05/24/2024
Research Article
Theory assumes that allocation to pre- and post-copulatory sexual traits draws from a common pool of resources, creating equivalent life-history trade-offs. However, Meng-Han Joseph Chung, Rebecca Fox and Michael Jennions use a novel experiment with mosquitofish to reveal independent costs of mating effort and sperm allocation on subsequent male performance.
Image credit: Andrew Kahn
Current Issue April 2024
05/23/2024
Meta-Research Article
Our ability to understand the progress of science through the evolution of research topics is limited by the need for specialist knowledge and the exponential growth of the literature. Shin-Han Shiu and Melissa Lehti-Shiu use artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to demonstrate how a biological field (plant science) has evolved, how the model systems have changed, and how countries differ in terms of research focus and impact.
Image credit: pbio.3002612
05/20/2024
Research Article
Targeted protein degradation strategies are promising avenues for drug development, but it is important to broaden the toolbox of E3 ligases that can be engaged. Ying Wang, Tianzi Wei, Man Zhao, Liang Hong, Rui Wang, Ruilin Tian, Guofeng Li and co-workers shows that alkenyl oxindole compounds act as novel E3 ligase ligands and recruit the CRL4-DCAF11 E3 ubiquitin ligase complex for substrate degradation.
Image credit: pbio.3002550
05/20/2024
Research Article
Neuronal activity during action execution and action observation is ubiquitous in the primate brain but what minimal visual features drive this activity? Sofie De Schrijver, Thomas Decramer and Peter Janssen show that neurons active during action observation and action execution respond to surprisingly simple visual stimuli which do not contain any meaningful action.
Image credit: pbio.3002358
05/16/2024
Research Article
Does the robustness of the standard genetic code accelerate or impede adaptive evolution? Hana Rozhoňová, Joshua Payne and colleagues use experimental data from six massively parallel sequence-to-function assays for four proteins to show that robust genetic codes enhance protein evolvability by producing smooth adaptive landscapes with few peaks. Don’t miss the related Primer.
Image credit: pbio.3002594
05/16/2024
Research Article
In third-party interventions, people tend to get involved in others’ injustices by either punishing the transgressor or helping the victim. Huagen Wang, Shaozheng Qin, Chao Liu and co-workers show that acute stress decreases the third party’s willingness to punish the violator and increases their willingness to help the victim. Read more details in the associated Primer.
Image credit: pbio.3002195
05/24/2024
Essay
Samuel Church, Jasmine Mah and Casey Dunn argue that, by integrating phylogenetic approaches into scRNA-seq analyses, hypotheses about gene and cell evolution can be robustly tested.
Image credit: pbio.3002633
05/21/2024
Essay
The 2022 GBF set out to conserve a global area of 30% by 2030. This Essay provides a framework for area-based conservation that prioritizes "Nature's Strongholds", arguing that these are disproportionately important for biodiversity conservation.
Image credit: Omar Torrico
05/20/2024
Essay
Reconstructing the tree of life is a central goal in biology. Jacob Steenwyk and Nicole King discuss the use of synteny for reconstructing the tree of life and propose a roadmap for conducting rigorous and accurate synteny-based phylogenomic analysis.
Image credit: pbio.3002632
04/16/2024
Unsolved Mystery
This Unsolved Mystery article explores how genome reduction alters endosymbiont biology and highlights a ‘tipping point’ where the loss of the ability to build a cell envelope coincides with a marked erosion of translation-related genes.
Image credit: pbio.3002577
Symbiosis research has become a holistic and pervasive field with a mature theoretical basis. This collection showcases symbiotic relationships across the tree of life, exploring their evolutionary basis and underlying mechanisms.
PLOS Biology is 20 and we are celebrating with a collection that contains articles that look back at landmark studies that we published, others that look past and future, and others discussing how publishing and open science have evolved and what is to come.
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This collection explores engineering strategies to help us adapt plants to a changing climate, including breeding techniques, genome engineering, synthetic biology and microbiome engineering.
The green collection explores biological solutions that could be applied to reduce CO2 emissions, get rid of non-degradable plastics, produce food in a sustainable manner or generate energy.
This collection explores potential solutions to mitigate the impacts of human activity on ocean ecosystems to minimize or reverse degradation.
May 29 - Jun 2
Meet Senior Editor Luke Smith (lsmith@plos.org)
June 9 - 14
Meet Senior Editor Ines Alvarez-Garcia (ialvarez-garcia@plos.org)
June 13 - 17
Meet Editor in Chief Nonia Pariente (npariente@plos.org)
June 18 - 21
Meet Associate Editor Melissa Vazquez Hernandez (mvazquezhernandez@plos.org)
June 24 - 29
Meet Senior Editor Christian Schnell (cschnell@plos.org)
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