Professor Masayuki Onishi has published “Cleavage-furrow formation without F-actin in Chlamydomonas”(PNAS Aug. 4, 2020. 117 (31): 18511ff.) based on postdoctoral research he did at Stanford. Masa studied how cells without a canonical division machinery, the contractile actomyosin ring, can form a cleavage furrow.
Congratulations to Professor Gustavo Silva! Gustavo's lab has been awarded a 5-year NIH R35 MIRA grant to study the roles of ubiquitin in translation control under stress.
The journal Cell has published a new study by Dr. Raul Zavaliev and colleagues in Xinnian Dong’s group. Formation of NPR1 Condensates Promotes Cell Survival during the Plant Immune Response sheds light on the biochemical function of the plant immune regulator NPR1. Activated by salicylic acid, it promotes cell survival against a broad spectrum of pathogens and environmental stresses by forming protein condensates.
Take it from Carlos Taboada, postdoc in the Johnson Lab. He and his collaborators have published a deep dive into frogs’ green coloration in PNAS, “Multiple Origins of Green Coloration in Frogs Mediated by a Novel Biliverdin-Binding Serpin.” While most species of frogs produce their color in the usual way, by chromatophores or pigment-carrying cells in the skin, a subset has very few chromatophores. These species, which are mostly treefrogs, have transparent skin as well as a phenomenal excess
Davis, with colleagues in the Johnsen Lab and the Smithsonian, trawled Monterey Bay and the Gulf of Mexico for fish living a mile deep, where almost no light penetrates. The results of their quest have been published in “Ultra-black Camouflage in Deep-Sea Fishes." Predators at that depth use bioluminescence to locate prey. After finding 18 different species, Davis et al.
How did the oaks come to rule North American forests? As champions of diversification and hybridization the oaks both became essential species in forest ecology and created a baffling evolutionary history.
With such a prosaic name, you’d think basement membranes were no big deal-a stable substrate for cellular activity. But the Sherwood lab has come out with an important paper demonstrating their significance as active players in the dance of life (“Comprehensive Endogenous Tagging of Basement Membrane Components Reveals Dynamic Movement within the Matrix Scaffolding.” Dev Cell.
Biograd Alex Davis and Sonke Johnson et al. have published “Evidence That Eye-Facing Photophores Serve as a Reference for Counterillumination inan Order of Deep-Sea Fishes” in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, June 2, 2020. The paper examines three families of fish who live at intermediate depths with some light from the surface, and whose bodies therefore cast a shadow downward. In order to make the shadow disappear, they must match the light output from photophores on their bellies to the local ambience.
Bio Grad Songhui Zhao, Neurobiology grad Bryson Deanhardt (co-first authors), and Professor Pelin Volkan have published significant findings in Science Advances: “Chromatin-based reprogramming of a courtship regulator by concurrent pheromone perception and hormone signaling.” It has been understood that mature male flies use their sense of smell to determine when and with whom to mate, and further that male flies raised in isolation are less able to detect female pheromones. This paper descr
Like many Duke faculty Sherryl Broverman was forced to convert her class “AIDS and Other Emerging Diseases” from a large lecture addressing 200 or more students to an online conversation. Even she was surprised, though, by how quickly the medium influenced the message. “For my first Zoom class, on a Tuesday, I sat at my desk and wore a blazer. By Thursday, I was on my couch and it was just more like having a conversation. My cat even visited.”