News & Comment

Sabre-toothed carnivores are among the most famed vertebrate fossils in the world. The sabre-tooth ecomorph has been converged upon repeatedly by distantly related species throughout mammalian evolution. Lautenschlager et al. employ a range of biomechanical analyses to investigate the functional diversity of sabre-toothed skulls. Across 66 species, broad functional diversity is recovered with implications for prey specialization and niche partitioning, despite being morphologically convergent.

João Conde began his independent career at NOVA Medical School of Universidade Nova de Lisboa in the beginning of 2020. In this short Q&A he tells us about his experience as an early career researcher, challenges he faced with science under lockdown, the advice he has for his younger self and what is the most likely science fiction vision we can achieve with nanotechnology.

The metabolism of immune cells is a rapidly developing field with therapeutic implications. In recognition of this exciting area, our journal is welcoming submissions of primary research articles, perspectives, comments, and review articles in immunometabolism with the aim to highlight these articles in a special collection.

While polygyny is common among vertebrates, polygyny with mate fidelity has not yet been demonstrated in amphibians. A recent study by Fábio de Sá and colleagues shows that single male saxicolous frogs share a breeding territory with two females and mate multiple times with them over the course of a breeding season. These authors attribute the evolution of this mating system to the intense competition for territories and mates when access to these resources is scarce.

The origins of Ornithodira (the last common ancestor of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and their descendants) are yet to be resolved, and have the potential to inform on the diversification of some of the most intriguing ecologies and body forms to evolve in reptiles. A recent discovery of an extremely small ornithodiran archosaur by Christian Kammerer and colleagues is indicative of a miniaturisation event early in the evolution of Ornithodira. This raises questions about the evolution of characters associated with small body forms in these groups, such as flight and body surface integument.

We are inviting submissions of articles on the role of mechanobiology in health and disease with the aim of publishing high quality research devoted to advance our understanding of mechanics shaping biological function. We are also happy to present a Collection of papers already published in our journal in this exciting field.

Communications Biology is committed to improving diversity in our pages, our reviewer pool, and our editorial board. We recognize both the overt and unconscious racism in the sciences and have tasked ourselves with using our platform to amplify Black voices and the voices of all biologists of color.

Dr. César de la Fuente is a Presidential Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He leads a Machine Biology group developing computational tools to expand the antibiotic arsenal, engineer the microbiome and study and control brain function and behavior. His work has been recognized by the Langer Prize, ACS Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry award, ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award, STAT News, GEN, and the MIT Technology Review. We asked Dr. de la Fuente about his research and journey of the field as part of our series on early-career researchers.

We are inviting submissions of articles, perspectives, and reviews on nanomedicine, drug delivery, tumour targeting, and nanotheranostics with the aim of publishing high quality research devoted to nanotechnology for biology.

Adree Khondker and Maikel Rheinstadter discuss how bacteria escape being killed by polymyxin antibiotics. Touching on their recent Communications Biology paper, they elaborate on the mechanism by which the bacterial membrane becomes resistant and on future directions to take in order to understand this phenomenon.

Research from Helen Goodridge and Clive Svendsen’s groups published in Communications Biology showed that young bone marrow transplantation slows down cognitive decline in old mice. The authors now discuss subsequent studies examining the relationship between blood components and aging-associated cognitive impairment and rejuvenation as well as their own ongoing work.

Yamamoto and Higashido discuss the possible routes of the hormone oxytocin in the body, and highlight their recent study in Communications Biology where they showed that the RAGE receptor is a transporter for oxytocin across the blood−brain barrier.

Wagner and Raunser recently presented a deep learning based particle picking program for Cryo-EM, crYOLO. Here they discuss recent improvements to the program, a graphical user interface and share their thoughts on desired future developments.

As we celebrate our second year of publishing, we look back on some highlights from 2019 in Communications Biology and consider what it means to study biology.

Following up on their recent study in Communications Biology Sasha Tetu et al discuss how plastic pollution of the oceans may affect marine microbes as well as strategies to identify the substances responsible for leachate toxicity and to further understand their impact.

In light of their recent finding that insertion of a rare endogenous retrovirus, β4, is the cause of the characteristic coat coloring in agouti and piebald mice, Akira Tanave and Tsuyoshi Koide now discuss the origin and expansion of this element as well as potential roles of β4 in the mouse genome.

Karen Echeverri and her colleagues showed in their recent Communications Biology study that an unconventional Fos/Jun heterodimer regulates axon regeneration in axolotl. In this article, she emphasises the diverse mechanisms of regeneration in other species and discusses future work needed to understand how the nervous system can be regenerated.

Chathuranga Dharmarathne et al. discuss an innovative conservation project to reduce human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka. This project uses citrus trees to repel elephants from farms, thereby reducing crop loss among farmers and providing additional income.

Genomic diversity is a driving force influencing human and animal health, and susceptibility to disease. During the Keystone Symposium on Leveraging Genomic Diversity to Promote Human and Animal Health held in Kampala on Lake Victoria in Uganda, we brought together diverse communities of geneticists with primary objectives to explore areas of common interest, joint technological and methodological developments and applications, and to leverage opportunities for cross-learning. We explored translational genomics research in farmed animals and humans, debated the differences in research objectives in high- and low-resourced environments, delved into infectious diseases and zoonoses affecting humans and animals and considered diversity and cultural context at many levels. The 109 participants were from 22 countries (13 in Africa) and included 44 global travel awardees from 9 countries, equal numbers of men and women, of whom 31 were students and 13 senior investigators.