Historians have long debated why the ground-breaking hereditability experiments of Gregor Mendel languished, largely unnoticed for decades. His experience with the humble hawkweed probably played a role. Despite Mendel’s best efforts, the common flowering plant refused to breed in the … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
In findings that elucidate Mendel’s 19th C work, gene triggers asexual births in dandelion
Categories: Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club | Plant Biology
Tagged apomixis, Gregor Mendel, Mendelian inheritance, parthenogenesis, plant breeding
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Microbes can shape host evolution, even without perfect transmission from parent to child
Termites need certain gut bacteria to digest wood. Aphids require the bacteria Buchnera to provide essential amino acids. Many microbes affect host traits related to survival and reproduction. But how exactly the microbiome might shape evolution is a mystery. The … Continue reading
Categories: Evolution | Journal Club | Microbiology
Tagged aphid, bacteria, Buchnera, evolution, Hologenome, microbe, microbiome, natural selection, termite
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A guidebook to incorporate changing human behaviors into planetary models
Humanity is now a geological force. Industries belch greenhouse gases into the sky; dams reroute waterways. People are changing major planetary cycles in the atmosphere, cryosphere, and ocean. These complex, multi-faceted effects have feedbacks that, in turn, affect society. And … Continue reading
Stem cell niche within plant callus tissue drives organ regeneration
Proper plant growth in tissue culture experiments typically depends on one crucial step: the plant’s ability to form a clump of pluripotent cells that can then regenerate root, stem, and other organs. This cluster of cells, known as a callus, … Continue reading
Categories: Agriculture | Cell Biology | Genetics | Journal Club | Plant Biology
Tagged Arabidopsis, callus, GMO, plant roots, pluripotent, stem cells, WOX5
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Jellyfish species proves its mettle as a neurobiology model organism
Aquaria at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena bustle with tiny translucent jellyfish, adrift like dust motes in a sunbeam, rhythmically pulsing with long tentacles in tow. They’re beautiful—they may also be an important tool for neurobiologists. According to … Continue reading
Categories: Neuroscience
Tagged bell, Clytia hemisphaerica, cnidarian, GCaMP, jellyfish, model organism, neuron, RFamide peptide, tentacle
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Social leverage makes great apes share more
Sharing is caring. But how much sharing seems fair? In a classical economics test of fairness called the Ultimatum Game, two individuals must agree on how to divide a pot of money. If I propose a split and you accept, … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Evolution | Journal Club | Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Tagged bonobo, chimpanzee, prosocial, Ultimatum Game
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Could expanding social webs help humans cooperate altruistically on a global scale?
Celebrities and social media influencers are reaching global audiences on unprecedented scales. Such audiences are already forming cooperative groups that could one day tackle complex problems such as climate change, argues a recent perspective published in One Earth. Drawing on … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Sustainability Science
Tagged altruism, biodiversity loss, climate change, empathy, hunter gatherer, protest, social science, sustainability
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Hormones not the only drivers of sex disparities in heart health
Often when it comes to disease, the sexes are not equal. Dementia, chronic kidney disease, and many other conditions disproportionately affect one sex or another. Heart disease is a complex case: Males are more likely to suffer heart attacks at … Continue reading
Categories: Developmental Biology | Genetics | Medical Sciences
Tagged A1BG, health disparities, heart attack, heart disease, hormones, sex chromosomes, sex differences
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Is scientific progress waning? Too many new papers may mean novel ideas rarely rack up citations
There are so many papers coming out in the largest fields of science that new ideas can’t get a foothold, according to a recent study in PNAS. Researchers analyzed citation trends for 90 million papers and found that in very … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Social Sciences
Tagged durable dominance, electrical engineering, molecular biology, Web of Science
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To find zoonotic viruses, researchers seek genomic signatures of virus adaptations to hosts
In light of the ongoing pandemic, researchers have stepped up efforts to identify new zoonotic threats—viruses that could make the leap from animals to humans and cause future epidemics. Studies aiming to identify such viruses often focus on a novel … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Computer sciences | Genetics | Infectious disease | Journal Club | Medical Sciences | Microbiology
Tagged coronavirus, genome, machine learning, MERS, SARS, SARS-Cov-2, zoonosis
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Using helpers, desert birds hedge their bets to weather variable conditions
Unpredictable environments can help explain the evolution of cooperative behavior, according to a decade-long study of birds in the Kalahari Desert. The research showed that white-browed sparrow-weavers (Plocepasser mahali) work to raise the offspring of other birds as a strategy … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Ecology | Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged altruism, cooperative breeding, drought, Kalahari Desert, kin selection, weaver bird
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