News & Comment

The cerebellum is more than just motor control: over the past 30 years, the notion that the “little brain” participates in cognitive functions and emotional response has grown to encompass social-related behaviors. Chao et al. bring to light the role of the cerebellar vermis in orchestrating a specific component of social memory in mice.

Retinal degenerative diseases are often multifaceted and difficult to treat, instead requiring more targeted or personalized therapeutic solutions. Recent work by Liu et al. reveals one such pipeline to engineer extracellular vesicles that can selectively reduce the spread of retinal inflammation and prevent the progression of vision loss in rodent models of retinal degeneration. This approach is representative of a new wave of precision medicines with the potential to treat these otherwise incurable diseases.

Dr. Rui Seabra studies the thermal landscapes of rocky shores across the world and how environmental complexity drives species’ distributions and vulnerability to global warming. He co-leads the Coupled Coastal Temperature and Biodiversity Observation Network (CCTBON), a network aimed at monitoring patterns of rocky shore temperatures and biodiversity patterns across the Atlantic Ocean. In this Q&A we discuss the challenges of biodiversity research at the global scale.

Analysis of the association between Altmetric scores and the gender of first and last authors of articles published in top cardiovascular research journals shows that women receive on average less attention for their work.

Dr. Chris Wallace is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Director of Research, and Principal Investigator in the Department of Medicine and a Programme Leader in the MRC Biostatistics Unit (BSU) at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Guillermo Reales is a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Wallace’s group, where he recently co-authored a Comment evaluating the impact of sharing summary statistics on average citation rates of genome-wide association studies (GWASs). In this Q&A, we discussed the inspiration for their recent analysis on GWAS summary statistics, the importance of open data, and potential barriers or paths to data sharing in genomics.

Although liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has been extensively studied in various cellular and organismal contexts, the link between functional influence of a genetic mutation and LLPS with respect to human diseases is poorly understood. A recent article by Mensah et al. looks at a rare genetic disease to identify a frameshift mutation, which triggered aberrant phase separation and nucleolar dysregulation, linking genetic variants to a dysregulation of biomolecular condensates.

March 31st marks Transgender Day of Visibility, an opportunity to celebrate and elevate the achievements of the transgender community. As part of our annual celebration of Transgender Day of Visibility, we reached out to Leland Graber and Dr. Ezra Kottler, two early-career transgender biologists who shared their own experiences and perspectives on improving support systems for the transgender research community.

We present a checklist to improve the reliability and reproducibility of molecular dynamics simulations and related methods.

Although we have come a long way in breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health conditions, we still have a long way to go. Here we speak to Dr Anna Schueth - a postdoc and passionate advocate whose blogs and other efforts are leading the way in changing academia towards a direction that will allow everyone to thrive as their authentic selves and to get the support they need.

Behavioral results suggest that learning by trial-and-error (i.e., reinforcement learning) relies on a teaching signal, the prediction error, which quantifies the difference between the obtained and the expected reward. Evidence suggests that distinct cortico-striatal circuits are recruited to encode better-than-expected (positive prediction error) and worst-than-expected (negative prediction error) outcomes. A recent study by Villano et al.¹ provides evidence for differential networks that underlie learning from positive and negative prediction errors in humans using real-life behavioral data. More specifically, they found that university students are more likely to update beliefs concerning grade expectations following positive rather than negative prediction errors.

A review of citation rates from genomic studies in the GWAS Catalog suggests that sharing summary statistics results, on average, in ~81.8% more citations, highlighting a benefit of publicly sharing GWAS summary statistics.

Cilia assembly and function require intraflagellar transport (IFT), a mechanism that uses “trains” to transport cargoes into and out of cilia. While much has been learned about IFT in the past decades, IFT train assembly, loading of cargo and transport regulation have remained poorly understood. In a recent study, Hesketh, Mukhopadhyay and colleagues obtained the complete structure of the IFT-A complex, a key element of IFT trains. By modelling IFT-A into anterograde trains and performing structure-guided mutagenesis, the authors uncover how the IFT-A complex polymerizes and forms carriages to accomplish its distinctive functions.

We reflect on how far we have come while looking forward to the next phase of our journey.

Recent structures of DNA-bound bacterial and phage recombinases provide insights into homologous recombination and suggest relation to the eukaryotic Rad52 and identification of a Rad52 single strand annealing protein (SSAP) superfamily.

The BIL1/BZR1 transcription factor is known to regulate transcriptional responses to the brassinosteroid class of phytohormones by directly recognizing short cis regulatory elements in promoters. A new study by Shohei Nosaki, Nobutaka Mitsuda, and colleagues published in Nature Plants indicates that binding of this transcription factor is additionally affected by nucleobases that influence DNA shape but are not directly contacted by BIL1/BZR1.