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Recent technical advances have provided unprecedented insights into the selective deployment of the genome in developing organisms, but how such differential gene expression is used to sculpt the complex shape...
Metazoan lineages exhibit a wide range of regenerative capabilities that vary among developmental stage and tissue type. The most robust regenerative abilities are apparent in the phyla Cnidaria, Platyhelminth...
A paper published in BMC Biology characterises biophysically oligomeric and filamentous structures formed spontaneously by the Toll-like receptor signalling adaptor MyD88. Naturally occurring mutants of MyD88 tha...
The original article was published in BMC Biology 2018 16:149
Functional characterisation of the compact genome of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans remains incomplete despite its sequencing 20 years ago. The last decade of research has seen a tremendous increase in...
Circadian oscillators are networks of biochemical feedback loops that generate 24-hour rhythms in organisms from bacteria to animals. These periodic rhythms result from a complex interplay among clock componen...
Notch-Delta signaling functions across a wide array of animal systems to break symmetry in a sheet of undifferentiated cells and generate cells with different fates, a process known as lateral inhibition. Unli...
Photosynthetic euglenids are major contributors to fresh water ecosystems. Euglena gracilis in particular has noted metabolic flexibility, reflected by an ability to thrive in a range of harsh environments. E. gr...
CRISPR-Cas12a (formerly Cpf1) is an RNA-guided endonuclease with distinct features that have expanded genome editing capabilities. Cas12a-mediated genome editing is temperature sensitive in plants, but a lack ...
In socially monogamous species, reproduction is not always confined to paired males and females. Extra-pair males commonly also reproduce with paired females, which is traditionally thought to be costly to the...
Photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation became evolutionarily immutable as “frozen metabolic accidents” because multiple interactions between the proteins and protein complexes involved led to their co-evolution ...
The emergence of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), especially those that are multidrug resistant poses a serious threat to global tuberculosis control. However, the mechanism underlying ...
Sex determination mechanisms in teleost fish broadly differ from mammals and birds, with sex chromosomes that are far less differentiated and recombination often occurring along the length of the X and Y chrom...
RNA localization involves cis-motifs that are recognized by RNA-binding proteins (RBP), which then mediate localization to specific sub-cellular compartments. RNA localization is critical for many different ce...
Recent genome studies of modern and ancient samples have proposed that Native Americans derive from a subset of the Eurasian gene pool carried to America by an ancestral Beringian population, from which two we...
Plasma concentration of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is a well-established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Inhibition of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9), which regula...
Current mesoscale 3D imaging techniques are limited to transparent or cleared samples or require the use of X-rays. This is a severe limitation for many research areas, as the 3D color surface morphology of op...
Cultured human cells are pivotal models to study human gene functions, but introducing complete loss of function in diploid or aneuploid cells has been a challenge. The recently developed CRISPR/Cas9-mediated ...
Base Editing is a precise genome editing method that uses a deaminase-Cas9 fusion protein to mutate cytidine to thymidine in target DNA in situ without the generation of a double-strand break. However, the eff...
Higher-order self-assembly of proteins, or “prion-like” polymerisation, is now emerging as a simple and robust mechanism for signal amplification, in particular within the innate immune system, where the recog...
The Commentary to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2019 17:15
Many physiological processes in our body are controlled by the biological clock and show circadian rhythmicity. It is generally accepted that a robust rhythm is a prerequisite for optimal functioning and that ...
The mitochondrial unfolded protein response (mitoUPR) is a stress response pathway activated by disruption of proteostasis in the mitochondria. This pathway has been proposed to influence lifespan, with studie...
Increases in biological complexity and the origins of life’s hierarchical organization are described by the “major transitions” framework. A crucial component of this paradigm is that after the transition in c...
The green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Volvox carteri are important models for studying light perception and response, expressing many different photoreceptors. More than 10 opsins were reported in C. rein...
Activity in populations of neurons often takes the form of assemblies, where specific groups of neurons tend to activate at the same time. However, in calcium imaging data, reliably identifying these assemblie...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2019 17:21
The capture and enslavement of eukaryotic algae by unicellular predators to acquire photosynthesis was a major driving force in early eukaryotic diversification. A genome presented in BMC Biology provides a glimp...
The original article was published in BMC Biology 2018 16:137
The evolution of photosynthesis has been a major driver in eukaryotic diversification. Eukaryotes have acquired plastids (chloroplasts) either directly via the engulfment and integration of a photosynthetic cy...
The Commentary to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2018 16:140
Mammalian cells are flexible and can rapidly change shape when they contract, adhere, or migrate. The nucleus must be stiff enough to withstand cytoskeletal forces, but flexible enough to remodel as the cell c...
Bacteria and mitochondria contain translocases that function to transport proteins across or insert proteins into their inner and outer membranes. Extant mitochondria retain some bacterial-derived translocases...
Base editors are a class of genome editing tools with the ability to efficiently induce point mutations in genomic DNA, without inducing double-strand breaks or relying on homology-direct repair as in other su...
Characterizing recurring sequence patterns in human promoters has been a challenging undertaking even nowadays where a near-complete overview of promoters exists. However, with the more recent availability of ...
Complex multicellularity requires elaborate developmental mechanisms, often based on the versatility of heterodimeric transcription factor (TF) interactions. Homeobox TFs in the TALE superclass are deeply embe...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2020 18:4
Alan Walker is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, UK, studying the intestinal microbiota and its interactions with the host’s diet. In this interview, Alan discusses his research interests, earli...
Emily Troemel is a Professor at the University of California San Diego, where her lab uses Caenorhabditis elegans to study host–pathogen interactions and the shaping of the immune response. In this interview, Emi...
Ryohei Terauchi is a Professor at Kyoto University and a Group Leader at the Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, Japan, studying the evolution of crops and their pathogens. In this interview, Ryohei describes...
The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is one of the most complex organelles in the eukaryotic cell. Recent findings suggest that a process called ER-phagy plays a major role in maintaining the ER’s shape and function.
Kerwyn Casey (“KC”) Huang is an Associate Professor at Stanford University, studying the physical nature of biological systems and the underpinnings of fundamental processes such as cell shape determination, c...
Childhood cancer is fundamentally a disease of dysregulated development. Why does it rarely occur during the fetal period, a time of enormous growth and development?
Thomas Couvreur is a researcher and botanist at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), based in Montpellier, France, studying tropical biosystems. He is using diverse approaches—from taxonomy, ...
Jane Hurst is a William Prescott Professor of Animal Science at the University of Liverpool, UK, studying scent communication in mammals and its role in behaviours. In this interview, Jane discusses how scents...
David Weinkove is an associate professor at Durham University, UK, studying host–microbe interactions in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. David has been focusing on the way microbes affect the physiolog...
David Ferrier is a Reader at the University of St Andrews and Deputy Director of the Scottish Oceans Institute, where his lab studies how the diversity of form in the animal kingdom evolved, with an emphasis o...
Bill Hanage is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, where he studies fundamental and applied epidemiology using genomic and evolutionary methods. Bill spoke to us about th...
Teva Vernoux is a plant developmental biologist and holds positions as the Director of the Institute for Reproduction and Development of Plants at ENS de Lyon, and as a Research Director at Centre National de ...
Joel Dacks is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Cell Biology at the University of Alberta, a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum (London), and the current Presiden...
Harold Burgess is a Senior Investigator at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health. Work in his lab combines genetic ...
Angelika Stollewerk is a Reader at Queen Mary University of London, where her lab uses a diverse range of species to study the evolution of the arthropod nervous system. Angelika spoke to us about social spide...
Although the idea of coevolution was first presented 150 years ago, we still only vaguely understand the genetic basis of its workings. Identifying the genes responsible for coevolutionary interactions would e...
In the mitochondrial inner membrane the respiratory enzymes associate to form supramolecular assemblies known as supercomplexes. The existence of supercomplexes is now widely accepted—but what functional or st...
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