Current Biology最新文献

{"title":"Chemodiverse cell system responses to UV in an algal sister of land plants.","authors":"Cäcilia F Kunz, Ilka N Abreu, Tatyana Darienko, Janine Fürst-Jansen, Kirstin Feussner, Ivo Feussner, Maike Lorenz, Jan de Vries","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Plant terrestrialization necessitated overcoming a barrage of stressors.¹ Embryophytes (land plants) use an integrated response network to adjust their molecular physiology in response to terrestrial stressors²-one of the important stressors is UV irradiance. The zygnematophytes are the closest streptophyte algal relatives of embryophytes,³^,⁴^,⁵^,⁶ renowned for their UV resilience⁷^,⁸^,⁹ and key for inferring the UV response toolkit of the earliest embryophytes.¹⁰^,¹¹ Throughout evolution, specialized metabolism radiated, yielding chemodiverse responses to environmental challenges¹²^,¹³^,¹⁴^,¹⁵ ranging from UV-shielding flavonoids and coumarins to the polymer lignin of tracheophytes¹⁶; homologs of the underpinning core pathway occur in streptophyte algae.¹⁷ Here, we exposed the zygnematophyte Mesotaenium to UV-B irradiation and profiled its physiological, morphological, transcriptomic, and metabolomic features. After UV-B exposure, the cells showed rapid photophysiological responses and progressively growing terminal vacuoles. Our transcriptome data capture dynamic changes in gene expression in (1) core downstream homologs of phenol metabolic enzymes, photophysiological homeostats, and DNA repair factors and (2) upstream components featuring key homologs of kinase-mediated signaling cascades, as well as light quality and abscisic acid-mediated signaling components. To scrutinize the acclimatory chassis, we created a metabolite feature database specifically for the Mesotaenium metabolome. The metabolome displayed pronounced temporal shifts, with several phenolic features that accumulate along the UV-stress-acclimation kinetics. Overall, we capture chemodiverse responses, including various phenolics such as methoxypsoralen-like derivatives and coumarins. We establish an integrated model for UV responses in the closest algal relatives of embryophytes, illuminating the toolkit that allowed the progenitors of embryophytes to move out of a protective water column.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Aha moment precedes the strategic response to a visuomotor rotation.","authors":"Max Townsend, Matthew Warburton, Carlo Campagnoli, Mark Mon-Williams, Faisal Mushtaq, J Ryan Morehead","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.021","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Strategic behavior in sensorimotor adaptation tasks is typically described as either a gradual error-minimization process or as a process of learning through trial and error. The former predicts a gradual monotonic reduction in error, until some asymptote, while the latter predicts behavioral exploration to discover an efficacious solution. Another explanation is that a sufficiently rich understanding of the task culminates in an \"Aha!\" moment and that this richer understanding naturally entails a new strategy. This predicts some period of perseveration in baseline behavior, followed by an abrupt shift to a new strategic solution. To avoid obfuscation caused by the motor system, we first investigated these hypotheses in a strategy-only aiming game, where participants aim and fire a cannon at targets. Most participants exhibited a period of baseline perseveration followed by a single-trial shift to a distinct strategy. This strategy typically appears to produce the correct compensatory magnitude for a noisily estimated perturbation, as well as substantial variability in compensatory sign. We then applied the same analyses to reaching data from a visuomotor rotation task that inhibited implicit adaptation through delaying feedback presentation. Similarly, we found that participants typically perseverated in reaching toward the target before suddenly switching, in a single trial, to good performance in compensatory magnitude. We fit our generative \"Aha!\" model to 1,337 participants across several datasets and show that it faithfully captures these phenomena. Our findings highlight the need to update existing models to account for the abrupt, insight-driven shifts that characterize individual human responses to sensorimotor perturbations.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147834979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Chemosensory evolution in the aquatic predator Drosophila enhydrobia.","authors":"Hamid Reza Ghanavi, Antoine Touret, Héloïse Bastide, Amir Yassin, Marcus C Stensmyr","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.024","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>From the Wunderkammern of Renaissance Europe to the curated vaults of today's natural history museums, millions of insect specimens have been preserved, capturing an irreplaceable chronicle of biodiversity, including lineages that are rare, highly specialized, or already extinct. Yet their fragility has historically constrained genomic inquiry. Here, we apply museomic methodology to a >40-year-old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rarely collected member of the enigmatic simulivora group whose fully aquatic obligate predatory larvae develop in fast-flowing streams where they hunt black fly and midge larvae. Despite the specimen's age, we recovered a highly complete genome, enabling both phylogenetic and comparative analyses of one of the most ecologically unusual drosophilids. Phylogenomic inference places this African lineage within the subgenus Siphlodora, closely allied to Oriental riparian specialists, revealing that the simulivora lineage represents an extreme extension of an ancestral, water-associated niche rather than an isolated evolutionary departure. Comparative genomic analyses identify focused reductions in gene families associated with cuticle formation, detoxification, metabolism, and chemosensation, consistent with a highly specialized aquatic and carnivorous lifestyle. Expanding our framework to 30 additional species, sampled from within Siphlodora, including two more genomes recovered from museum specimens, we find that D. enhydrobia sits at the extreme of chemosensory reduction and simplification, even in comparison with other siphlodoran specialists, which display patterns of gain, loss, or stasis. Selection analyses reveal that these reductions are not accompanied by pervasive relaxation. Instead, a subset of retained chemosensory genes shows intensified selection, suggesting functional refinement rather than wholesale decay.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Disease and bleaching drive divergent net carbonate production across Caribbean reef systems.","authors":"Lorenzo Álvarez-Filip, Chris T Perry, Esmeralda Pérez-Cervantes, Ana Molina-Hernández, Didier M de Bakker, Alice E Webb, Rodolfo Rioja-Nieto, Alexis Medina-Valmaseda","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.017","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Over the past decades, persistent environmental degradation has compromised the ability of many tropical reefs to maintain positive carbonate budgets-fundamental indicators of reef growth potential and critical to maintaining structural complexity and ecosystem function.¹ This chronic deterioration is exacerbated by extreme climate-induced disturbances, which can abruptly tip the balance from net carbonate production to net erosion at regional to global scales. The 2023 thermal stress event caused the most extensive and severe global reef stress on record.² Here, we assess its impact on carbonate budgets across 68 reef sites in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Notably, the Caribbean sites were also affected by the recent stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) outbreak,³ providing a unique opportunity to differentiate thermal stress impacts both individually (GoM) and in combination with SCTLD (Caribbean). We show that 70%-75% of Caribbean reef sites shifted to net-erosional states following the heat stress, driven by widespread loss of branching and plate-forming corals. These impacts compounded previous SCTLD effects, which had already significantly reduced large and massive taxa. By contrast, GoM reefs, unaffected by SCTLD, largely retained positive carbonate budgets due to the dominance of massive reef builders that better resisted heat-related mortality. These divergent responses highlight how differences in community composition, even between adjacent biogeographic regions, determine the vulnerability of carbonate production to acute thermal stress events and underscore the urgent need for targeted management and global climate mitigation to preserve reef ecosystems.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Prenatal behavioral contagion through maternal yawning and fetal resonance.","authors":"Giulia D'Adamo, Andrea Dall'Asta, Martina Ardizzi, Sara Sorrentino, Valentina Mora, Giulia Arenare, Piernicola D'Amario, Mariagrazia Capurso, Francesca Ferroni, Dmitri Ollari Ischimji, Claudio Ferrari, Tullio Ghi, Vittorio Gallese","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Yawning is a phylogenetically preserved and highly stereotyped behavior observed across vertebrates.¹ In humans, it emerges early in development, as it is already present prenatally.²^,³ Qualitative studies show that fetal yawns display a structured motor pattern closely resembling adult yawns, suggesting a role in early sensorimotor organization,⁴^,⁵ and they have been proposed to support the maturation of brainstem central pattern generators and early synaptic development.⁶^,⁷ Due to its early emergence in development, prenatal yawning has largely been interpreted as driven by endogenous programs, whereas in postnatal life, yawning can also be shaped by the social context through contagion, a phenomenon linked to sensorimotor mirroring and affective attunement.⁸^,⁹ Here, we tested whether prenatal yawning may also be modulated by maternal behavior. Using ultrasound recordings of fetal facial activity combined with controlled elicitation of maternal yawning, we show that fetal yawning selectively increases following maternal yawns but not during non-contagious control conditions. Temporal analyses reveal structured coordination between maternal and fetal yawning, and machine-learning classification identifies shared kinematic signatures across maternal and fetal yawns. These findings suggest that fetal yawning might also be embedded within a dyadic sensorimotor context in which maternal behavior shapes fetal expression, suggesting that forms of behavioral resonance and embodied alignment precede birth and contribute to the early foundations of social attunement.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sleep: Melatonin dims the lights on wakefulness.","authors":"Talia K Pittman, Jason Rihel","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.071","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The hormone melatonin is one of the most widely used over-the-counter sleep aids, yet, rather surprisingly, how it promotes sleep is not understood. A new study shows that melatonin uses a specific receptor to simultaneously stimulate sleep and dampen the brain's responsiveness to visual inputs.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"36 9","pages":"R391-R393"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147835016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mechanoregulation of basal body integrity during Plasmodium exflagellation.","authors":"Jiepeng Guan, Yujiao Gong, Wenqi Liang, Huiting Cui, Jing Yuan","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.068","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.068","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Constant mechanical stress challenges the structural integrity of cell systems. During malaria parasite transmission from mammal to mosquito, Plasmodium male gametogenesis features a unique axoneme release pattern characterized by basal body first, axoneme following. Substantial mechanical stress from axonemal beating threatens basal body integrity during axoneme exflagellation. However, how Plasmodium adapts to such mechanical stress and maintains the structural integrity of the basal body remains elusive. In this study, we identified a conserved Plasmodium protein, Calcifer, essential for male gamete formation and mosquito transmission of the parasite. Calcifer translocates to the basal body after axoneme assembly and persists during exflagellation, which is distinct from canonical basal body proteins. Parasites lacking Calcifer form intact axonemes but show rapid axoneme disintegration during exflagellation, a defect that can be rescued by inhibiting axoneme beating. In vivo and in vitro assays revealed that Calcifer directly stabilizes basal body integrity under mechanical forces generated by axoneme beating. Calcifer forms a wrapping structure around the basal body at the axoneme minus end, providing resistance to mechanical stress. Our findings elucidate a mechanical stabilization mechanism of the basal body that resists axoneme-beating-induced mechanical stress and reveal Calcifer as a key factor safeguarding basal body integrity during Plasmodium axoneme exflagellation.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"2314-2330.e4"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147765651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Soybean.","authors":"Zongbiao Duan, Chao Fang, Shulin Liu, Hai Nian, Guoan Zhou, Zhixi Tian","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.039","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Soybean (Glycine max) is the fourth most important crop in the world and a major source of plant-based protein and lipids for human consumption and livestock feed. According to archaeological findings, soybean cultivation began in central China around 5,000-6,000 years ago. Cultivated soybean seeds typically contain approximately 35% or more protein, making soybean products a vital nutritional resource due to their rich protein content and accessibility during periods of nutrient deficiency in human history. Previous studies have shown that well-processed soybean protein products can effectively substitute for meat and fish proteins without compromising dietary nitrogen utilization in adults. Soybeans also contain several bioactive components, including isoflavones, saponins, lecithin, and oligosaccharides.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"36 9","pages":"R370-R374"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147834965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rapid growth in a Neandertal infant from Amud Cave in Israel.","authors":"Ella Been, Erella Hovers, Yoel Rak, Adeline Le Cabec, Christopher Dean, Alon Barash","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.054","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.054","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Neandertal infants are rarely found, with only a few individuals documented in the literature. Therefore, their growth and development remain poorly understood. Amud 7 is the articulated skeleton of an infant Neandertal discovered in Amud Cave, northern Israel.¹^,² The cave was excavated in the 1960s¹ and the 1990s²^,³^,⁴^,⁵^,⁶^,⁷^,⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰^,¹¹ and has yielded several human remains with distinct Neandertal affinities,¹^,⁹^,¹⁰^,¹¹^,¹²^,¹³^,¹⁴ as well as Middle Paleolithic stone tool assemblages,¹⁵^,¹⁶^,¹⁷^,¹⁸^,¹⁹^,²⁰^,²¹ dated to approximately 51-56 thousand years old.²²^,²³ Nearly 111 skeletal pieces of Amud 7 were found in situ, of which only the cranial bones were thoroughly described.²⁴^,²⁵^,²⁶^,²⁷ It is the most complete Neandertal infant assigned to the 6- to 14-month age range. As such, it plays a significant role in our understanding of Neandertal paleobiology. The skeleton exhibits distinct Neandertal affinities in both cranial and postcranial remains, and its morphological features shed light on Neandertal phylogeny, growth, and development. Most notably, the infant exhibits signs of unusually rapid somatic growth, suggesting that Neandertals had a distinct developmental strategy in early life. Other rare Neandertal infants show the same pattern of accelerated early somatic and endocranial growth, suggesting a consistent difference in how our evolutionary relatives developed. Simultaneously supporting faster somatic growth and brain development would have resulted in high energetic demands. These findings emphasize the diversity of developmental strategies among hominin species and demonstrate that Neandertals might have followed a different developmental path, distinguishing them from H. sapiens.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"2434-2441.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147698100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Molecular pathways for learning in the single-cell Stentor coeruleus.","authors":"Deepa H Rajan, Ashley Albright, Hyeyoon Kim, Ulises Diaz, Yina Hudnall, Niklas Steube, Gautam Dey, Tao Liu, Wallace F Marshall","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.080","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.080","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The single-cell Stentor coeruleus contracts in response to mechanical taps but habituates and learns to ignore the taps after repeated stimulation. Here, we explored the molecular changes that occur during the formation of this cellular memory in order to improve our understanding of non-synaptic learning. We impaired cellular protein synthesis with cycloheximide and puromycin and found that, contrary to the effects of such treatments on metazoa, these drugs accelerate habituation and prolong memory retention in Stentor. Exploratory proteomic and transcriptomic analyses identified candidate proteins and genes that changed over the course of habituation and response recovery, pointing toward the regulation of Stentor learning by calcium signaling and protein phosphorylation. Building on these results, we found that using RNA interference to knock down the calcium-binding, EF-hand domain-containing protein SteCoe_6763 accelerated habituation. Furthermore, increased extracellular calcium improved Stentor learning, while treatment with kinase and phosphatase inhibitors impaired learning. In particular, KN-93, a drug known to inhibit calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase II and voltage-gated calcium channels, decreased both the rate and extent of habituation in Stentor, similar to its effects on learning in metazoa. We also discovered that habituation memory can be maintained in progeny following cell division. Taken together, these results suggest that response recovery in Stentor requires new protein synthesis and that memory formation involves the modification of delocalized mechanoreceptors by phosphorylation and calcium signaling. This is consistent with our previous model of Stentor learning, in which habituation occurs through the inactivation of cell-surface receptors.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"2367-2381.e9"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147765587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}