Current Biology最新文献

{"title":"Modulation of sweet preference by neurosteroid-sensitive, δ-GABA_A receptors in adult mouse gustatory insular cortex.","authors":"Priscilla E Yevoo, Alfredo Fontanini, Arianna Maffei","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.035","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Taste preference is a fundamental driver of feeding behavior, influencing dietary choices and eating patterns. Extensive experimental evidence indicates that the gustatory cortex (GC) is engaged in taste perception, palatability, and preference. However, our knowledge of the neural and neurochemical signals regulating taste preference is limited. Neuromodulators can affect preferences, though their effects on neural circuits for taste are incompletely understood. Neurosteroids are of particular interest, as systemic administration of the neurosteroid allopregnanolone (ALLO), a positive allosteric modulator of extrasynaptic GABA_A receptors containing the delta subunit (δ-GABA_ARs), induces hyperphagia and increases intake of energy-rich food in humans and animals. The δ-GABA_ARs receptors produce a tonic inhibitory current and are widely distributed in the brain. However, information regarding their expression within gustatory circuits is lacking, and their role in taste preference has not been investigated. Here, we focused on GC to investigate whether activation of δ-GABA_ARs affects sweet taste preference in adult mice. Our data reveal that δ-GABA_ARs are expressed in multiple cell types within GC, mediate an ALLO-sensitive tonic current, decrease the behavioral sensitivity to sucrose, and reduce the preference for sweet taste in a cell-type-specific manner. Our findings demonstrate a fundamental role for δ-GABA_AR-mediated currents within GC in regulating taste sensitivity and preference in the adult mammalian brain.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1047-1060.e4"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11903165/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143398691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Phylogenomics defines Streptofilum as a novel deep branch of streptophyte algae.","authors":"Vojtěch Žárský, Marek Eliáš","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.013","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Streptophytes constitute a major organismal clade comprised of land plants (embryophytes) and several related green algal lineages¹. Their seemingly well-studied phylogenetic diversity was recently enriched by the discovery of Streptofilum capillaum, a simple filamentous alga forming a novel deep streptophyte lineage in a two-gene phylogeny². A subsequent phylogenetic analysis of plastid genome-encoded proteins resolved Streptofilum as a sister group of nearly all known streptophytes, including Klebsormidiophyceae and Phragmoplastophyta (Charophyceae, Coleochaetophyceae, Zygnematophyceae, and embryophytes)³. However, another recent report, published in Current Biology by Bierenbroodspot et al.⁴, presented a phylogenetic analysis of 845 nuclear loci, resolving S. capillatum as a member of Klebsormidiophyceae, nested among species of the genus Interfilum. Here, we demonstrate that the latter result is an artefact stemming from an unrecognized contamination of the transcriptome assembly from S. capillatum by sequences from Interfilum paradoxum. When confirmed S. capillatum sequences are employed in the analysis, the position of the alga in the nuclear gene-based tree fully agrees with the plastid gene-based phylogeny. Our results underscore S. capillatum as a lineage pivotal for the understanding of the evolutionary genesis of streptophyte, and ultimately embryophyte, traits.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 5","pages":"R171-R172"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143604171","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":"Wild rock doves.","authors":"William J Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.065","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>William Smith introduces the wild rock dove, the ancestor of domestic and feral pigeons.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 5","pages":"R162-R164"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143604203","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":"Accounting for sampling heterogeneity suggests a low paleolatitude origin for dinosaurs.","authors":"Joel A Heath, Natalie Cooper, Paul Upchurch, Philip D Mannion","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.053","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2024.12.053","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dinosaurs dominated Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems for ∼160 million years, but their biogeographic origin remains poorly understood. The earliest unequivocal dinosaur fossils appear in the Carnian (∼230 Ma) of southern South America and Africa, leading most authors to propose southwestern Gondwana as the likely center of origin. However, the high taxonomic and morphological diversity of these earliest assemblages suggests a more ancient evolutionary history that is currently unsampled. Phylogenetic uncertainty at the base of Dinosauria, combined with the subsequent appearance of dinosaurs throughout Laurasia in their early evolutionary history, further complicates this picture. Here, we estimate the distribution of early dinosaurs and their archosaurian relatives under a phylogenetic maximum likelihood framework, testing alternative topological arrangements and incorporating potential abiotic barriers to dispersal into our biogeographic models. For the first time, we include spatiotemporal sampling heterogeneity in these models, which frequently supports a low-latitude Gondwanan origin for dinosaurs. These results are best supported when silesaurids are constrained as early-diverging ornithischians, which is likely because this topology accounts for the otherwise substantial ornithischian ghost lineage, explaining the group's absence from the fossil record prior to the Early Jurassic. Our results suggest that the archosaur radiation also took place within low-latitude Gondwana following the end-Permian extinction before lineages dispersed across Pangaea into ecologically and climatically distinct provinces during the Late Triassic. Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrates are under-sampled at low paleolatitudes, and our findings suggest that heterogeneous sampling has hitherto obscured the true paleobiogeographic origin of dinosaurs and their kin.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"941-953.e5"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143037587","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":"Aversive generalization in human amygdala neurons.","authors":"Tamar Reitich-Stolero, Dean Halperin, Genela Morris, Lilach Goldstein, Lottem Bergman, Firas Fahoum, Ido Strauss, Rony Paz","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.013","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.013","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Generalization around aversive stimuli is a key feature of learning and adaptive decision making,¹^,²^,³^,⁴^,⁵ but it can be maladaptive if subjects overgeneralize and respond with fear to stimuli that are only loosely similar to the original experience.⁶^,⁷^,⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰^,¹¹^,¹² Human imaging studies indicate that the amygdala, a hub of emotional learning, is involved in such overgeneralization,²^,⁹^,¹³^,¹⁴^,¹⁵^,¹⁶^,¹⁷ and studies in animal models revealed neural correlates of generalized aversive stimuli and identified changes in response properties of single neurons.¹⁸^,¹⁹^,²⁰^,²¹^,²²^,²³^,²⁴^,²⁵^,²⁶^,²⁷^,²⁸^,²⁹ Yet, it remains unclear if human neurons contribute specifically in aversive situations and, importantly, if they contribute to subsequent behavior even in a safe environment. We recorded single neurons in human subjects while they engaged in probabilistic loss/gain conditioning, followed by a choice task that included additional stimuli and when the original conditioned stimulus no longer entails an aversive (loss) outcome. We find wider behavioral generalization around the aversive stimulus accompanied by a selective increase in amygdala neural responses that were correlated with the degree of individual generalization. In addition, neural activity in the amygdala was predictive of the later choice on a trial-by-trial basis and specific to loss trials. Whereas other brain regions also modulated their activity during generalization, only amygdala neurons signal a trial-specific and loss-specific generalization. The findings reveal that human amygdala neurons play a role in aversive overgeneralization and contribute to generalized choice behavior in a later safe environment and suggest a single-neuron substrate that might enhance anxious and traumatic behaviors.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1137-1144.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143406287","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":"Population genomics of Marchantia polymorpha subsp. ruderalis reveals evidence of climate adaptation.","authors":"Shuangyang Wu, Katharina Jandrasits, Kelly Swarts, Johannes Roetzer, Svetlana Akimcheva, Masaki Shimamura, Tetsuya Hisanaga, Frédéric Berger, Liam Dolan","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.008","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sexual reproduction results in the development of haploid and diploid cell states during the life cycle. In bryophytes, the dominant multicellular haploid phase produces motile sperm that swim through water to the egg to effect fertilization from which a relatively small diploid phase develops. In angiosperms, the reduced multicellular haploid phase produces non-motile sperm that is delivered to the egg through a pollen tube to effect fertilization from which the dominant diploid phase develops. These different life cycle characteristics are likely to impact the distribution of genetic variation among populations. However, little is known about the distribution of genetic variation among wild populations of bryophytes. To investigate how genetic variation is distributed among populations of a bryophyte and to establish the foundation for population genetics research in bryophytes, we described the genetic diversity of collections of Marchantia polymorpha subsp. ruderalis, a cosmopolitan ruderal liverwort. We identified 78 genetically unique (non-clonal) from a total of 209 sequenced accessions collected from 37 sites in Europe and Japan. There was no detectable population structure among European populations but significant genetic differentiation between Japanese and European populations. By associating genetic variation across the genome with global climate data, we showed that temperature and precipitation influence the frequency of potentially adaptive alleles. This collection establishes the core of an experimental platform that exploits natural genetic variation to answer diverse questions in biology.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"970-980.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143398679","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":"Semantic language decoding across participants and stimulus modalities.","authors":"Jerry Tang, Alexander G Huth","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.024","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.024","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Brain decoders that reconstruct language from semantic representations have the potential to improve communication for people with impaired language production. However, training a semantic decoder for a participant currently requires many hours of brain responses to linguistic stimuli, and people with impaired language production often also have impaired language comprehension. In this study, we tested whether language can be decoded from a goal participant without using any linguistic training data from that participant. We trained semantic decoders on brain responses from separate reference participants and then used functional alignment to transfer the decoders to the goal participant. Cross-participant decoder predictions were semantically related to the stimulus words, even when functional alignment was performed using movies with no linguistic content. To assess how much semantic representations are shared between language and vision, we compared functional alignment accuracy using story and movie stimuli and found that performance was comparable in most cortical regions. Finally, we tested whether cross-participant decoders could be robust to lesions by excluding brain regions from the goal participant prior to functional alignment and found that cross-participant decoders do not depend on data from any single brain region. These results demonstrate that cross-participant decoding can reduce the amount of linguistic training data required from a goal participant and potentially enable language decoding from participants who struggle with both language production and language comprehension.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"1023-1032.e6"},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11903136/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143370735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Oscillatory control over representational geometry of sequence working memory in macaque frontal cortex.","authors":"Wen Fang, Xi Jiang, Jingwen Chen, Cong Zhang, Liping Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.031","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To process sequential streams of information, e.g., language, the brain must encode multiple items in sequence working memory (SWM) according to their ordinal relationship. While the geometry of neural states could represent sequential events in the frontal cortex, the control mechanism over these neural states remains unclear. Using high-throughput electrophysiology recording in the macaque frontal cortex, we observed widespread theta responses after each stimulus entry. Crucially, by applying targeted dimensionality reduction to extract task-relevant neural subspaces from both local field potential (LFP) and spike data, we found that theta power transiently encoded each sequentially presented stimulus regardless of its order. At the same time, theta-spike interaction was rank-selectively associated with memory subspaces, thereby potentially supporting the binding of items to appropriate ranks. Furthermore, this putative theta control can generalize to length-variable and error sequences, predicting behavior. Thus, decomposed entry/rank-WM subspaces and theta-spike interactions may underlie the control of SWM.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143630273","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":"Maternal symbiont transmission via envenomation in the parasitoid wasp Spalangia cameroni.","authors":"Benjamin Weiss, Sarit Rohkin Shalom, Anna Dolgova, Li Szhen Teh, Martin Kaltenpoth, Colin Dale, Elad Chiel","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Microbial symbionts of multicellular hosts originate from free-living ancestors and often persist through vertical transmission, but their mechanisms of establishment are not well understood. Here, we studied acquisition and transmission routes in a nascent symbiosis involving the bacterium Sodalis praecaptivus subsp. spalangiae (Sodalis SC) and the parasitoid wasp Spalangia cameroni. Using fluorescence in situ hybridization, transmission electron microscopy, and experimental infections, we found that oocytes are devoid of Sodalis SC, but the female venom gland is densely colonized. Sodalis SC is injected with the venom into the fly host, subsequently acquired by larval progeny during feeding, invades through the larval gut epithelium into multiple host organs, and eventually localizes in the venom gland. Adult wasps can also acquire Sodalis SC by artificial feeding, but, in this case, the bacterium is not transmitted vertically. Additionally, Sodalis SC is localized in the testes of some males, transmitted paternally at low frequency, and females that inherit Sodalis SC paternally can subsequently transmit it via the venom. To assess the specificity of the symbiosis, we performed experiments with the closely related free-living species Sodalis praecaptivus subsp. praecaptivus (Sodalis PP), known to initiate symbiosis with other insects. Sodalis PP is readily acquired when supplied artificially to wasp larvae but not transmitted to wasp progeny, because it fails to proliferate in the parasitized host. Our results indicate that non-ovarian transmission routes of intracellular symbionts may be more common than currently appreciated and provide a scenario for the early steps in establishing persistent symbiotic associations in insects.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143630271","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 tension-induced morphological transition shapes the avian extra-embryonic territory.","authors":"Arthur Michaut, Alexander Chamolly, Aurélien Villedieu, Francis Corson, Jérôme Gros","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.02.028","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The segregation of the extra-embryonic lineage is one of the earliest events and a key step in amniote development. Whereas the regulation of extra-embryonic cell fate specification has been extensively studied, little is known about the morphogenetic events underlying the formation of this lineage. Here, taking advantage of the amenability of avian embryos to live and quantitative imaging, we investigate the cell- and tissue-scale dynamics of epiboly, the process during which the epiblast expands to engulf the entire yolk. We show that tension arising from the outward migration of the epiblast border on the vitelline membrane stretches extra-embryonic cells, which reversibly transition from a columnar to a squamous morphology. The propagation of this tension is strongly attenuated in the embryonic territory, which concomitantly undergoes fluid-like motion, culminating in the formation of the primitive streak. We formulate a simple viscoelastic model in which the epiblast responds elastically to isotropic stress but, on a similar timescale, flows in response to shear stress, and we show that it recapitulates the flows and deformation of both embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. Together, our results clarify the mechanical basis of early avian embryogenesis and provide a framework unifying the divergent mechanical behaviors observed in the contiguous embryonic and extra-embryonic territories that make up the epiblast.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143623875","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}