Pawel Burkhardt @pawelburkhardt@qoto.org

Interesting #neurobiology paper.

Neurons are very large, with mm to m often separating synapses from nucleus. So how do terminals rapidly make new protein, when these are encoded far away?

Local translation of mRNAs is one way, but that raises the question how mRNAs get to terminals. It is thought that localising RNAs contain 'zipcode' sequences, but not many of these have been found.

This paper now implicates mRNA stability as an important factor for localisation.

https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(23)00468-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1097276523004689%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

We published a new preprint on nitric oxide (NO) signalling in #Platynereis. In the paper Kei Jokura et al. described how NO is required for UV-avoidance behaviour by mediating retrograde signalling to brain ciliary photoreceptors.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.02.551600v1
#neuroscience #animals #science

Reposting from @extremefungi: Our Current Biology Primer on #fungi from extreme environments just came online!
Free access for the next 50 days: authors.elsevier.com/a/1hTUb3QW8S2Q…
#extremefungi #extremophiles

Just out: the peer-reviewed versions, back-to-back, of "replacing Academic Journals"

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230206

and

"Mastodon over Mammon"
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230207

#openscience #opendata #openaccess

In our new preprint we characterise neuropeptide signalling in the cnidarian #Nematostella.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.03.547448v1
Daniel Thiel and Luis Yanez-Guerra screened 64 neuropeptides against 161 G-protein coupled receptors (#GPCR) and found activating peptide ligands for 31 receptors.
#cnidaria #neuropeptide #evolution #neuroscience

The connectome of the adult female fly brain, Drosophila melanogaster:

“Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain” by Dorkenwald et al. 2023 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.27.546656v1

A project that started with Davi Bock and Wei Lee developing the TEMCA for the mouse visual cortex in Clay Reid’s lab (Bock et al. 2011 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09802), then Bock moving to #HHMIJanelia and developing the instrument much further to deliver the #FAFB volume (Zheng et al. 2018 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867418307876 ), and then the Seung, Murthy and Jefferis labs automatically re-registering, segmenting and annotating the whole volume via #FlyWire and more.

Extraordinary!

#Drosophila #connectomics #neuroscience #brain

Map of night trains in Europe. In combination with high-speed trains and regional trains, a lot of destinations are one evening plus overnight away. Now if only oil subsidies would end, flight tickets wouldn’t be competitive, particularly with Interrail ticket schemes.

Higher resolution version at the website: https://back-on-track.eu/night-train-map/

#Europe #Train #TrainTravel #Travel

Faculty position open at the #MRCLMB in Cambridge, UK:

Group Leader at the Neurobiology division: come join us!

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CZP497/research-group-leader-neurobiology-lmb-2136

Oh very cool.
You can have fiji open with your favorite tools already open.

https://didyouknowimageanalysis.wordpress.com/2023/05/12/hitting-the-ground-running-with-fiji-start-up-options/

“Rosalind Franklin has been reduced to the “wronged heroine” of the double helix” Instead, “She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure.”

By @matthewcobb and N. Comfort, 2023

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5

#Science #HistoryOfScience #DNA #RosalindFranklin

Cover article in Science Magazine shows that comb jellies' epithelial nerve net is slime-mold-like syncytium. No discrete neurons!

"Syncytial nerve net in a ctenophore adds insights on the evolution of nervous systems"
by Burkhardt et al. (2023, Science)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade5645

The invisible world of plankton is literally expanding... #PlanExM #UExM
---
RT @vincentflora
Featuring a friend and colleague @dudin_o during @EMBLtrec @embl
Looking at our plankton #catchoftheday .
I’ll try to share more of what we actually catch in the next stop (Tallinn!). This time in Roscoff a lot of Rhizosolenia (diatom people happy 😊 ) https://twitter.com/embltrec/status/1646870708440514562
https://twitter.com/vincentflora/status/1646872300464095232

@eLife

For anyone on the fence about #eLife's new publishing model, note there is no such thing as an "eLife paper", since the purpose of the review process in scientific publishing is to provide accurate, constructive reviews to authors. In modern times, dissemination doesn't depend on mailed-in printed periodicals.

Each eLife publication has an evaluation attached to it in the form of an assessment–be it negative or positive. Critically, authors decide whether to go forward with assessments as they are and go public, or to revise the manuscript and request re-review to improve both manuscript and, consequently, the reviews and assessment.

In other words, nothing changed, except, its authors who decide how to move forward with their own manuscript, rather than editors.

#ScientificPublishing #academia

Here are two stupendous articles on octopus chemo-detection, which just appeared in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05822-1 and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05808-z