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: 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.