Current Biology最新文献

{"title":"Large animal restoration and carbon storage across climate-relevant timescales.","authors":"Andrew J Abraham, Joe Roman, Heidi C Pearson, Elizabeth le Roux, Jeppe A Kristensen, Yadvinder Malhi, Ethan S Duvall","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.016","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>By virtue of their size and mobility, large animals can play important roles in Earth's carbon cycle. This has led to suggestions that restoring their populations can contribute to mitigating the climate crisis through removal and storage of atmospheric carbon. However, as animals can affect both release and sequestration of carbon, understanding when, where and how much they impact climate-relevant carbon is critical for evaluating their potential to become a trustworthy climate nature-based solution. Here, we review scientific evidence for the carbon impacts of elephants and great whales - two well-studied animal groups commonly cited for climate mitigation and suggested for carbon monetization. We identify six lessons to guide future research, policy and practice: first, large animal carbon impacts vary considerably by individual, species, ecosystem and biospheric conditions, making predictions of future impacts hard and wildlife-based carbon investments high-risk; second, meaningful carbon impacts will likely take longer to manifest than the Paris Agreement's mid-century net-zero target, but wildlife restoration should nonetheless begin now to realize immediate co-benefits and potentially support longer-term climate recovery; third, current conservation remains highest priority, as loss of animals may exacerbate climate breakdown; fourth, caution is needed when incorporating wildlife into climate policy to prevent false confidence in mitigation potential or perverse outcomes; fifth, potential wildlife carbon benefits should be communicated transparently and cautiously to manage expectations; sixth, robust monitoring and validation are essential to ensure carbon sequestration is real and durable. With these lessons in mind, conservation and restoration of large animals may realize their potential to aid long-term climate recovery as well as ecological resilience and adaptation under ongoing global change.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"36 20","pages":"R1184-R1201"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149223571","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":"Astrobiology.","authors":"Sean McMahon","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Astrobiology aims not only to determine whether life exists beyond Earth but to understand how biology 'fits' into a physicochemical universe of stars and planets, including Earth itself. The field coalesced in the late twentieth century around a core of much older questions about the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. Today, it is a rapidly advancing interdisciplinary collaboration that draws on many sources of data - from planetary missions and exoplanet surveys to field-based, experimental, computational and analytical methods in biology, geology, chemistry, physics and astronomy. A recurrent concern across many branches of astrobiology is the fuzziness of the boundaries between life and non-life as well as the difficulty of discriminating biological signals from an 'abiotic baseline'.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"36 20","pages":"R1115-R1122"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149223535","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 evolution of oxygen, temperature, and marine aerobic habitat for animals over the last billion years of Earth history.","authors":"Kemi F Ashing-Giwa, Jonathan L Payne, Kristin Bergmann, Pedro M Monarrez, Daniel E Gaskell, Richard G Stockey, Erik A Sperling","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.017","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Atmospheric and ocean oxygen levels and temperature have changed considerably over Earth history, and many of these changes coincided with similarly dramatic changes in marine life. The synergistic interaction between oxygen availability and temperature sets aerobic capacities for marine animals, determining whether a given environment is habitable. Here, we explore the relationship between oxygen, temperature and aerobic habitability across the last billion years of Earth history using a metric known as the 'metabolic index' (Φ). Idealized scenarios for oxygen-temperature trajectories indicate several distinct avenues for a concurrent transition from 'non-permissive' to 'permissive' aerobic environments at the onset of the Cambrian Period. Thereafter, the continued presence of fossils in shallow, tropical habitats sets clear constraints on oxygen-temperature combinations, suggesting that the most extreme published estimates for each are improbable. We then draw on published oxygen and temperature estimates to illustrate how these variables have controlled aerobic habitability for marine animals over the Phanerozoic. The dominance of hypoxia-tolerant faunas during the Paleozoic is explained in part by low oxygen oceans, while increasing oxygen levels in the Devonian likely led to lower extinction rates. Sharp spikes in temperature, such as during the end-Permian, led to the contraction of aerobic habitat and mass extinction, but probably also to a more temperature-tolerant modern fauna. We emphasize the need for more robust environmental records of early animal evolution and a better understanding of trade-offs in animal physiology. Finally, exciting future applications of the metabolic index to astrobiology have arisen as knowledge of extraterrestrial environmental conditions increases.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"36 20","pages":"R1130-R1144"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149223637","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":"Tectonics, geomorphology and biodiversity.","authors":"Loïc Pellissier, Sean D Willett","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.008","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The global distribution of biodiversity broadly follows latitude and climate with regions of high species richness in the tropics and environments rich in energy, water and other factors conducive to life. However, superimposed on the correlation with climate is a correspondence between biodiversity and physical geography. High biodiversity is also associated with mountain systems. The inference is that topographic relief generates ecological heterogeneity through the creation of complex topography, landforms and the interaction of that topography with climate, creating temperature and rainfall gradients, geographic barriers and habitat patchiness. All of these factors create new niches for species, driving formation of new species and thus biodiversity. Mountain ranges are the product of tectonic activity where mantle convection and tectonic plate motion have deformed the surface of the Earth, uplifting crustal rock and creating rugged topography and high relief. Tectonics creates topography, but surface processes, such as mineral weathering, physical erosion by wind, water and ice, as well as sediment transport and deposition, modify that topography. The result is the complex patchwork of landscapes of the Earth's surface whose description is at the core of the field of geomorphology. There is a vast complexity to the processes within tectonics, geomorphology, ecology and evolutionary biology, and the links between the physical and biological processes are only beginning to be understood. To complicate matters, these processes are time dependent, coupled and include multiple feedbacks. Mountain ranges rise and fall. Ocean basins open and close. Moving plates and active faults displace terrains or entire continents across climatic gradients or relative to each other. Rivers and valleys may connect regions, but rivers can be redirected, providing new connections bringing species into a common competitive arena, or closing connections, leaving populations isolated and free to evolve without competitive constraints. Biodiversity emerges from this continual interplay of tectonics, geomorphology, and ecology, with Earth's surface persistently creating and erasing opportunities for life to diversify.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":"36 20","pages":"R1097-R1104"},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149223592","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 ancient polymorphism in myosin I a/b determines chiral variation in Japanese Euhadra snails.","authors":"Alec Martin Lewis, Yasuto Ishii, Shun Ito, Kazuki Kimura, Margrethe Johansen, Alistair Nicholas Hume, Christopher Moore, Tom Hartman, Daniel John Jackson, Satoshi Chiba, Takahiro Hirano, Angus Davison","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.059","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.059","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Left-right (LR) asymmetry is a fundamental feature of animal development, yet progress in understanding its establishment has been limited by the fact that almost all animals do not ordinarily vary in the direction of their asymmetry. Snails are an exception because some wild-living species show abundant variation-externally visible in the shell coiling direction or \"chirality\"-yet the existing knowledge is from species, including the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis, in which the sinistral mutation is rare and causes pathology. Here, we show that chiral polymorphism in Japanese Euhadra snails is due to functional variation in an unconventional myosin I a/b, a myosin family member not previously implicated in LR specification in any animal. Both the sinistral and dextral gene variants are ancient, impart minimal transcriptional differences in the single-cell embryo, and are not associated with pathology. Analyses show that relaxed selection enabled dominant-acting amino acid substitutions in the sinistral version of the Euhadra myosin motor domain and motor-lever junction, potentially affecting actomyosin interactions. For comparison, in the pond snail, we found that thousands of genes are differentially expressed between dextral and sinistral embryos due to the frameshift mutation in a formin gene. Overall, these results reinforce the role of myosin and actin-driven processes in LR symmetry breaking, broaden the known molecular repertoire, and highlight key mutations and positions in myosins that should be explored further, including in other animals. VIDEO ABSTRACT.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149206656","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":"Neural coordination of wing and leg movements during a terrestrial threat display.","authors":"Shuo Cao, David J Anderson","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.056","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.056","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In most flying species, legs and wings mediate earthbound vs. aerial locomotion, respectively. During terrestrial social displays such as threat or courtship, however, species-typical movements of these appendages are coordinated in a stereotyped manner. How such appendicular control is integrated is poorly understood. Threat behavior in Drosophila consists of four types of leg and wing actions, which can be performed singly or in combination. Using a large-scale functional screen, we previously identified a cluster of 4-5 AIP (CL062) neurons whose optogenetic activation can evoke all threat actions and which are essential for natural threat displays. To understand how this threat command module functions, we have mapped AIP neurons into the male fly connectome and identified split-GAL4 drivers for four major downstream targets, whose functional connectivity and behavioral roles we have tested. Surprisingly, we find that distinct threat-specific actions are not controlled by parallel connections from different subsets of AIP cells to different action-specific descending neurons (DNs), a parsimonious circuit architecture. Rather, AIP neurons collectively activate two parallel downstream modules comprising pairs of neurons that control wing vs. leg movements, respectively. Wing movements are controlled via direct projections to two specialist DNs that act synergistically, while leg movements are controlled indirectly via two interneurons that act antagonistically to pattern the activity of multiple DNs, which are likely used in other locomotor contexts. These data elucidate a hierarchical circuit for appendicular coordination during a terrestrial social display and provide insight into how the brain has repurposed appendage-specific locomotor control for social communication, a form of exaptation.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149191912","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":"Longitudinal study of Toba/Qom communities reveals delay and shortening of sleep in real time.","authors":"Leandro P Casiraghi, Ignacio Spiousas, Laura L Trebucq, M Florencia Coldeira, Camila R Godoy Peirone, Victor Y Zhang, Malen D Moyano, Diego A Golombek, Horacio O de la Iglesia","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.058","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.058","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While artificial light and digital technologies are widely assumed to delay and curtail sleep, direct, longitudinal evidence documenting these changes is remarkably scarce. From 2012 to 2024, we conducted a longitudinal study of native Toba/Qom communities in northern Argentina, including rural groups newly introduced to electricity and semi-urban groups with earlier access to electricity. Using linear mixed-effects models on a dataset of over 12,000 actigraphically recorded sleep events from 156 participants at different times, we observed striking shifts in sleep dynamics. Remarkably, both groups showed delays of close to 1 h in sleep timing, and participants from rural communities lost 35 min of sleep within the course of a decade. These changes occurred across a period that included, first, the introduction of electricity to rural communities after 2016, and, in more recent years, the spread of the internet and smartphone use among the Toba/Qom. While previous work in these and other populations has shown that both factors are associated with changes in sleep habits, our analyses suggest that they cannot fully explain the reported shifts in sleep timing across time by themselves, which may therefore be consistent with concurrent broader processes of modernization and acculturation. These transformations highlight the rapid changes that can take place in communities going through the early stages of the adoption of modern technologies, offering a contemporary parallel to the shifts in human sleep hypothesized to have accompanied global industrialization.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13674011/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149191896","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":"Mucoromycotina fine root endophyte engages in a nutritionally mutualistic symbiosis with Arabidopsis thaliana.","authors":"James Prout, Jamie Burgess, Alex Williams, Victor Morales, Silvia Pressel, Jurriaan Ton, Katie J Field","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.061","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Arabidopsis thaliana, a widely used genetic model species, is considered incapable of forming mycorrhizal associations, which support nutrient acquisition in most other land plants. Mucoromycotina \"fine root endophytes\" (MFREs) are a recently characterized group of mycorrhizal fungi capable of forming nutritional mutualisms with a wide range of plants, supplying nitrogen and phosphorus to host plants and gaining access to photosynthetically derived carbon. Here, we demonstrate that a wild-isolated MFRE strain, Lyc-1, successfully colonizes Arabidopsis roots under monoaxenic conditions without affecting plant growth. Using a combination of conventional light and epifluorescence microscopy, we demonstrate extensive extra- and intraradical colonization of the root cortex. Stable- and radio-isotope tracing further revealed bidirectional nutrient exchange between the host plant and the fungus. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a functional, mycorrhiza-like nutritional mutualism in Arabidopsis. As Arabidopsis lacks a complete set of common symbiosis signaling pathway genes, our findings suggest that Arabidopsis-Lyc-1 symbiosis may be controlled by an alternative, so far uncharacterized, symbiotic pathway. Thus, our study not only supports the existence of multiple evolutionary routes to plant-fungal nutritional mutualisms but also establishes Arabidopsis as a genetically tractable model to study plant-fungal symbiosis, thereby opening new opportunities to dissect the molecular basis and evolution of mycorrhizal symbioses.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149191926","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 premitotic polarity program patterns the grass leaf epidermis.","authors":"Anastasiia L Korosteleva, Kim Janssen, Dan Zhang, Paola Ruiz Duarte, Irem Polat, Nika Goršek, Barbara Jesenofsky, Elif Baç, Heike Lindner, Michael T Raissig","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.051","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Transverse asymmetric cell divisions (ACDs) in grass leaf epidermal development produce large basal pavement cells and small apical specialized cells. These \"patterning divisions\" generate the long-short epidermal cell pattern that is distinctive of grasses. Here, we show that patterning divisions require premitotic basal polarization of BdPOLAR-LIKE1 (BdPL1) in the model grass Brachypodium distachyon. Loss of BdPL1 disrupted division-plane orientation and postmitotic cell-size asymmetry in all cell files, which resulted in epidermal patterning defects. Ectopic expression analyses demonstrated that BdPL1 polarization was independent of cellular context and sufficient to promote supernumerary transverse divisions. Furthermore, the developmental regulators BdBREVIS RADIX-solo and BdYODA1 formed a post-division polarity domain that enforced cell fate asymmetry independently of BdPL1. We propose that the premitotic BdPL1 module enforces physical cell division asymmetry contributing to medio-lateral patterning of cell types, whereas the postmitotic BdBRX-solo/BdYDA1 module enforces within-file cell fate asymmetry. Together, they robustly pattern the grass leaf epidermis.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149180087","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 North American mycorrhizal fungus displays zinc tolerance intraspecific variation and protects pines from zinc toxicity.","authors":"Jessica Fletcher, Haihua Wang, Kaile Zhang, Xinlu Chen, Kerrie Barry, Alan Kuo, Anna Lipzen, Andrei Steindorff, Daniel Peterson, Jie Guo, Igor V Grigoriev, Feng Chen, Hui-Ling Liao, Sara Branco","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.050","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Soil zinc (Zn) pollution, largely caused by anthropogenic activities such as mining and metal processing, can disrupt metabolism and reproduction, often leading to death. Some fungi can tolerate elevated Zn concentrations, but the mechanisms of Zn tolerance and if and how they affect symbionts are still unclear. To fill these gaps in knowledge, we investigated Zn tolerance in the ectomycorrhizal fungus Suillus tomentosus and its host pine Pinus contorta, two widespread symbiotic partners in American Western forests. Using a combination of whole-genome resequencing, in vitro Zn fungal assays, fungal-pine partner bioassays, transcriptomics, and metabolomics, we found an absence of S. tomentosus population structure based on Zn tolerance, and that the trait is highly polygenic, constitutive, and associated with Zn exclusion and antioxidant responses to mitigate toxicity. We also found that S. tomentosus protects P. contorta from Zn toxicity by increasing seedling performance under Zn stress, with Zn-tolerant S. tomentosus providing slightly more benefit compared with Zn-sensitive S. tomentosus. Our results illustrate that fungal metal tolerance is a complex trait, and that intraspecific variation should be considered for understanding the impacts of environmental stress on biodiversity, as well as for designing effective biotechnological tools and conservation/reforestation strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149180059","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}