures as means for proteins to attach to or embed into biological membranes. Physical constraints such as the membrane’s hydrophobicity and...
BMC Biology 2017 15:66
Published on: 24 July 2017
Research article
Biological mineral formation (biomineralization) proceeds in specialized compartments often bounded by a lipid bilayer membrane. Currently, the role of membranes in biomineralization is hardly understood.
BMC Biology 2017 15:65
Published on: 24 July 2017
Research article
In addition to DNA, gametes contribute epigenetic information in the form of histones and non-coding RNA. Epigenetic programs often respond to stressful environmental conditions and provide a heritable history...
BMC Biology 2017 15:61
Published on: 17 July 2017
Question and Answer
The risk of developing cancer should theoretically increase with both the number of cells and the lifespan of an organism. However, gigantic animals do not get more cancer than humans, suggesting that super-hu...
BMC Biology 2017 15:60
Published on: 13 July 2017
Review
There is increasing evidence that all cells sense mechanical forces in order to perform their functions. In animals, mechanotransduction has been studied during the establishment of cell polarity, fate, and di...
BMC Biology 2017 15:59
Published on: 11 July 2017
Question and Answer
Individual neurons vary widely in terms of their gene expression, morphology, and electrophysiological properties. While many techniques exist to study single-cell variability along one or two of these dimensi...
BMC Biology 2017 15:58
Published on: 6 July 2017
Research article
The aggregation of the protein ɑ-synuclein (ɑS) underlies a range of increasingly common neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s disease. One widely explored therapeutic strategy for these conditions...
BMC Biology 2017 15:57
Published on: 3 July 2017
Research article
Odor information is processed through multiple receptor-glomerular channels in the first order olfactory center, the antennal lobe (AL), then reformatted into higher brain centers and eventually perceived by t...
BMC Biology 2017 15:56
Published on: 30 June 2017
Forum
Model organisms are widely used in research as accessible and convenient systems to study a particular area or question in biology. Traditionally only a handful of organisms have been widely studied, but moder...
BMC Biology 2017 15:55
Published on: 29 June 2017
Research article
Moloney leukemia virus 10 (Mov10) is an RNA helicase that mediates access of the RNA-induced silencing complex to messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Until now, its role as an RNA helicase and as a regulator of retrotrans...
BMC Biology 2017 15:54
Published on: 29 June 2017
Review
Macrophages are present in all vertebrate tissues, from mid-gestation throughout life, constituting a widely dispersed organ system. They promote homeostasis by responding to internal and external changes with...
BMC Biology 2017 15:53
Published on: 29 June 2017
Research article
Strigolactones (SLs) are a class of plant hormones that control many aspects of plant growth. The SL signalling mechanism is homologous to that of karrikins (KARs), smoke-derived compounds that stimulate seed ...
BMC Biology 2017 15:52
Published on: 29 June 2017
Comment
Intracellular membrane-bounded organelles of eukaryotic cells transiently contact the extracellular environment during endocytosis and secretion. Such contacts must be precisely timed to prevent leakage of car...
BMC Biology 2017 15:51
Published on: 26 June 2017
Question and Answer
Expansion microscopy (ExM) is a recently invented technology that uses swellable charged polymers, synthesized densely and with appropriate topology throughout a preserved biological specimen, to physically ma...
BMC Biology 2017 15:50
Published on: 19 June 2017
Editorial
Registered Reports, an article format initiated to help promote transparency and reproducibility in the preclinical and social sciences, are spreading into the biological literature. The format is now offered by
BMC Biology 2017 15:49
Published on: 15 June 2017
Research article
A stereotyped array of body wall muscles enables precision and stereotypy of animal movements. In Drosophila, each syncytial muscle forms via fusion of one founder cell (FC) with multiple fusion competent myoblas...
BMC Biology 2017 15:48
Published on: 9 June 2017
Comment
One of the great revelations of post-genomic biology has been the extent to which essential functions and mechanisms are conserved across vast phylogenetic distances. Because of this, we can look to the fruit ...
BMC Biology 2017 15:47
Published on: 8 June 2017
Research article
Matriptase is a membrane serine protease essential for epithelial development, homeostasis, and regeneration, as well as a central orchestrator of pathogenic pericellular signaling in the context of inflammato...
BMC Biology 2017 15:46
Published on: 1 June 2017
Methodology article
Recent developments in droplet-based microfluidics allow the transcriptional profiling of thousands of individual cells in a quantitative, highly parallel and cost-effective way. A critical, often limiting ste...
BMC Biology 2017 15:44
Published on: 19 May 2017
Methodology article
Intravascular leukocyte recruitment in most vertebrate tissues is restricted to postcapillary and collecting venules, whereas capillaries and arterioles usually support little or no leukocyte adhesion. This se...
BMC Biology 2017 15:45
Published on: 19 May 2017
Comment
Senses connect organisms to both the world and to each other, yet there is much we don’t know about them. Using examples drawn primarily from the author’s subfield of vision research, this article discusses fi...
BMC Biology 2017 15:43
Published on: 17 May 2017
Commentary
Improvements in imaging technology and the development of powerful machine learning algorithms are revolutionizing the study of animal behavior in the laboratory. These innovations promise to reveal both globa...
BMC Biology 2017 15:42
Published on: 15 May 2017
Software
Accurate determination of mouse positions from video data is crucial for various types of behavioral analyses. While detection of body positions is straightforward, the correct identification of nose positions...
BMC Biology 2017 15:41
Published on: 15 May 2017
Research article
Endogenous circadian oscillators distributed across the mammalian body are synchronised among themselves and with external time via a variety of signalling molecules, some of which interact with G-protein-coup...
BMC Biology 2017 15:40
Published on: 15 May 2017
