Reviews & Analysis

A detailed Review across animal and human societies provides insight on the causes and consequences of adult sex ratio skew.

The current state and limitations of research on extracellular vesicles in central nervous system (CNS) signaling are discussed, with particular focus on EV-mediated cargo transfer.

A reassessment of early trilobite phylogenetic relationships and palaeobiogeographic patterns suggests that a cryptic evolutionary history is unlikely for this group. The abrupt appearance of trilobites is likely to closely reflect their evolutionary origins, and may be explained by survivorship biases inherent in the fossil record.

A Perspective highlights current evidence that supports oligodendrocytes and their progenitors’ involvement in cognition and proposes that our understanding of learning and memory can be expanded beyond the classic view of synaptic plasticity to a system-wide network function.

Microglia “heterogeneity” is often described in the literature, but a clear understanding of what “heterogeneity” entails is essential to avoid confusion among researchers.

Myanmar amber collection and study in palaeontology is clouded with ethical and legal issues. Here, the history and legality of Myanmar amber use in the literature is reviewed.

A review of the function of the Dystrophic Glycoprotein Complex (DGC) in mechanosignaling provides an overview of the various components of DGC and potential mechanopathogenic mechanisms, particularly as they relate to muscular dystrophy.

This review discusses the recent advances in the engineering of bioartificial muscle. The applications highlighted include cultured meat, biorobotics, and muscle implants.

In this Perspective, the authors discuss how state-of-the-art three-dimensional mapping technologies such as fine-scale terrestrial laser scanning can help us understand the theories of plant forms.

This review discusses emerging roles for the NLR family pyrin domain containing 6 receptor (NLRP6) in intestinal homeostasis, inflammation, cancer, the nervous system and liver disease.

In this review, numerous aspects of sand flies as vectors of Leishmania parasites—from biology to the vector parasite interactions—are discussed.

Walker et al. review methods used to analyse spatial transcriptomics data and discuss open questions and areas of future development.

Colzato, Beste and Hommel discuss the possibility of a theoretical framework which considers the positive potential of selective cognitive dysfunction. They suggest a two-step approach to identify the potential and develop the corresponding training.

The study of animal societies has been increasingly explored with social network analysis. In this Perspective, the importance of these networks in directing conservation efforts of fish is highlighted.

Evanthia Pangou and co-authors review recent insights into the important roles of non-proteolytic ubiquitylation in cellular signaling as well as in physiology and disease.

Al-Aghbar et al propose a TCR bending mechanosignal model that demonstrates how local mechanical membrane bending may influence T cell receptor binding events and thus T-cell activation.

Kozlowski, Crook, and Ku review current state-of-the-art techniques in culturing and manipulating organoids without the use of EHS-tumor-derived matrix, the most popular of which is Matrigel by Corning. They cover organoid-based applications of different matrix types, ranging from natural sources (decellularized ECM, purified ECM proteins, polysaccharides), synthetic sources (e.g. PEG-based), and recombinant peptide-based systems.

Okabe and Uchiyama provide their perspective on the work performed during the past decade on intracellular thermometry and major challenges of the field. Describing the importance of the temperature at both large and cellular scale, they highlight the possible contribution of intracellular thermometry to new biological studies.

Zhang et al. describe metrics for evaluating glycaemic variability (GV) in clinical practice and summarize the role and related mechanisms of GV in diabetic neuropathy, including cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy, diabetic peripheral neuropathy and cognitive impairment. They aim to stimulate ideas for the treatment of diabetic neuropathy.

This perspective by Ziegler et al. explores the impact of mitochondria-endoplasmic reticulum contacts (MERCs) biology on cellular senescence. The authors also explore the potential impacts of MERCs perturbation and how this relates to the increase in cellular senescence observed in common age-related diseases.