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When applied to vertebrate vocalizations, source-filter theory, initially developed for human speech, has revolutionized our understanding of animal communication, resulting in major insights into the form and...
Mechanical stimulation, including wind exposure, is a common environmental factor for plants and can significantly impact plant phenotype, development, and growth. Most responses to external mechanical stimula...
The discovery of diverse molecular mechanisms of regulated cell death has opened new avenues for cancer therapy. Ferroptosis, a unique form of cell death driven by iron-catalyzed peroxidation of membrane phosp...
Representative models of intestinal diseases are transforming our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of disease, facilitating effective drug screening and avenues for personalised medicine. Despite the emer...
CRISPR are adaptive immunity systems that protect bacteria and archaea from viruses and other mobile genetic elements (MGE) via an RNA-guided interference mechanism. However, in the course of the host-parasite...
Eukaryotic microorganisms, or “protists,” while often inconspicuous, play fundamental roles in the Earth ecosystem, ranging from primary production and nutrient cycling to interactions with human health and so...
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common adult primary brain tumor. The standard of care involves maximal surgery followed by radiotherapy and concomitant chemotherapy with temozolomide (TMZ), in addit...
When a pathogen invades a plant, it encounters a diverse microbiota with some members contributing to the health and growth of the plant host. So far, the relevance of interactions between pathogens and the pl...
Epiphytic microbes are those that live for some or all of their life cycle on the surface of plant leaves. Leaf surfaces are a topologically complex, physicochemically heterogeneous habitat that is home to ext...
The vast majority of the food we eat comes from land-based agriculture, but recent technological advances in agriculture and food technology offer the prospect of producing food using substantially less or eve...
The mitochondria contain their own genome derived from an alphaproteobacterial endosymbiont. From thousands of protein-coding genes originally encoded by their ancestor, only between 1 and about 70 are encoded...
Physical activity and several pharmacological approaches individually combat age-associated conditions and extend healthy longevity in model systems. It is tantalizing to extrapolate that combining geroprotect...
As organisms evolve, the effects of mutations change as a result of epistatic interactions with other mutations accumulated along the line of descent. This can lead to shifts in adaptability or robustness that...
Sex chromosomes are typically viewed as having originated from a pair of autosomes, and differentiated as the sex-limited chromosome (e.g. Y) has degenerated by losing most genes through cessation of recombina...
Marine sponges (phylum Porifera) form symbioses with diverse microbial communities that can be transmitted between generations through their developmental stages. Here, we integrate embryology and microbiology...
Stem cells (SCs) in vertebrates typically reside in “stem cell niches” (SCNs), morphologically restricted tissue microenvironments that are important for SC survival and proliferation. SCNs are broadly defined...
Cell membrane fusion and multinucleation in macrophages are associated with physiologic homeostasis as well as disease. Osteoclasts are multinucleated macrophages that resorb bone through increased metabolic a...
In the olfactory system, odorant receptors (ORs) expressed at the cell membrane of olfactory sensory neurons detect odorants and direct sensory axons toward precise target locations in the brain, reflected in ...
Plasma membrane integrity is essential for cellular homeostasis. In vivo, cells experience plasma membrane damage from a multitude of stressors in the extra- and intra-cellular environment. To avoid lethal con...
The preservative effects of low temperature on biological materials have been long recognised, and cryopreservation is now widely used in biomedicine, including in organ transplantation, regenerative medicine ...
Modified nucleic acids, also called xeno nucleic acids (XNAs), offer a variety of advantages for biotechnological applications and address some of the limitations of first-generation nucleic acid therapeutics....
The traditional view of protein aggregation as being strictly disease-related has been challenged by many examples of cellular aggregates that regulate beneficial biological functions. When coupled with the em...
Recent developments within micro-computed tomography (μCT) imaging have combined to extend our capacity to image tissue in three (3D) and four (4D) dimensions at micron and sub-micron spatial resolutions, open...
Nitrogen is an essential element of life, and nitrogen availability often limits crop yields. Since the Green Revolution, massive amounts of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers have been produced from atmospheric n...
Animal domestication has fascinated biologists since Charles Darwin first drew the parallel between evolution via natural selection and human-mediated breeding of livestock and companion animals. In this revie...
The human upper respiratory tract (URT) offers a variety of niches for microbial colonization. Local microbial communities are shaped by the different characteristics of the specific location within the URT, b...
The human gut harbors a complex ecosystem of microorganisms, including bacteria and viruses. With the rise of next-generation sequencing technologies, we have seen a quantum leap in the study of human-gut-inha...
The Christensenellaceae, a recently described family in the phylum Firmicutes, is emerging as an important player in human health. The relative abundance of Christensenellaceae in the human gut is inversely relat...
As a “holy grail” of neuroscience, optical imaging of membrane potential could enable high resolution measurements of spiking and synaptic activity in neuronal populations. This has been partly achieved using ...
Cell-free systems (CFS) have recently evolved into key platforms for synthetic biology applications. Many synthetic biology tools have traditionally relied on cell-based systems, and while their adoption has s...
This review discusses the current state of the viral metabolism field and gaps in knowledge that will be important for future studies to investigate. We discuss metabolic rewiring caused by viruses, the influe...
Changes in cell metabolism and metabolic adaptation are hallmark features of many cancers, including leukemia, that support biological processes involved into tumor initiation, growth, and response to therapeu...
Perturbed mitochondrial bioenergetics constitute a core pillar of cancer-associated metabolic dysfunction. While mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer may result from myriad biochemical causes, a historically ne...
Altered metabolism and deregulated cellular energetics are now considered a hallmark of all cancers. Glucose, glutamine, fatty acids, and amino acids are the primary drivers of tumor growth and act as substrat...
The study of tumorigenic rewiring of metabolic flux is at the heart of cancer metabolic research. Here, we review two widely used computational flux inference approaches: isotope tracing coupled with Metabolic...
Reproduction, i.e. the ability to produce new individuals from a parent organism, is a hallmark of living matter. Even the simplest forms of reproduction require cell division: attempts to create a designer ce...
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...
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 ...
Between the 1930s and 50s, evolutionary biologists developed a successful theory of why organisms age, firmly rooted in population genetic principles. By the 1980s the evolution of aging had a secure experimen...
Mitochondria are sensitive to numerous environmental stresses, which can lead to activation of mitochondrial stress responses (MSRs). Of particular recent interest has been the mitochondrial unfolded protein r...
Spatial organization of membrane domains within cells and cells within tissues is key to the development of organisms and the maintenance of adult tissue. Cell polarization is crucial for correct cell–cell sig...
A molecular arms race is progressively being unveiled between prokaryotes and viruses. Prokaryotes utilize CRISPR-mediated adaptive immune systems to kill the invading phages and mobile genetic elements, and i...
The need for high-throughput, precise, and meaningful methods for measuring behavior has been amplified by our recent successes in measuring and manipulating neural circuitry. The largest challenges associated...
Paraphrasing Dobzhansky’s famous dictum, I discuss how interrogating cancer through the lens of evolution has transformed our understanding of its development, causality and treatment resistance. The emerging ...
Efficient movement of proteins across membranes is required for cell health. The translocation process is particularly challenging when the channel in the membrane through which proteins must pass is narrow—su...
The five most pervasive anthropogenic threats to biodiversity are over-exploitation, habitat changes, climate change, invasive species, and pollution. Since all of these threats can affect intraspecific biodiv...
Insights from inherited forms of parkinsonism suggest that insufficient mitophagy may be one etiology of the disease. PINK1/Parkin-dependent mitophagy, which helps maintain a healthy mitochondrial network, is ...
The trillions of microbes living in the gut—the gut microbiota—play an important role in human biology and disease. While much has been done to explore its diversity, a full understanding of our microbiomes de...
The cell envelope is essential for the survival of Gram-negative bacteria. This specialised membrane is densely packed with outer membrane proteins (OMPs), which perform a variety of functions. How OMPs fold i...
The plastids, including chloroplasts, are a group of interrelated organelles that confer photoautotrophic growth and the unique metabolic capabilities that are characteristic of plant systems. Plastid biogenes...