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Production of stomata, the gas-exchange structure in plants, requires asymmetric cell division and cell type differentiation in an orderly manner. Identification of a key switch gene for the fate transition of stomatal precursor cells revealed a compelling view that consecutive actions of three closely related bHLH proteins control stomatal differentiation, a mechanism strikingly similar to cell-type differentiation in animals.
A set of three paralogous bHLH transcription factors is required to promote stomatal development. SPEECHLESS, MUTE and FAMA are sequentially expressed in, and are successively required for, the initiation, proliferation and terminal differentiation of cells in the stomatal lineage.
Toxoplasma gondii causes intracellular infections with disease severity that varies depending on the pathogen strain. A potential mechanism has now been elucidated, whereby the presence of a putative kinase in certain strains results in the activation of distinct host signalling pathways.
Neurons in the monkey lateral prefrontal cortex are activated before a large number of individual complex movements, suggesting that they represent an abstract categorization of motor behaviours, as opposed to the individual sequences themselves. Combined with previous work, this suggests that abstract grouping may be a general property of the prefrontal cortex, perhaps facilitating complex behaviour.