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Internal tagging of proteins by inserting small functional peptides into surface accessible permissive sites has proven to be an indispensable tool for basic and applied science. Permissive sites are typically...
In a macro-molecular complex, any minor change may prove detrimental. For a supra-molecular nano-machine like the bacterial flagellum, which consists of several distinct parts with specific characteristics, st...
California is a world floristic biodiversity hotspot where the terms neo- and paleo-endemism were first applied. Using spatial phylogenetics, it is now possible to evaluate biodiversity from an evolutionary st...
Signaling pathways direct organogenesis, often through concentration-dependent effects on cells. The hedgehog pathway enables cells to sense and respond to hedgehog ligands, of which the best studied is sonic ...
Mitochondria are predominantly inherited from the maternal gamete, even in unicellular organisms. Yet an extraordinary array of mechanisms enforce uniparental inheritance, which implies shifting selection pres...
Hormone transporters are crucial for plant hormone action, which is underlined by severe developmental and physiological impacts caused by their loss-of-function mutations. Here, we summarize recent knowledge ...
Apoptosis is a form of programmed cell death that is carried out by proteolytic enzymes called caspases. Executioner caspase activity causes cells to shrink, bleb, and disintegrate into apoptotic bodies and ha...
Microbes are found on us, within us and around us. They inhabit virtually every environment on the planet and the bacteria carried by an average human, mostly in their gut, outnumber human cells. The vast majo...
Proper DNA replication is essential for faithful transmission of the genome. However, replication stress has serious impact on the integrity of the cell, leading to stalling or collapse of replication forks, a...
What made us human? Gene expression changes clearly played a significant part in human evolution, but pinpointing the causal regulatory mutations is hard. Comparative genomics enabled the identification of hum...
Mate finding and recognition in animals evolves during niche adaptation and involves social signals and habitat cues. Drosophila melanogaster and related species are known to be attracted to fermenting fruit for ...
Mammalian organs comprise a variety of cells that interact with each other and have distinct biological roles. Access to evaluate and perturb intact biological systems at the cellular and molecular levels is e...
Root and tuber crops are a major food source in tropical Africa. Among these crops are several species in the monocotyledonous genus Dioscorea collectively known as yam, a staple tuber crop that contributes enorm...
The first report of multiple, blind, wild birds in good health suggests vision is not necessary for the survival of kiwi.
Antibiotic natural products are ancient and so is resistance. Consequently, environmental bacteria harbor numerous and varied antibiotic resistance elements. Nevertheless, despite long histories of antibiotic ...
In this question and answer article we discuss how evolution shapes morphology (the shape and pattern of our bodies) but also how learning about morphology, and specifically how that morphology arises during d...
Neurons relevant to a particular behavior are often widely dispersed across the brain. To record activity in groups of individual neurons that might be distributed across large distances, neuroscientists and o...
Driving endonuclease genes (DEGs) spread through a population by a non-Mendelian mechanism. In a heterozygote, the protein encoded by a DEG causes a double-strand break in the homologous chromosome opposite to...
Similar to other eukaryotes, splicing is emerging as an important process affecting development and stress tolerance in plants. Ski-interacting protein (SKIP), a splicing factor, is essential for circadian clo...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2019 17:25
Members of the thioester-containing protein (TEP) family contribute to host defence in both insects and mammals. However, their role in the immune response of Drosophila is elusive. In this study, we address the ...
For a subset of genes in our genome a change in gene dosage, by duplication or deletion, causes a phenotypic effect. These dosage-sensitive genes may confer an advantage upon copy number change, but more typic...
Genomic evidence has demonstrated that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Today, the genomes of most individuals outside Africa contain 2–3% Neanderthal DNA. However, it is still hotly debated why the Neandert...
Helen Saibil is Bernal Professor of Structural Biology at Birkbeck, University of London. After undergraduate work at McGill University, Canada, Helen moved to London for her PhD at Kings College. After stints...
Amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriacus) was a food staple among the ancient civilizations of Central and South America that has recently received increased attention due to the high nutritional value of the seeds, ...
While methods for annotation of genes are increasingly reliable, the exact identification of translation initiation sites remains a challenging problem. Since the N-termini of proteins often contain regulatory...
Polymorphic toxins (PTs) are multi-domain bacterial exotoxins belonging to distinct families that share common features in terms of domain organization. PTs are found in all major bacterial clades, including m...
Disrupting sleep during development leads to lasting deficits in chordates and arthropods. To address lasting impacts of sleep deprivation in Caenorhabditis elegans, we established a nonlethal deprivation protoco...
The original article was published in BMC Biology 2017 15:66
Strong DNA conservation among divergent species is an indicator of enduring functionality. With weaker sequence conservation we enter a vast ‘twilight zone’ in which sequence subject to transient or lower cons...
The phylum Apicomplexa includes intracellular parasites causing immense global disease burden, the deadliest of them being the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which invades and replicates within ery...
The original article was published in BMC Biology 2017 15:63
Researchers have long sought to understand the genetic basis of the cognitive differences between primates, with particular focus on the human brain. Although all mutational types have worked in concert with e...
Helicoverpa armigera and Helicoverpa zea are major caterpillar pests of Old and New World agriculture, respectively. Both, particularly H. armigera, are extremely polyphagous, and H. a...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2017 15:69
The duplication of genes can occur through various mechanisms and is thought to make a major contribution to the evolutionary diversification of organisms. There is increasing evidence for a large-scale duplic...
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...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Biology 2017 15:72
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Related Article to this article has been published in Nature Protocols 2017 12:nprot.2017.120
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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
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