How plants sense temperature is a longstanding and little-understood question. Researchers have discovered some of the mechanisms involved. A recent study in Nature adds a new mechanism—among the first in which the biophysical behavior of a single protein regulates the … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs
Author Archives: Amy McDermott
Plants sense temperature with help of elegant protein
Categories: Journal Club | Plant Biology
Tagged amino acids, Arabidopsis, ELF3, flowering, meristem, NTL8, protein, temperature, thermosensing
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Inner Workings: Researchers race to develop in-home COVID-19 testing, a potential game-changer
For most people, a COVID-19 test entails a swab up the nose in a doctor’s office or drive-in site. The sample then goes out to a lab. Results come back within a few days to a week—a waiting period that’s … Continue reading
Categories: Infectious disease | Inner workings
Tagged antigen, COVID-19, COVID-19 testing, CRISPR, EUA, FDA, LAMP, nucleic acid, PCR, SARS-Cov-2
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The hippocampus has brief but critical role in early task learning
How the brain learns new tasks is among the biggest and oldest questions in neuroscience. A recent study in Nature Neuroscience offers a new, potentially key part of the answer: the dorsal hippocampus is involved in the earliest stages of … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Neuroscience
Tagged Alzheimer's disease, chemogenetics, decision-making, dorsal hippocampus, hippocampus, learning, memory, neuron
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Insects, not just wind, offer an ancient mechanism of orchid seed dispersal
On Yakushima Island, at the southern tip of Japan, an orchid employs a very unusual strategy to disperse its seeds. Crickets visit the orchid at night, eat its fruits, and defecate the seeds in the vicinity. The discovery, reported recently … Continue reading
Deep-sea mussels still show biological rhythms tracking sunlight, tides
Like many land animals, marine organisms follow daily and seasonal clocks—in the water, those clocks are set by the cadence of the sun and the moon. But researchers hadn’t known if deep-sea creatures also exhibit biological rhythms, tucked away in … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged chronobiology, circadian rhythms, deep sea, marine ecosystem, tides
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People who are likely to dismiss journalism as “fake news” tend to believe the world is predictable
The notion of “fake news” spread like wildfire in the United States after the 2016 election. Recent research in Psychological Science tried to determine what psychological factors drove this concept—generally defined as the suspicion that politically-biased news outlets produce deliberately … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Tagged fake news, need for structure, psychology, social psychology
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Seasonality shapes coevolution of parasites and hosts
Parasites and their hosts coevolve in an arms race influenced by environmental conditions. Seasonal change, for example, can shape the course of evolution, but precisely how has been something of a mystery. A recent study used lab experiments and mathematical … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Evolution | Journal Club | Mathematics
Tagged bacteriophage, coevolution, host, parasite, phage, pseudomonas
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Snake venom evolved in fits and spurts
The cocktail of toxins in snake venom experienced constant change with pulses of rapid evolution over the last 60 million years, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Venom, the researchers report, has changed … Continue reading
Categories: Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club
Tagged diversification, phylogenetics, RNA expression, snake, speciation, toxin, venom
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Trends in conservation funding track popular narratives about the illegal wildlife trade
Trends in conservation funding are changing, according to a recent study in World Development. “We see a shift toward funding conservation work that’s increasingly about combatting wildlife trafficking,” says coauthor Jared Margulies, a human-environment geographer at the University of Alabama … Continue reading
Categories: Ecology | Journal Club | Political Science | Social Sciences
Tagged conservation, COVID-19, illegal wildlife trade, novel coronavirus, wildlife
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PREVIEW Inner Workings: Molecular biologists offer “wartime service” in the effort to test for COVID-19
*Editor’s Note: We’re providing a preview of this content due to the urgent and rapidly unfolding events surrounding the novel coronavirus pandemic. An updated version will appear in PNAS in the coming weeks. As COVID-19 spreads, communities across the United … Continue reading
Categories: Inner workings | Medical Sciences
Tagged coronavirus, COVID-19, COVID-19 testing, pandemic, qPCR, RNA extraction, SARS-Cov-2
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