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Insects live in almost every habitat on earth. To adapt to their diverse environments, insects have developed a myriad of different strategies for reproduction reflected in diverse anatomical and behavioral fe...
Regulatory T cells (Treg) in diverse species include CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. In all species, CD8+ Treg have been only partially characterized and there is no rat model in which CD4+ and CD8+ FOXP3+ Treg are geneti...
Innate immunity is the first line of defense against pathogens. In animals, the Toll pathway, the Imd pathway, the complement system, and lectins are well-known mechanisms involved in innate immunity. Although...
Methods for the long-term in situ transduction of the unperturbed murine intestinal epithelium have not been developed in past research. Such a method could speed up functional studies and screens to identify ...
Eusociality is widely considered to evolve through kin selection, where the reproductive success of an individual’s close relative is favored at the expense of its own. High genetic relatedness is thus conside...
Signal reliability poses a central problem for explaining the evolution of communication. According to Zahavi’s Handicap Principle, signals are honest only if they are costly at the evolutionary equilibrium; o...
Camponotus floridanus ant colonies are comprised of a single reproductive queen and thousands of sterile female offspring that consist of two morphologically distinct castes: smaller minors and larger majors. Min...
The black cutworm, Agrotis ipsilon, is a serious global underground pest. Its distinct phenotypic traits, especially its polyphagy and ability to migrate long distances, contribute to its widening distribution an...
Prolonged cellular activity may overload cell function, leading to high rates of protein synthesis and accumulation of misfolded or unassembled proteins, which cause endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and activ...
Laterality in relation to behavior and sensory systems is found commonly in a variety of animal taxa. Despite the advantages conferred by laterality (e.g., the startle response and complex motor activities), l...
SMYD3, a member of the SET and MYND domain-containing (SMYD) family, is a histone methyltransferase (HMT) and transcription factor that plays an important role in transcriptional regulation in human carcinogen...
Antibody affinity maturation in vertebrates requires the enzyme activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) which initiates secondary antibody diversification by mutating the immunoglobulin loci. AID-driven an...
The ongoing adaptation of plants to their environment is the basis for their survival. In this adaptation, mechanoperception of gravity and local curvature plays a role of prime importance in finely regulating...
Despite a global prevalence of photosynthetic organisms in the ocean’s mesophotic zone (30–200+ m depth), the mechanisms that enable photosynthesis to proceed in this low light environment are poorly defined. ...
Animals form complex symbiotic associations with their gut microbes, whose evolution is determined by an intricate network of host and environmental factors. In many insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, the ...
Coleoid cephalopods have distinctive neural and morphological characteristics compared to other invertebrates. Early studies reported massive genomic rearrangements occurred before the split of octopus and squ...
Many echinoderms form seasonal aggregations prior to spawning. In some fecund species, a spawning event can lead to population outbreaks with detrimental ecosystem impacts. For instance, outbreaks of crown-of-...
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are characterized by sustained inflammation and/or ulcers along the lower digestive tract, and have complications such as colorectal cancer and inflammation in other organs....
The original article was published in BMC Biology 2022 20:223
Ordered transposon-insertion collections, in which specific transposon-insertion mutants are stored as monocultures in a genome-scale collection, represent a promising tool for genetic dissection of human gut ...
Vector-borne viral diseases threaten human and wildlife worldwide. Vectors are often viewed as a passive syringe injecting the virus. However, to survive, replicate and spread, viruses must manipulate vector b...
Like most living organisms, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster exhibits strong and diverse behavioural reactions to light. Drosophila is a diurnal animal that displays both short- and long-term responses to li...
As well known to any photographer, controlling the “field of view” offers an extremely powerful mechanism by which to adjust target acquisition. Only a few natural sensory systems can actively control their fi...
Sex differences ranging from physiological functions to pathological disorders are developmentally hard-wired in a broad range of animals, from invertebrates to humans. These differences ensure that animals ca...
The rumen is the hallmark organ of ruminants, playing a vital role in their nutrition and providing products for humans. In newborn suckling ruminants milk bypasses the rumen, while in adults this first chambe...
Male-derived seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) that enter female fruitflies during mating induce a myriad of physiological and behavioral changes, optimizing fertility of the mating pair. Some post-mating changes ...
In insects, an interplay between the activities of distinct hormones, such as juvenile hormone (JH) and 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), regulates the progression through numerous life history hallmarks. As a crucial...
During their lifetime, animals must adapt their behavior to survive in changing environments. This ability requires the nervous system to undergo adjustments at distinct temporal scales, from short-term dynami...
Decidualization refers to the process of transformation of endometrial stromal fibroblast cells into specialized decidual stromal cells that provide a nutritive and immunoprivileged matrix essential for blasto...
Escalation in industrialization and anthropogenic activity have resulted in an increase of pollutants released into the environment. Of these pollutants, heavy metals such as copper are particularly concerning...
Root development and function have central roles in plant adaptation to the environment. The modification of root traits has additionally been a major driver of crop performance since the green revolution; how...
Insights into the genetic basis of complex traits and disease in both human and livestock species have been achieved over the past decade through detection of genetic variants in genome-wide association studie...
Genes, principal units of genetic information, vary in complexity and evolutionary history. Less-complex genes (e.g., long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) expressing genes) readily emerge de novo from non-genic sequen...
The original article was published in BMC Biology 2022 20:247
Recently, bacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been considered to play crucial roles in various biological processes and have great potential for developing cancer therapeutics and biomedicine. However,...
Double-strand break repair (DSBR) is a highly regulated process involving dozens of proteins acting in a defined order to repair a DNA lesion that is fatal for any living cell. Model organisms such as Saccharomyc...
N-3-oxo-tetradecanoyl-L-homoserine lactone (oxo-C14-HSL) is one of the N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHL) that mediate quorum sensing in Gram-negative bacteria. In addition to bacterial communication, AHL are invol...
Several protists have evolved the ability to perforate the cell walls of algae and fungi to specifically feed on their cell contents. These phagotrophic “protoplast feeders” represent an interesting mechanisti...
The relationship between the gut microbiome and diet has been the focus of numerous recent studies. Such studies aim to characterize the impact of diet on the composition of the microbiome, as well as the micr...
The symbiotic relationship between cnidarians and dinoflagellates is one of the most widespread endosymbiosis in our oceans and provides the ecological basis of coral reef ecosystems. Although many studies hav...
The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted medical and socioeconomic havoc, and despite the current availability of vaccines and broad implementation of vaccination programs, more easily accessible and cos...
Deep-learning–based image segmentation models are required for accurate processing of high-throughput timelapse imaging data of bacterial cells. However, the performance of any such model strictly depends on t...
During range expansion in spatially distributed habitats, organisms differ from one another in terms of their patterns of localization versus propagation. To exploit locations or explore the landscape? This is...
Folate is an essential B-group vitamin and a key methyl donor with important biological functions including DNA methylation regulation. Normal neurodevelopment and physiology are sensitive to the cellular fola...
One of the ways genomes respond to stress is by producing extrachromosomal circular DNAs (eccDNAs). EccDNAs can contain genes and dramatically increase their copy number. They can also reinsert into the genome...
Satellite DNAs (satDNAs) are tandemly repeated non-coding DNA sequences that belong to the most abundant and the fastest evolving parts of the eukaryotic genome. A satellitome represents the collection of diff...
Commensal microorganisms have a significant impact on the physiology of host animals, including Drosophila. Lactobacillus and Acetobacter, the two most common commensal bacteria in Drosophila, stimulate fly devel...
RNA G-quadruplexes (rG4s) are non-canonical structural motifs that have diverse functional and regulatory roles, for instance in transcription termination, alternative splicing, mRNA localization and stabiliza...
Plants are continuously challenged with biotic stress from environmental pathogens, and precise regulation of defense responses is critical for plant survival. Defense systems require considerable amounts of e...
Combinatorial gene regulation by multiple microRNAs (miRNAs) is widespread and closely spaced target sites often act cooperatively to achieve stronger repression (“neighborhood” miRNA cotargeting). While miRNA...
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