Current Biology最新文献

{"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}

{"title":"Dual-mode dynamics in hippocampal populations enable rapid and precise spatial coding.","authors":"Minglong Ren, Shiqing Feng, Qiang Chen, Longnian Lin, Jiamin Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.052","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hippocampal spatial representations emerge within minutes of first exposure to novel environments, challenging models based solely on gradual synaptic plasticity. Here, we show that CA1 spatial coding is organized according to a dual-mode architecture comprising a pre-organized backbone and an experience-dependent component. Backbone cells expressing immediately emerging place fields form a stable spatial scaffold and dominate positional decoding from the first traversal, whereas experience-dependent cells bearing gradually emerging fields are progressively incorporated to refine spatial representations. Analyses of ensemble activity further reveal that offline dynamics prospectively organize future spatial coding. In backbone cells, latent tuning aligns with their future place fields prior to task engagement, while in experience-dependent cells this alignment strengthens before overt place-field expression. Together, these findings identify a dual-mode organization of hippocampal populations in which offline dynamics pre-organize network activity to enable rapid and precise spatial coding in novel environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149180021","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 chytrid fungus threatens the last epidemiologically naive Neotropical montane amphibian biodiversity hotspot.","authors":"Amadeus Plewnia, Frank Pasmans, Tobias Hildwein, Kevin P Mulder, Jonas Henn, Andrew J Crawford, Luis Alberto Rueda Solano, Nico Fuhrmann, Arved Lühmann, Jesse Erens, Sandra Victoria Flechas, Alessandro Catenazzi, Laura Victoria Rivera Jaimes, Victor L N Araújo, Claudia Lansac, Christopher Heine, Romario Salas, Aldair A Barros-Granados, Alejandra Barrios Yepes, Laura V Rengifo-Saavedra, Anna E Savage, Valentina Vásquez, Jaime Culebras, Jose Daniel Barros Castañeda, José Luis Pérez-González, Sintana Rojas-Montaño, Jefferson Villalba, Juan M Guayasamin, Sandra P Galeano, Ben C Scheele, Simon Clulow, An Martel, Stefan Lötters","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.048","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (B. dendrobatidis) has caused catastrophic biodiversity loss worldwide.¹^,²^,³ Although B. dendrobatidis is now widespread across environmentally suitable regions,⁴ the absence of amphibian declines in some high-suitability areas suggests the existence of refuges supporting epidemiologically naive communities. Epidemiologically naive refuges have not experienced past B. dendrobatidis epizootics despite suitable environmental conditions and may be B. dendrobatidis-free, harbor less virulent B. dendrobatidis lineages, or contain resistant host communities. As eradication of virulent B. dendrobatidis lineages is rarely successful after establishment, identifying epidemiologically naive refuges is imperative.⁵^,⁶ Here, following extensive multi-year disease surveillance, we report a major epidemiologically naive refuge in the Neotropical highlands, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM) in northern Colombia. We found no evidence for contemporary B. dendrobatidis presence, despite detecting the hypervirulent Global Panzootic Lineage in a neighboring Andean mountain range. Population genomic analyses in SNSM-endemic harlequin toads found no demographic signatures indicative of cryptic epizootic decline. Niche modeling predicted high suitability for B. dendrobatidis occurrence and B. dendrobatidis-induced declines throughout the SNSM, with climatic conditions in lowland regions surrounding the SNSM likely acting as a dispersal barrier and preventing B. dendrobatidis invasion, creating a \"sky island.\" Infection trials using three SNSM-endemic amphibian species revealed tolerant and susceptible species. Together, our results indicate that the SNSM is an epidemiologically naive refuge at risk of invasion by hypervirulent B. dendrobatidis, which could result in the loss of 25 endemic amphibian species. We highlight the urgent need for proactive conservation action and the strict implementation of biosecurity to safeguard the unique and vast amphibian diversity of the SNSM.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149180090","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":"Individual identification of brown bears using pose-aware metric learning.","authors":"Beth Rosenberg, Mu Zhou, Nathan Wolf, Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis, Bradley P Harris, Alexander Mathis","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.10.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.10.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149180056","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":"Functional recomposition of excitatory synaptic inputs to individual neurons in ferret visual cortex after the onset of visual experience.","authors":"Juliane Jaepel, Clara Tepohl, Rachel Satterfield, David Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.026","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.026","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>During early visual cortex development, the onset of visual experience initiates a period of rapid dendritic growth and excitatory synapse formation that coincides with the functional maturation of visually driven neuronal response properties. How this surge in the number of excitatory synaptic inputs refines the initial functional network structure to generate coherent, yet adaptable, single-neuron responses remains unclear. To address this issue, we examined the functional properties and spatial organization of individual dendritic spines of layer 2/3 neurons in ferret visual cortex before and after the onset of visual experience. Our findings indicate that this initial period of visual experience is marked by a dramatic and selective functional and spatial recomposition of the visually naive excitatory synaptic network. This reorganization leads to an increase in the proportion and tuning strength of orientation- and direction-selective inputs and markedly expands the population of binocular inputs, particularly those with highly aligned responses across both eyes. This refinement follows distinct developmental trajectories of contralateral vs. ipsilateral inputs, as well as monocular vs. binocular inputs, that reshape the functional organization of excitatory synaptic inputs to individual neurons. In parallel, synaptic inputs are spatially reorganized, with co-tuned inputs becoming locally clustered along dendrites as a coarser branch-level organization present at eye opening is remodeled. Together, these rapid changes appear to be organized as a scaffold-and-integration process through which visual experience expands and reorganizes the excitatory synaptic network. This process enhances tuning selectivity and supports the emergence of a robust binocular representation while maintaining functional input diversity.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149164490","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 hidden archaeal lineage with an ultra-reduced genome retaining only its replicative core.","authors":"Ryo Harada, Yuki Nishimura, Mami Nomura, Akinori Yabuki, Kogiku Shiba, Kazuo Inaba, Thorsten Allers, Yuji Inagaki, Takuro Nakayama","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.042","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Host-associated prokaryotes can undergo extreme genome reduction, but the most reduced genomes belong to mutualistic endosymbionts whose hosts compensate for lost functions, eroding the symbiont's identity as an autonomous cell. Whether comparable reduction can occur while preserving the informational autonomy of a cell remains unclear. Here, we report the discovery of Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile, an archaeon with a genome of only 238 kbp (less than half the size of the smallest known archaeal genome) obtained by single-cell genomics from a dinoflagellate cell. Phylogenetic analyses reveal Sukunaarchaeum as an extremely divergent lineage that cannot be placed within any recognized archaeal phylum, although its precise branching position remains unresolved; environmental surveys indicate a diverse, geographically dispersed, and previously overlooked clade. Its genome lacks virtually all recognizable metabolic pathways yet retains the catalytic cores of the machinery for DNA replication, transcription, and translation, with losses largely confined to auxiliary and regulatory subunits. This profile contrasts with that of highly reduced mutualistic endosymbionts, in which informational genes are lost alongside metabolic ones, eroding autonomous cellular identity: Sukunaarchaeum encodes no recognizable metabolic pathway that could benefit a host, and instead dedicates ∼25% of its genome to large membrane proteins of unknown function, a feature paralleled by host-invasion proteins in parasitic archaea. These observations argue against a mutualistic mode of host dependence and reveal a second, distinct endpoint of cellular reduction: the informational core may represent the practical lower bound for a cell that retains the capacity to replicate and express its own genome.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149147692","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":"Temporal heterogeneity in the animal fossil record driven by proliferation of microbial collagenases.","authors":"Philip B Vixseboxse, Edmund R R Moody, Philip C J Donoghue, Sean McMahon, Alexander G Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.09.045","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The animal fossil record is a non-uniform archive of evolutionary history in which exceptional preservation diminishes toward the present,¹^,²^,³ with biomineralized skeletal elements constituting the majority of the fossil record. Preservation of soft tissues requires rare combinations of chemical, biological, and physical conditions that preclude or delay decay until biological substrates can be geologically stabilized via mineralization or maturation.⁴ However, during the late Ediacaran Period (∼579-539 mya) fossilization of soft-bodied macroorganisms was common across a wide range of depositional settings.⁵^,⁶ Taphonomic models seeking to explain Ediacaran exceptionalism typically appeal to unusual mineralogical and geochemical conditions or microbiological influence (e.g., Gehling,⁷ Tarhan et al.,⁸ Bykova et al.,⁹ and Bobrovskiy et al.¹⁰), and the Paleozoic decline in exceptional preservation has invariably been explained in terms of expansion of the oxic zone through metazoan bioturbation (though see Cribb et al.¹¹) and enhanced scavenging.¹² We explore the hypothesis that temporal heterogeneity in metazoan exceptional preservation is a consequence of the origin and/or proliferation of microbial collagenases.¹³ Collagenase gene trees reconciled with a time-calibrated phylogeny show that collagenases arose and were produced by obligate anaerobes billions of years before proliferating by lateral gene transfer, approximately coincident with the diversification of early animals. These results support a link between the evolution of collagenases, animals, and the non-uniformity of the fossil record. Proliferation of collagenase-producing microbial lineages occurred in concert with early animal evolution. Evidence also indicates a shift in the locus of collagen degradation within the sediment redox profile, coincident with the decline of exceptional soft-tissue preservation in the marine realm.</p>","PeriodicalId":11359,"journal":{"name":"Current Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149135068","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}