Current Biology最新文献

Simple frequency ratios naturally make precisely perceived melodies.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Epub Date: 2025-03-12 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.030

Laurent Demany, Catherine Semal, Daniel Pressnitzer

{"title":"Simple frequency ratios naturally make precisely perceived melodies.","authors":"Laurent Demany, Catherine Semal, Daniel Pressnitzer","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.030","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.030","url":null,"abstract":"Almost all human music is built on discrete scales of pitch.1 Culturally prominent scales, such as the diatonic major scale of Western music, make use of the simple frequency ratios 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3 between notes.2 It is generally believed that these ratios were chosen to optimize the consonance of simultaneous notes.3,4,5,6,7 Alternatively, or in addition, it is conceivable that these ratios are intrinsically advantageous for the perceptual encoding of melodies.8,9,10,11,12 Here, we provide behavioral support for this hypothesis. In three experiments, young Western adults had to detect pitch anomalies (\"sour notes\") in partly random pure-tone melodies based on various musical scales, including novel ones. The task did not require any musical knowledge. Most importantly, the listeners were extensively trained in order to saturate familiarity with the scales: for a given scale and listener, more than 2,000 (up to 5,280) trials were run. Practice largely improved performance. This occurred even for the diatonic major scale, suggesting that performance in our task was not biased by previous musical enculturation.13,14 Frequency ratio simplicity also favored performance. Crucially, its benefit was not smaller in the final test sessions, when performance for each scale was presumably optimal and no longer improvable by practice, than in the initial test sessions. Thus, frequency ratio simplicity appeared to be intrinsically advantageous, rather than advantageous merely due to familiarity. The naturalness of melodic intervals defined by simple frequency ratios is likely to have contributed to the cultural selection of musical scales.","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1649-1655.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143623893","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}

引用次数: 0

A loss of stomata exposes a critical vulnerability to variable atmospheric humidity in ferns.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Epub Date: 2025-03-18 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.043

Marc Carriquí, Josep Fortesa, Timothy J Brodribb

引用次数: 0

Island-wide removal of honeybees reveals exploitative trophic competition with strongly declining wild bee populations.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Epub Date: 2025-03-19 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.048

Lorenzo Pasquali, Claudia Bruschini, Fulvia Benetello, Marco Bonifacino, Francesca Giannini, Elisa Monterastelli, Marco Penco, Sabrina Pesarini, Vania Salvati, Giulia Simbula, Marta Skowron Volponi, Stefania Smargiassi, Elia van Tongeren, Giorgio Vicari, Alessandro Cini, Leonardo Dapporto

{"title":"Island-wide removal of honeybees reveals exploitative trophic competition with strongly declining wild bee populations.","authors":"Lorenzo Pasquali, Claudia Bruschini, Fulvia Benetello, Marco Bonifacino, Francesca Giannini, Elisa Monterastelli, Marco Penco, Sabrina Pesarini, Vania Salvati, Giulia Simbula, Marta Skowron Volponi, Stefania Smargiassi, Elia van Tongeren, Giorgio Vicari, Alessandro Cini, Leonardo Dapporto","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.048","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.048","url":null,"abstract":"High densities of managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) can threaten wild bees through exploitative competition, thus leading to population declines of the latter. Although reviews have outlined key steps to demonstrate these impacts-measuring resource overlap, changes in wild bee behavior, and population trends-studies that comprehensively address these aspects are virtually absent. We were granted access to the entire protected island of Giannutri (2.6 km2) and to the apiary (18 hives) located there during the early phase of coexistence between honeybees and wild bees. Using the island as an open-air laboratory, we experimentally manipulated honeybee pressure by closing the hives on selected days during the peak of the wild bee foraging period. In the plants most visited by pollinators, even short-term honeybee removals (11 h per day) increased nectar volume (∼60%) and pollen availability (∼30%). In the absence of honeybees, target wild bees (Anthophora dispar and Bombus terrestris) became dominant in the insect-plant visitation network, and the potential apparent competition significantly decreased. Accordingly, both species intensified their foraging activity and increased nectar suction time, a recognized proxy for the quantity of probed nectar, and Bombus terrestris also shortened the time of pollen searching. Transect monitoring revealed an alarming ∼80% decline in both species over 4 years, consistent with honeybee monopolization of floral resources, thus reducing availability for wild pollinators and altering their foraging budget. These findings underscore the risks of introducing high densities of honeybees into protected areas and emphasize the need for rigorous preventive ecological assessments.","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1576-1590.e12"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143669389","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}

引用次数: 0

Ecosystem condition emerges from an ecological equation of state applied to North American tree communities.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.062

Jake Williams, Nathalie Pettorelli

{"title":"Ecosystem condition emerges from an ecological equation of state applied to North American tree communities.","authors":"Jake Williams, Nathalie Pettorelli","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.062","url":null,"abstract":"Ecosystems represent the largest scales of biological organization and shape the ecology and evolution of genes, populations, species, and communities. Yet we lack an understanding of the key properties of ecosystems-the state variables-that must be tracked to predict changes in ecosystem condition through time,1,2,3 instead commonly relying on reference states.4,5 A recently published ecological equation of state demonstrated a strong relationship between biomass, species richness, organism abundance, and productivity, suggesting the untested possibility that this relationship may systematically vary under ecological disturbance (i.e., vary with ecosystem condition).6 To test this idea, we investigate how the performance of the ecological equation of state relates to expected ecosystem condition (derived from protected area data) using satellite-derived proxies for the forests of the conterminous USA. We found that, despite the noise introduced by the use of satellite-derived proxies, the performance of the ecological equation of state in predicting biomass varied systematically with expected ecosystem condition. Moreover, differences in equation performance could be used to identify areas with different expected ecosystem condition. This differential performance was stronger in the equation of state than in correlative models fit to the same data, though similar to patterns seen in the relationship between productivity and biomass. These findings suggest deeper underlying regularities linking ecosystem condition and state variables and the potential to break ecology's dependence on reference states. Further investigation of these relationships may reveal new principles of ecosystem dynamics, which are vital to informing global biodiversity conservation efforts.","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 7","pages":"1672-1679.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143810798","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}

引用次数: 0

Plasma membrane folding enables constant surface area-to-volume ratio in growing mammalian cells.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Epub Date: 2025-03-17 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.051

Weida Wu, Alice R Lam, Kayla Suarez, Grace N Smith, Sarah M Duquette, Jiaquan Yu, David Mankus, Margaret Bisher, Abigail Lytton-Jean, Scott R Manalis, Teemu P Miettinen

{"title":"Plasma membrane folding enables constant surface area-to-volume ratio in growing mammalian cells.","authors":"Weida Wu, Alice R Lam, Kayla Suarez, Grace N Smith, Sarah M Duquette, Jiaquan Yu, David Mankus, Margaret Bisher, Abigail Lytton-Jean, Scott R Manalis, Teemu P Miettinen","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.051","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.051","url":null,"abstract":"All cells are subject to geometric constraints, including the surface area-to-volume (SA/V) ratio, which can limit nutrient uptake, maximum cell size, and cell shape changes. Like the SA/V ratio of a sphere, it is generally assumed that the SA/V ratio of cells decreases as cell size increases. However, the structural complexity of the plasma membrane makes studies of the surface area challenging in cells that lack a cell wall. Here, we investigate near-spherical mammalian cells using single-cell measurements of cell mass and plasma membrane proteins and lipids, which allow us to examine the cell size scaling of cell surface components as a proxy for the SA/V ratio. Surprisingly, in various proliferating cell lines, cell surface components scale proportionally with cell size, indicating a nearly constant SA/V ratio as cells grow larger. This behavior is largely independent of the cell-cycle stage and is also observed in quiescent cells, including primary human monocytes. Moreover, the constant SA/V ratio persists when cell size increases excessively during polyploidization. This is enabled by increased plasma membrane folding in larger cells, as verified by electron microscopy. We also observe that specific cell surface proteins and cholesterol can deviate from the proportional size scaling. Overall, maintaining a constant SA/V ratio ensures sufficient plasma membrane area for critical functions such as cell division, nutrient uptake, growth, and deformation across a wide range of cell sizes.","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1601-1611.e5"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143656368","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}

引用次数: 0

Neural circuit assembly: A sticky cue that connects neurons with a preference for hue.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.065

Mrinalini Hoon

引用次数: 0

Polyploid cyanobacterial genomes provide a reservoir of mutations, allowing rapid evolution of herbicide resistance.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Epub Date: 2025-03-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.044

Alberto Scarampi, Joshua M Lawrence, Paolo Bombelli, Darius Kosmützky, Jenny Z Zhang, Christopher J Howe

{"title":"Polyploid cyanobacterial genomes provide a reservoir of mutations, allowing rapid evolution of herbicide resistance.","authors":"Alberto Scarampi, Joshua M Lawrence, Paolo Bombelli, Darius Kosmützky, Jenny Z Zhang, Christopher J Howe","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.044","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.044","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive mechanisms in bacteria, which are widely assumed to be haploid or partially diploid, are thought to rely on the emergence of spontaneous mutations or lateral gene transfer from a reservoir of pre-existing variants within the surrounding environment. These variants then become fixed in the population upon exposure to selective pressures. Here, we show that multiple distinct wild-type (WT) substrains of the highly polyploid cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 can adapt rapidly to the potent herbicide methyl viologen (MV). Genome sequencing revealed that the mutations responsible for adaptation to MV were already present prior to selection in the genomes of the unadapted parental strains at low allelic frequencies. This indicates that chromosomal polyploidy in bacteria can provide cells with a reservoir of conditionally beneficial mutations that can become rapidly enriched and fixed upon selection. MV-resistant strains performed oxygenic photosynthesis less efficiently than WTs when MV was absent, suggesting trade-offs in cellular fitness associated with the evolution of MV resistance and a possible role for balancing selection in the maintenance of these alleles under ecologically relevant growth conditions. Resistance was associated with reduced intracellular accumulation of MV. Our results indicate that genome polyploidy plays a role in the rapid adaptation of some bacteria to stressful conditions, which may include xenobiotics, nutrient limitation, environmental stresses, and seasonal changes.","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1549-1561.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143691562","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}

引用次数: 0

Passive responses in mouse hind leg locomotion. 小鼠后腿运动中的被动反应

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Epub Date: 2025-03-20 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.048

Scott L Hooper, Christoph Guschlbauer, Frederique Wieters, Markus Aswendt, Ansgar Büschges

{"title":"Passive responses in mouse hind leg locomotion.","authors":"Scott L Hooper, Christoph Guschlbauer, Frederique Wieters, Markus Aswendt, Ansgar Büschges","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.048","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.048","url":null,"abstract":"Mice are of a size at which passive joint and muscle forces should be important in leg movements. To investigate this issue, we measured, in anesthetized mice, hind leg passive movements in response to changes in animal orientation relative to gravity and to manual deflections of the leg. Changing gravity orientation did not rotate leg joints to their physiological extremes, indicating that passive responses limit joint rotation range. The manual leg deflections were sufficient to achieve joint angles overlapping those present in published descriptions of mouse locomotion. Upon release from these deflections, the legs returned to intermediate postures. These results show that passive responses are (1) present at locomotory joint angles and (2) sufficiently large, at these angles, to move the leg. Return amplitude depended linearly on deflection amplitude. The slope of this dependence was the same across leg joints, suggesting it is evolutionarily or developmentally selected for. Combining the extremes of our passive response data and published descriptions of joint angles during mouse locomotion (e.g., most-flexed passive response mouse with most-extended published locomotion pattern) allowed determining when in a locomotory cycle passive responses could be definitely extending or flexing. In three of these four combinations, only extending passive responses could be definitely present in the locomotory patterns. In the fourth, alternatively, both extending and flexing passive responses could be definitely present. Passive responses thus likely act during mouse hind leg locomotion, but their amplitude and even sign may vary across individual mice.","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1459-1469.e4"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143673601","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}

引用次数: 0

Germ cell development: Polar granules and PIPs - best buds forever.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.057

Marynelle S Icmat, Julie A Brill

引用次数: 0

Iain Mathieson.

IF 8.1 1区生物学

Current Biology Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.005

Iain Mathieson

引用次数: 0