Current Biology最新文献

{"title":"Neural sequences: Hippocampal representation of spatial trajectories in flying bats.","authors":"Daniel Bush, Neil Burgess","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.079","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>By recording large populations of neurons in flying bats, two recent studies have observed sequential activities in the hippocampus that represent ongoing spatial trajectories during movement and recently experienced trajectories during rest, analogous to 'theta sweeps' and 'replay' previously described in rodents.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 18","pages":"R888-R890"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145130254","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":"Linear covariation between germline and somatic mutation rates across ciliates and mammals.","authors":"Guangying Wang, Lu Fu, Wei Miao, Jianzhi Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.045","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.045","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Somatic mutations have received increased attention due to their roles in disease (e.g., cancer) and possibly aging.¹ In mammals, the somatic mutation rate per site per year (μ_S) is at least 10 times higher than the corresponding germline rate (μ_G).²^,³^,⁴^,⁵^,⁶ Because the DNA replication and repair machinery is largely shared between the germline and soma, their substantial disparity in mutation rate is commonly hypothesized to be owing to their different cell division rates and/or differential mutagen exposures.⁶^,⁷^,⁸ To test the above hypothesis, we take advantage of ciliates-unicellular eukaryotes that contain in the same cell 2 nuclei dividing at the same rate but respectively harboring the germline and somatic genome.⁹ Performing mutation accumulation experiments in the model ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, we estimate that its base-substitution somatic mutation rate is 1.32 × 10^-10 per site per generation, 17.3 times the germline rate.¹⁰ Strikingly, we find μ_S and μ_G to covary linearly across T. thermophila and 6 mammals, despite the independent origins of the germ-soma separation in ciliates and animals. The overall pattern of somatic mutations in T. thermophila also resembles that in mammals. These observations call for the investigation of a possible linear coupling between μ_S and μ_G across diverse organisms and argue against a primary role of different cell division rates or differential mutagen exposures in determining the relationship between μ_S and μ_G. They also suggest that whatever the evolutionary forces shaping μ_S and μ_G, these 2 traits are simultaneously impacted, likely because mutations influencing one of them also influence the other.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4553-4560.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144859051","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":"Nautilus sex determination is unique among cephalopods.","authors":"Héctor Torrado, Carlos Leiva, Ana Riesgo, Sarah Lemer, Arthur Perez, Jose M Lorente-Sorolla, Bruce Carlson, Marjorie Awai, Gonzalo Giribet, David J Combosch","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.047","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.047","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mechanisms for sex determination are highly diverse among animals and can evolve rapidly across taxonomic groups. This fundamental process dictates an animal's sexual fate and ultimately its development. Recent research has suggested that cephalopods follow a ZZ/Z0 sex determination (where males are homozygous and females are hemizygous) that originated at least 480 million years ago, making it one of the oldest conserved sex determination systems known for animals.¹ By combining phenotypic sex data with three genomic datasets from the highly divergent cephalopod clade Nautiloidea (including the raw data from 2 published genomes, 28 low-coverage whole genomes, and 63 restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) datasets from 6 species across 9 populations), we suggest that nautiloids follow an XX/XY sex determination system, where females are homogametic and males are heterogametic. We also identified chromosome #4 as the X chromosome rather than the Z chromosome, as previously suggested.¹ Lastly, we identified five scaffolds representing a putative Y chromosome, based on combined evidence from Bayesian analyses, differences in genome coverage across sexes, and extremely low levels of heterozygosity. Our study identified 36 genes on the putative Y scaffolds, 30 of which are known to be linked to male reproductive functions and include sexual markers conserved across bilaterians. Our findings thus add to previous assumptions about sex determination in cephalopods and their common ancestor and illuminate the diversity of sexual systems and their remarkable turnover in animals.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4561-4569.e3"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144859052","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":"Competition for microtubule lattice spacing between a microtubule expander and compactor.","authors":"Alexandra L Paquette, Sofía Cruz Tetlalmatzi, Justin A G Haineault, Yining Li, Nadja Finkel, Adam G Hendricks, Gary J Brouhard, Muriel Sébastien","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.080","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.080","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Microtubules exist in expanded and compacted states, as defined by the lattice spacing of αβ-tubulin dimers. Changes in lattice spacing have been linked to factors such as GTP-hydrolysis, the binding of microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs), the tubulin code, and microtubule bending. These diverse factors exert opposing molecular driving forces on the microtubule lattice that push lattice spacing toward expanded or compacted states. To better understand how these opposing forces are reconciled, we developed in vitro and cell-based model systems for the competition between a microtubule expander (paclitaxel) and a microtubule compactor (doublecortin or DCX). Using an in vitro reconstitution approach, we show that paclitaxel expands microtubules cooperatively. In cells, high concentrations of paclitaxel cause DCX to relocalize to compacted lattices found at concave bends. When the concentration of DCX is increased, however, we find that DCX re-compacts the previously expanded microtubules in vitro. Consistently, high expression levels of DCX prevent its relocalization in paclitaxel-treated cells. When the competition between paclitaxel and DCX is \"balanced,\" we observe a complex phenotype: DCX simultaneously localizes to both long, straight clusters and concave bends, whereas other regions on the microtubule network remain DCX free. We conclude that multiple lattice spacings can coexist in cells. Our results indicate that competition for microtubule lattice spacing is a critical aspect of microtubule physiology.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4442-4452.e4"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144946614","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":"Auditory object representation in the bat hippocampus.","authors":"Aditya Krishna, Xiaoyan Yin, Chao Yu, Dimitri A Skandalis, Heekyung Lee, Cynthia F Moss","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.044","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.044","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cognitive maps enable the flexible selection of navigation paths. Acoustic cognitive maps, constructed from the spatial layout of sonar auditory objects, support bat navigation in natural settings; however, the neural building blocks of acoustic maps remain unknown. Here, we demonstrate auditory object representation in the hippocampus of echolocating bats and test the hypothesis that active tracking drives hippocampal auditory object representation. We discovered two distinct populations of hippocampal CA1 neurons, one encoding allocentric object location and another, egocentric object distance. During trials when the bat ceased object tracking, the spatial code degraded. These findings reveal that auditory information alone can drive the construction of cognitive maps of space, with hippocampal auditory object representations activated by the animal's sonar tracking.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4311-4320.e4"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12355007/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144854853","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":"Stream noise induces song plasticity and a shift to visual signals in a riverine songbird.","authors":"Léna de Framond, Stuart P Sharp, Kevin Duclos, Thejasvi Beleyur, Henrik Brumm","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.049","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.049","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Environmental noise can severely impair acoustic communication, thereby affecting key behaviors such as predator avoidance,¹^,² territory defense,³^,⁴ and reproduction.⁵^,⁶^,⁷ Persistent noise in some habitats is thought to have favored the emergence of multimodal communication systems.⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰ Multimodal signals, which integrate information across several sensory channels, can enhance signal detection and improve message clarity in challenging environments.¹¹ The capacity to flexibly adjust signaling strategies in response to noise is considered critical to the resilience and evolutionary success of communication systems.¹²^,¹³ However, direct evidence for noise-induced shifts between sensory modalities-termed \"multimodal shift\"-remains scarce.¹¹ Although river noise has been linked to the evolution of multimodal displays¹⁴^,¹⁵ and shifts¹⁶ in torrent frogs, examples from other taxa are lacking. Here, we investigate how the white-throated dipper (Cinclus cinclus), a riverine songbird, modulates both acoustic and visual signaling along noisy rivers. We find that the dippers adjust their songs to the ambient noise level. In addition, they use conspicuous blinking with white-feathered eyelids to compensate for acoustic masking in high-noise environments. Blinking rate was linked to local river noise, aggressive behavior, and conspecific presence. Calibrated field measurements revealed a negative correlation between song amplitude and blinking rate, consistent with a noise-driven multimodal shift. This indicates that song plasticity operates in tandem with visual signaling, showing that animals can dynamically reallocate investment across modalities in response to fluctuating environmental pressures. The fine-tuning of both signal performance and modality underscores the critical role of noise interference and signal flexibility in the evolution of complex communication systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4570-4576.e6"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144862213","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":"Acorn woodpeckers.","authors":"Walter D Koenig, Eric L Walters, Joey Haydock","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.08.021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.08.021","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Walt Koenig and colleagues introduce the acorn woodpecker, a cooperatively breeding, food-caching bird of North America.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 18","pages":"R869-R870"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145130447","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":"Embryonic development: Tracing the origin of epiblast cells.","authors":"Violaine Paulus, Claire Chazaud","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.08.018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.08.018","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The epiblast is the source of all the cells of our bodies and of the pluripotent embryonic stem cells. Novel work using fluorescent reporter-based cell tracking supports a stochastic mechanism for epiblast differentiation and reveals SOX2 as the most obvious marker.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"35 18","pages":"R892-R895"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145130240","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":"Corrections in single-cell migration path in vivo are controlled by pulses in polar Rac1 activation.","authors":"Dennis Hoffmann, Tal Agranov, Lucas Kühl, Laura Ermlich, Michal Reichman-Fried, Benjamin D Simons, Nir S Gov, Erez Raz","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.063","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.063","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Directed migration of single cells is central to a large number of processes in development and adult life. Corrections to the migration path of cells are often characterized by periodic loss of polarity that is followed by the generation of a new leading edge in response to guidance cues, a behavior termed \"run and tumble.\" While this phenomenon is essential for accurate arrival at migration targets, the precise molecular mechanisms responsible for the periodic changes in cell polarity are unknown. To investigate this issue, we employ germ cells in live zebrafish embryos as an in vivo model and show that a tunable molecular network controls periodic pulsations of Rac1 activity and actin polymerization. This process, which we term \"polar pulsations,\" is responsible for the transitions between the run and tumble phases. In addition, we provide evidence for the role of apolar blebbing activity during tumble phases in erasing the memory of the previous front-back polarity of the migrating cell. To understand how the molecular components give rise to this distinct behavior, we develop a minimal mathematical model of the biochemical network that accounts for the observed cell behavior. Together, our in vivo findings and the mathematical model suggest that a pulsatory signaling network regulates the accuracy of individual cell migration.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4365-4382.e8"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144946737","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":"Supraspinal commands have a modular organization that is behavioral context specific.","authors":"Joanna Y N Lau, James E Fitzgerald, Isaac H Bianco","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.066","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2025.07.066","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Animals generate a range of locomotor patterns that subserve diverse behaviors, and in vertebrates, the required supraspinal commands derive from reticulospinal neurons in the brainstem. Yet how these commands are encoded across the reticulospinal population is unknown, making it unclear whether a universal control logic generates the full locomotor repertoire or if distinct sets of command modules might compose movement in different behavioral contexts. Here, we used calcium imaging, high-resolution behavior tracking, and statistical modeling to comprehensively survey reticulospinal activity and relate single-cell activity to movement kinematics as larval zebrafish generated a broad diversity of swim types. We found that reticulospinal population activity had a low-dimensional organization and identified 8 functional archetypes that provided a succinct and robust encoding of the full range of locomotor actions. Across much of locomotor space, 5 functional archetypes supported multiplexed control of swim speed and independent control of direction, whereas an independent set of 3 functional archetypes controlled the specialized swims that zebrafish use during hunting to orient toward prey. Overall, our study reveals a modular supraspinal control architecture that is partitioned according to behavioral context.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":"4408-4425.e6"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144946774","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}