News & Comment

Professor Akiko Iwasaki’s research focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at mucosal surfaces, which are a major site of entry for infectious agents. Professor Iwasaki received her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral training with the National Institutes of Health before joining Yale’s faculty in 2000. She has received many awards and honors and has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2014. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Professor Iwasaki is also well known for her Twitter advocacy of women and underrepresented minorities in the science and medicine fields. In addition, Professor Iwasaki co-directs the IMPACT (Implementing Medical and Public Health Actions against Coronavirus in Connecticut) team to generate an extensive biorepository for specimens collected from patients and health care workers, as well as implementing viral testing in both groups.

Jasmine Miller-Kleinhenz et al. highlight the risk of science and academia’s general neutrality to discussions around race and social justice. Their collectively-developed course represents a framework to begin these important discussions and improve conversations on race in academia.

Alice Soragni is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at UCLA and a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Originally from Italy, she received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the ETH of Zurich and a postdoc with David Eisenberg (UCLA) before starting her independent lab in December 2016. In this Q&A, Dr. Soragni tells us about her research on organoids, importance of learning from peers while starting an independent research career and of creating inclusive and diverse lab practices.

García Saura et al. report a new tool, MacroGreen, to detect ADP-ribosylation by GFP fluorescence in a microplate reader, or in cells by microscopy. With superior affinity and reduced ADP-ribosyl hydrolase activity, MacroGreen is an easy to produce and suitable tool for rapid detection of ADP-ribosylated proteins in vitro without a need for specialist reagents and time-consuming methods.

The theme for World Brain Day (WBD) this year is ‘Stopping MS’. Despite the amazing progress that science and medicine have made in the development of therapies for multiple sclerosis (MS), access to such therapies is still a major challenge in many parts of the world. We spoke to Professor Tissa Wijeratne, one of the founders of WBD, who has steered many initiatives that aim to improve brain health globally and Dr Joanna Laurson-Doube about the actions needed to improve MS treatment worldwide.

This year’s World Brain Day is focused on stopping Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Although amazing progress has resulted in the development of relatively successful MS therapies, access to such therapies is a major problem for most of the world. In addition, major advances are still needed that would enable more precise treatment of MS for all patient demographics. We therefore spoke to Dr Maurico Farez, whose pioneering work focuses on the use of AI for precision medicine in MS and Helen Onourah, who has highlighted crucial issues surrounding the inequities that exist in MS research.

Dr. Sebastian Groh is a postdoctoral researcher at University College London, UK, and co-founder of Trans In STEM. We asked them about their experiences as an early career palaeontologist, and the challenges faced by transgender scientists in academia.

July is Disability Pride Month here in New York, where part of the Communications Biology team is based. To mark this occasion, we are featuring a series of scientist interviews on the Nature Portfolio Ecology & Evolution Community site and wanted to elaborate on our motivations behind this post and our hopes for the future concerning the lived experience of disability in science.

Dr Maël Lebreton is about to set up his own lab at the Paris School of Economics, in September 2021, thanks to an ERC Starting Grant. In the meantime he holds a part-time position at the Swiss Center for Affective Science at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where he has been a Senior Research Associate since 2018. Mael originally obtained a B.Sc and MSc in Biosciences from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, and a PhD in Cognitive Neurosciences from Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris 6 (now Sorbonne Université) in 2013. He then moved to the University of Amsterdam, where he spent over 4 years as a postdoc at the Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision-Making at the Faculty of Economics and Business. This is where he truly began his independent research career.

In a recent issue of Science Advances, Srivastava et al. report a novel nucleotide biosynthesis regulatory role for UBR7 in NOTCH1-driven T-ALL. Here we will discuss their key findings and the implications for using cancer metabolism to understand the development and progression of T-ALL.

While reforestation efforts are important in limiting the progression of climate change, tree stems are known to emit the potent greenhouse gas, methane. Luke Jeffrey and colleagues recently discovered that methanotrophic bacteria colonize the bark of the common lowland tree, Melaleuca quinquenervia, and significantly reduce its methane emissions. Their results expand the known pool of habitats for methanotrophic bacteria and suggest that these bark-dwelling taxa may be a future target for limiting methane emissions from trees.

Denise Akob is a Research Microbiologist for the United State Geological Survey (USGS), based at the Geology, Energy & Minerals Science Center in Reston, VA. Dr. Akob received her Ph.D. in 2008 from Florida State University and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Friedrich Schiller University Jena before starting her independent research career with the USGS in 2012. In this Q&A, Dr. Akob tells us about her current work, experiences in federal research, and the best bacterial taxa.

The collection of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that form microbiota play an important role in both human and environmental health. In recognition of World Microbiome Day, we have curated a Collection of articles, news and commentary to celebrate the diversity of microbiome research published at Communications Biology, and highlight exciting new avenues for the field.

Somatic mutations in cancer genomes can be caused by many different mutational processes, each of which produce distinctive patterns termed “mutational signatures”. Although cancer researchers can now recognize a large number of mutational signatures, exactly how these patterns arise remains unknown. Nik-Zainal and colleagues tackled this problem using a CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing screen to knock out components of the DNA mismatch repair machinery and learn their unique mutational patterns. Based on their data, the authors developed MMRDetect, a computational algorithm to classify the different DNA repair deficiencies and predict tumour responsiveness to immunotherapy.

Helen Vuong is a postdoctoral fellow in the Hsiao lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is currently funded by a K99 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health. In this Q&A, Dr. Vuong tells us about her current work and the importance of tailoring scientific educational experiences to students. Dr. Vuong also shares tips on how to better support young parents in STEM.

There is a continual need to develop new therapies for neuropsychiatric disorders such as Schizophrenia, and identifying the underlying molecular processes remains challenging. Chadha et al. recently discovered a potential role for mTOR kinase activity disruption in Schizophrenia and further uncover the precise pathomechanism. Their study sheds further light on the role of mTOR in Schizophrenia and could inform the development of future therapeutic strategies for the condition.

Shortly after the onset of ciliogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans sensory neurons, the centrioles/basal bodies undergo degeneration. The fate of the pericentriolar material (PCM) that was associated with those centrioles has, however, remained unknown. Two recent studies by the Dammermann and the Feldman groups now show that not only does the PCM persist at the ciliary base, it also continues to assemble in the absence of canonical centrioles. Importantly, these neuronal centrosomes retain the ability to function as the cell’s main microtubule-organizing center and support ciliary function.

Yi Arial Zeng has been a Principal Investigator at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBCB), Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2010. In this interview she talks about her research, but also shares her experience of the challenges facing a group leader and highlights the importance of art and beauty in science and beyond.

Conrad Waddington famously used his epigenetic landscape to describe the paths a cell might take during developmental differentiation. In this analogy, the undifferentiated stem cell begins at the highest elevation and proceeds to tumble downward towards its final resting place, representing terminal differentiation. This general concept elegantly captures the essence of developmental transitions, but recent single-cell studies by Dr. Joanna Wysocka’s research group indicate that an alternative strategy underlies development of cranial neural crest cells. Published in Science, Antoine Zalc, Rahul Sinha and colleagues discovered that ectoderm-derived cranial neural crest cells undergo a developmental reprogramming event in vivo, expanding their differentiation potential through the reactivation of pluripotency, in effect rolling backwards up Waddington’s development landscape before eventually differentiating into mesenchymal lineages.

Willias Masocha is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at Kuwait University where he studies the pathophysiology and treatment of neuropathic pain. Professor Masocha obtained a Bachelor of Pharmacy Honours from the University of Zimbabwe followed by a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Granada before undertaking his postdoctoral training and International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) fellowship at the Karolinska Institutet. He began his independent research career at Kuwait University in 2006. In this Q&A he tells us about his current work and his perspectives on neuroscience research in the Middle East and Africa. He also shares tips for young scientists—particularly those based in Africa.