Issues

Summary: The 20th student-organised Progressive Palaeontology conference was held from 17th-20th of June 2024, giving postgraduate students experience of presenting at a conference to their peers. The organisers describe the meeting and offer advice for future meetings.

Summary: This Meeting Review highlights the recent progress in modeling the human placenta in vitro, their advantages and limitations, as well as the challenges that remain this field.

Summary: This Review explores the Drosophila host-parasitoid system as a powerful model for advancing our understanding of hostparasitoid interactions.

Summary: Acclimation, spacial adaptation and temporal adaptation impact Drosophila chill tolerance to different degrees. Adaptation and plasticity in cold tolerance are associated with elemental stoichiometry in different ways.

Summary: The SUMO-targeted ubiquitin ligase Slx8 associates with heterochromatin loci enriched at the nuclear periphery and promotes gene silencing and nuclear organization in the yeast Schizossacharomyces pombe.

Summary: Knee position impacts plantarflexor muscle activation and reduces plantarflexion strength, with decreased medial gastrocnemius activity but no compensatory increase in soleus activation.

Summary: This study highlights significant differences in femur morphology between Panthera species, linking these variations to body size, locomotion, and ecological adaptations like hunting success and arboreal movement.

Summary: Maternal microchimerism (MMc) varies in our bodies through unknown factors. We tested whether maternal immune activation alters its proportion, but no significant differences were detected, thus suggesting an MMc control system.

Summary: MicroRNA expression patterns across patient-matched primary canine osteosarcoma tissues, plasma samples, and derived cell lines, demonstrate differential expression across sample types within the same patient.

Summary: Age- and oxidative stress-induced centrosome amplification and renal stones in Drosophila Malpighian tubules.

Summary: A robust inducible epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) model was established in MCF10A cells using doxycycline-induced mTwist1 expression. This model will facilitate researchers to investigate cancer metastasis-driving genes and their effects on Twist1-mediated EMT.

Summary: Smoking impairs adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell (ADMSC) functionality, reducing proliferation and viability, altering oxidative stress responses, and diminishing therapeutic potential.

Summary: We show the distribution of the nitric oxide system within the nervous system of Octopus maya. NO positive neurons are observed in areas associated with olfactory and visual information processing.

Summary: This study explores how early-life challenges in zebrafish affect stress responses and hormone regulation, offering insights into developmental adaptability and stress management mechanisms.

Summary: This study shows that retina-specific modification of efemp1 expression in zebrafish results in myopic eye, and impacts responses to myopia-inducing dark-rearing in eye growth, retinal function, and myopia-associated molecular expression and distribution, implicating light-dependent regulation of efemp1 in ocular development.

Summary: This paper demonstrates that blocking the interaction between DLC1 and AMBRA1 shifts the balance away from apoptosis and towards autophagy/mitophagy, thus representing a potential therapeutic strategy for neurodegeneration.

Summary: This paper describes how spectral scanning and FLIM can be combined to characterize autofluorescence and improve GFP quantification in autofluorescent tissues.