Editor's Summary
21 April 2005
Same-sex mating: cryptic couples
The sex life of the pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans is rather mysterious. This fungus, which is a common cause of illness in AIDS patients, has two mating types, 
and a, yet the vast majority of clinical isolates are of the type. Sexual congress between the two mating types is necessarily rare, but now the fruiting process, involving cells only and previously considered strictly mitotic and asexual, is revealed as an unusual form of the sexual cycle. As the mating type has been linked to virulence, these studies also have implications for the mechanism of pathogenicity.
News and Views: Neurobiology: Sculpted by competition
Neuronal competition helps connections to form in the brain: the branches of less active neurons are more likely to retract — and, it now seems, less likely to grow — than those of their more active neighbours.
Ole Petter Ottersen
doi: 10.1038/434969a
Letter: Regulation of axon growth in vivo by activity-based competition
Jackie Yuanyuan Hua, Matthew C. Smear, Herwig Baier and Stephen J. Smith
doi: 10.1038/nature03409
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