Current Biology最新文献

{"title":"Avian germline-restricted chromosomes are reservoirs for active and expressed long-terminal-repeat retroviruses.","authors":"Bohao Fang, Scott V Edwards","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.091","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Germline-restricted chromosomes (GRCs) occur only in germ cells and are absent from somatic cells in songbirds, but their contents and evolutionary mechanisms remain poorly understood. We performed comparative genomics on long-read GRC assemblies from male house finch (HF) (Haemorhous mexicanus), common rosefinch (RF) (Carpodacus erythrinus), and blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus), the first two of which are newly assembled and annotated. The assemblies vary widely in size (6.5-168.4 Mb) and gene content; whereas most GRC-linked genes are species specific, a small conserved set predates the diversification of passerine birds 47 mya. Despite genic variability, GRCs are consistently repeat rich (63.7%-79.5%) and accumulate intact endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) with long terminal repeats (LTRs). This ERV proliferation peaked during the passerine radiation. In contrast, regular chromosomes purge ERVs to generate solo LTRs. Transcriptomic data reveal significantly higher ERV transcription on GRCs than on regular chromosomes in HF testis. We propose that GRCs act as reservoirs of active ERVs, potentially promoting germline transposition and accelerating speciation.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149264307","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":"Effector-triggered immunity in oilseed crops is expanded despite the restricted specificity of the receptor ZAR1.","authors":"Clare Breit-McNally, Yan Lai, Rong Xiao, Olivia Mazzurco, Carina Lyons, Racquel A Singh, Alexandre Martel, Derek Seto, Isobel A P Parkin, Darrell Desveaux, David S Guttman","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.076","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Effector-triggered immunity (ETI), mediated by nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat immune receptors (NLRs), plays a critical role in protecting plants from pathogens. While the scope of ETI elicited by Pseudomonas syringae type III effectors on Arabidopsis thaliana has been characterized, no equivalent study has been performed on related oilseed crops, limiting our ability to translate fundamental plant immunity research into crop protection strategies. Here, we present a comprehensive screen of the ETI landscapes in Brassicaceous oilseeds Brassica napus (canola) and Camelina sativa (false flax) using 529 P. syringae effectors. We found that 44.6% and 55.4% of the 65 effector families contained alleles that elicited ETI in B. napus and C. sativa, respectively. Mapping ETI-elicitor homologs onto a P. syringae phylogeny revealed that 79% and 88% of strains carry three or more predicted ETI elicitors in B. napus and C. sativa, suggesting a significant ETI load against P. syringae in oilseeds. Oilseed ETI landscapes are expanded relative to A. thaliana, and the number of ETI responses is correlated with the species' NLR repertoire size and ploidy. Interestingly, while the A. thaliana ETI profile is smaller than the two oilseed crops, A. thaliana ETI responses are generally stronger. Further, the A. thaliana ZAR1 NLR has a broader effector recognition spectrum than ZAR1 in B. napus or C. sativa, supporting a role for convergent evolution in expanding immunodiversity. Overall, our findings reveal an expanded functional diversity of crop immune systems compared with a wild relative and highlight both ETI conservation and the divergence of recognition mechanisms.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149264314","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":"The antimicrobial peptide pileup promotes enterocyte shedding to maintain gut homeostasis in aging Drosophila.","authors":"Ji-Hoon Lee, Sung-Hee Kim, Eun-Kyoung Kim, Kyung-Ah Lee, Jinhyuk Bhin, Daehee Hwang, Dong Gun Lee, Yong-Sun Bahn, Won-Jae Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.077","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cellular turnover is a fundamental biological process that counteracts aging by activating stem cells to replace aging cells. This process is especially critical for maintaining the intestinal epithelium, one of the most rapidly renewing tissues in the body. However, the replacement of aging enterocytes cannot be explained solely by the generation of new cells from intestinal stem cells (ISCs); it also requires the complementary process of physically removing aging enterocytes through shedding. Compared with the well-characterized regulation of ISCs, the mechanisms governing enterocyte shedding remain poorly understood. Here, we identify pileup, a novel age-associated antimicrobial peptide (AMP) in Drosophila, as both a genetic marker and a key regulator of enterocyte shedding. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated through age-related mitochondrial dysfunction, a process facilitated by Autophagy-related gene 1 (ATG1) kinase, activate hypoxia-inducible factor 1α, which induces pileup expression specifically in aging enterocytes. Pileup then compromises the membrane of these cells and triggers c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) activation, which we propose promotes their shedding. Notably, pileup has three homologs, and loss of all four genes leads to tumorous cell accumulation, gut barrier dysfunction, microbiome dysbiosis, and premature death. Our findings reveal a previously unrecognized role for AMPs in the turnover of aging host cells, extending their classical function beyond microbial defense. This work provides new mechanistic insights into enterocyte shedding and underscores its essential role in preserving gut homeostasis during aging.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149264365","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":"Environment-specific virtual head direction representation in the human anteroventral thalamus during memory-guided spatial orientation.","authors":"Pengcheng Lv, Dong Chen, Chao Zhang, Kai Zhang, Liang Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.087","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Knowing which way you are facing is essential for navigation. In animals, a dedicated set of neurons-head direction cells-acts as an internal compass: each cell fires most strongly when the animal faces a particular direction. The anterior thalamus is a key hub for this system. In humans, however, direct electrophysiological evidence for a comparable head direction signal remains limited. To address this gap, we recorded intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) from the anteroventral thalamus (AVT) in patients with epilepsy while they performed a virtual navigation task. We analyzed neural activity during in-place rotation to isolate virtual head direction (vHD) information. Using inverted encoding models applied to multi-band neural activity, we reconstructed continuous vHD within two distinct virtual environments. Critically, the decoders failed to generalize across environments, indicating that the AVT vHD representation is environment specific rather than a fixed, universal map. This encoding was observed in the AVT and was temporally specific to rotation epochs; no significant encoding was detected in the pulvinar, another thalamic subregion not part of the classic head direction network in rodents. Together, these findings suggest that the human AVT carries environment-specific vHD information, bridging a gap between animal models and human navigation and highlighting a potential link to spatial disorientation disorders.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149264363","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":"Infants respond to alterations in their own voice months before they recognize themselves in the mirror.","authors":"Margherita Belia, Fannie Fabre, Camille Borel, Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Nathan Faivre, Louise Goupil","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.089","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recognizing our body as our own grounds our perceptions, actions, and social interactions. Even newborns detect cross-modal links between self-related perceptions,¹ considered necessary for body ownership.² Yet, clear evidence for a sense of ownership only appears once children not simply detect but also correct mismatches between predicted and perceived self-related sensorimotor inputs. So far, this has mostly been measured using mirror self-recognition, which revealed that children typically do not start recognizing themselves before 18 months of age.³^,⁴^,⁵ Infants rarely see their own face, however, and mirror self-recognition has been related to sensorimotor⁶ and social experiences.⁷ We therefore hypothesized that a sense of ownership over the voice might develop earlier, because most infants routinely perceive themselves vocalizing from birth.⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰ This might allow them to build sensorimotor models supporting the identification of self-generated signals earlier in this modality. Related research with adults has used the altered auditory feedback paradigm to show that they respond to transpositions of the fundamental frequency (f₀) of their voice by restoring the alignment between predicted and perceived feedback.¹¹^,¹²^,¹³^,¹⁴ Crucially, these compensatory changes depend on the voice being perceived as self-generated.¹⁵^,¹⁶^,¹⁷^,¹⁸^,¹⁹ Using an adaptation of this paradigm with 5-month-old infants, we found that they can already perceive and correct upward transpositions of their f₀, at an age when they remain unable to recognize themselves in the mirror. This suggests that hearing ourselves routinely allows us to learn what we sound like months before we recognize what we look like, which might be especially crucial for speech acquisition.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149264375","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":"A kleptomyiophilous orchid exploits milichiid flies through mimicry of common pentatomoid bugs with high levels of toxicity.","authors":"Ming-Fai Liu, Ai-Qun Hu, Ting-Zhang Li, Junhao Chen, Ko Mochizuki, Tin Yan Siu, Billy Chi Hang Hau, Steven D Johnson, Stephan W Gale","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.085","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To attract pollinators, mimetic flowers imitate the visual and olfactory cues that their pollinators use when responding to models.¹^,² However, it is unclear which processes influence the mimicry of particular models. One possibility is that selection favors mimicry of models that act as \"magnet species\" by attracting large numbers of potential pollinators.¹^,³^,⁴^,⁵ According to this hypothesis, models should be highly common, even if they are not the most attractive resources. This may apply to kleptomyiophilous flowers that exploit kleptoparasitic flies by imitating injured insects.⁶^,⁷^,⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰ In this form of mimicry, the injured insect models would be highly common, even if they emit toxic defensive volatiles that could impede pollinator activities.¹¹^,¹² We report that the eastern ecotype of Bulbophyllum claviforme attracts a specific kleptoparasitic milichiid pollinator Phyllomyza sp. 1. Orchid floral scent is similar to (E)-2-decenal-dominated emissions of multiple pentatomoid bugs in the families Pentatomidae, Scutelleridae, Plataspidae, and Acanthosomatidae. Bioassays suggest that undecane, (E)-2-decenal and (E)-2-decenyl acetate are critical for attraction. Three (E)-2-alkenals, namely (E)-2-hexenal, (E)-2-octenal, and (E)-2-decenal, are both toxic and attractive to Phyllomyza sp. 1, with the toxicity of dominant (E)-2-alkenals negatively correlated to attractiveness. The orchid paradoxically appears to mimic pentatomoids that are less attractive due to higher toxicity. Selection may have favored mimicry of these bugs because (E)-2-decenal is emitted by a wide range of species, representing 68% of the pentatomoid species sampled. Our findings are congruent with the hypothesis that magnet species effects on pollinator abundance are important for the evolution of floral mimicry.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149243575","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":"Allelic variation in OsATG3 enhances nitrogen-responsive tillering to sustain rice productivity.","authors":"Zhi Hu, Chenming Li, Hongli Shen, Yifan Guo, Ruishan Xing, Xiaoya Gao, Yumeng Yuan, Haoqi Li, Hongchun Liu, Xiang Han, Minghan Cheng, Yifei Wang, Ziyan Shen, Yi Xue, Chongyuan Zhong, Min Guo, Youguang Li, Rujia Chen, Yihao Yang, Shengyuan Sun, Yong Zhou, Guohua Liang, Minghong Gu, Xiangdong Fu, Changjie Yan","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.090","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nitrogen (N) deficiency constrains crop productivity by limiting shoot growth, yet the adaptive mechanisms that reprogram shoot development under low N conditions remain largely elusive. Here, we identify a major locus, OsATG3 (autophagy-related protein 3), controlling tillering in response to N deficiency through a genome-wide association study in rice. OsATG3 functions as an essential autophagy component and promotes selective degradation of IDEAL PLANT ARCHITECTURE1 (IPA1) via OsATG8d-mediated autophagy in shoot apices, thereby enhancing N-responsive tillering. Natural variation in the promoter of OsATG3 modulates its transcriptional activity and underlies the adaptive range of tiller number under low N conditions. The elite haplotype OsATG3-H enhances both tillering and grain yield under N-limited supply and appears to contribute to geographical adaptation both in O. sativa and O. glaberrima. Our findings uncover a genetic and molecular mechanism that couples N deficiency to shoot developmental plasticity, providing a promising target for sustainable rice breeding with reduced fertilizer input.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149243566","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":"Alerting acoustic stimuli enhance the internal representation of head direction.","authors":"Florian Hofmann, Eduardo Blanco-Hernández, Giuseppe Balsamo, Steffen R Hage, Andrea Burgalossi, Patricia Preston-Ferrer","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.088","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Animals rapidly execute goal-directed spatial behaviors in response to threats, yet how alerting cues engage spatial representations remains unknown. Here, we tested whether head direction (HD) neurons-key components of the brain's navigation system-are recruited by alerting stimuli. We recorded thalamic and cortical HD cells in head-fixed mice during alerting acoustic stimuli while monitoring arousal via pupillometry and facial motion. Identified HD cells in the anterodorsal thalamic nucleus exhibited ectopic axons and projections to the thalamic reticular nucleus. These cells responded to artificial and natural alerting sounds, with frequency tuning closely matching facial motion patterns. Thalamic responses comprised fast and slow components, whereas cortical responses in the dorsal presubiculum were sparser and dominated by the slow component. In the thalamus, the fast component was independent of HD tuning, whereas the slow component was selectively amplified by alerting stimuli. This gain modulation enhanced HD coding, with decoding accuracy scaling with facial motion. Together, these findings identify the thalamocortical HD system as a non-canonical auditory pathway relaying alerting signals to spatial navigation circuits, providing a mechanism by which alerting stimuli sharpen the internal compass for goal-directed behaviors.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149243602","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":"Top-down inferior colliculus signals engage unipolar brush cell circuits in the dorsal cochlear nucleus of the mouse auditory system.","authors":"Christian T Candler, Gabrielle A Peña, Isabelle F Witteveen, Shawn C Murphy, Kennedy E Whittaker, Olivia G Poole, Timothy S Balmer","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.070","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sensory systems comprise ascending pathways that convey information from the sense organs and descending pathways that provide feedback and contextual signals to guide sensory processing. How top-down signals are integrated at early stages to improve sensory function remains poorly understood. The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) is a cerebellum-like circuit proposed to perform adaptive filtering, including suppression of self-generated sounds. A major question is how sound-frequency-specific top-down information is processed by the DCN, since many top-down inputs target granule cells whose axons span the tonotopic axis and are unlikely to maintain frequency-specific signals. Here, we characterize neurons in the inferior colliculus that provide descending input to DCN. We show that among their targets are unipolar brush cells (UBCs) that distribute and transform descending signals directly to principal neurons and inhibitory interneurons in a circuit that bypasses granule cells. In vivo activation of UBCs attenuated auditory responses in awake mice. Together, these findings identify a circuit through which top-down signals from IC could influence early auditory processing and potentially guide adaptive filtering in the DCN.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149243583","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":"A language-model approach to species distribution reveals alternative stable states.","authors":"Noémie Coulon, Maximilien Servajean, Julien Thomazo, Ulysse Flandrin, Cyril Hautecoeur, Rick Stuart-Smith, Alexis Joly, David Mouillot","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.081","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ecological communities are reorganizing rapidly under accelerating global change, yet predicting how species assemble, persist, or collapse remains a major challenge.¹^,²^,³^,⁴ Most species distribution models treat species as independent entities, overlooking the dependencies that structure ecological communities. Here, we introduce a language-model-inspired approach⁵^,⁶ to species distribution that generates ecological communities sequentially, predicting each species and its biomass conditional on previously assembled species. Trained on ∼27,000 reef fish surveys,⁷ the generative framework reveals multiple coherent community configurations emerging under identical environmental conditions.⁸^,⁹ For instance, the model can generate both coral-associated and macroalgal-associated fish communities, consistent with alternative ecological regimes described in these ecosystems. The model also uncovers a hierarchy of emergent species positions within the learned dependency structure, including core species strongly associated with particular environmental conditions, bridging species linking alternative configurations, and satellite species occupying more peripheral positions. Despite this richer representation of ecological communities, the model also improves predictions of species occurrence and biomass relative to a species-by-species machine-learning baseline (XGBoost¹⁰) and a multispecies deep-learning baseline (MLP¹¹). Together, these results show that ecological communities can be learned and generated as a structured syntax, from which multistability, directional assembly patterns, and hierarchical species positions naturally emerge.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149243599","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}