Published in Nature Communications
Defects in the Casparian strip, a fine band of lignin that seals root endodermal cells and plays roles in nutrient homeostasis, activate a signaling pathway leading to over-lignification. Here, the authors show that this process leads to the deposition of compensatory lignin that is chemically distinct from Casparian strip lignin.
Published in BMC Biology
BackgroundDinoflagellates are aquatic protists particularly widespread in the oceans worldwide. Some are responsible for toxic blooms while others live in symbiotic relationships, either as mutualistic symbionts in corals or as parasites infecting other protists and animals. Dinoflagellates harbor atypically large genomes (~ 3 to 250 Gb), with gene...
Published in Nature Communications
Welwitschia mirabilis is a unique plant that only has two leaves, but it can survive in hostile conditions of the African desert. Here, the authors report its chromosome-level genome assembly and discuss how gene function and regulation have given rise to its unique morphology and environmental adaptions.
Published in Communications Biology
Villacis-Perez et al. describe the existence of and the mechanisms sustaining a host race of the spider mite Tetranychus urticae, which was previously regarded as a generalist. Here, the authors identify a specialist host race exhibiting reproductive incompatibility with sympatric generalist populations, as well as significant differences in host p...
Published in Arthritis & rheumatology (Hoboken, N.J.)
We undertook this study to evaluate the activation and functional relevance of inflammasome pathways in ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients and rodent models and their relationship to dysbiosis. An inflammasome pathway was evaluated in the gut and peripheral blood from 40 AS patients using quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reacti...
Published in Molecular ecology resources
The flowering plant family Annonaceae includes important commercially grown tropical crops, but development of promising species is hindered by a lack of genomic resources to build breeding programs. Annonaceae are part of the magnoliids, an ancient lineage of angiosperms for which evolutionary relationships with other major clades remain unclear. ...
Published in Molecular ecology
With the growing anthropogenic pressure on marine ecosystems, the need for efficient monitoring of biodiversity grows stronger. DNA metabarcoding of bulk samples is increasingly being implemented in ecosystem assessments and is more cost-efficient and less time-consuming than monitoring based on morphology. However, before raw sequences are obtaine...
Published in Nature Communications
Filamentous cable bacteria conduct electrical currents over centimeter distances through fibers embedded in their cell envelope. Here, Boschker et al. show that the fibers consist of a conductive core containing nickel proteins that is surrounded by an insulating protein shell.
Published in Nature Communications
To benchmark single cell bioinformatics tools, data simulators can provide a robust ground truth. Here the authors present dyngen, a multi-modal simulator, and apply it to aligning cell developmental trajectories, cell-specific regulatory network inference and estimation of RNA velocity.
Single-cell approaches are quickly changing our view on biological systems by increasing the spatiotemporal resolution of our analyses to the level of the individual cell. The field of plant biology has fully embraced single-cell transcriptomics and is rapidly expanding the portfolio of available technologies and applications. In this review, we gi...
