Scotttate6051

Our results support the use of catnip and nepetalactone as insect-selective irritants and suggest that, despite TRPA1's broad conservation, insect TRPA1 can be targeted for the development of safe repellents.Motor skill retention is typically measured by asking participants to reproduce previously learned movements from memory. The analog of this retention test (recall memory) in human verbal memory is known to underestimate how much learning is actually retained. Here we asked whether information about previously learned movements, which can no longer be reproduced, is also retained. Following visuomotor adaptation, we used tests of recall that involved reproduction of previously learned movements and tests of recognition in which participants were asked whether a candidate limb displacement, produced by a robot arm held by the subject, corresponded to a movement direction that was experienced during active training. The main finding was that 24 h after training, estimates of recognition memory were about twice as accurate as those of recall memory. Thus, there is information about previously learned movements that is not retrieved using recall testing but can be accessed in tests of recognition. We conducted additional tests to assess whether, 24 h after learning, recall for previously learned movements could be improved by presenting passive movements as retrieval cues. These tests were conducted immediately prior to recall testing and involved the passive playback of a small number of movements, which were spread across the workspace and included both adapted and baseline movements, without being marked as such. This technique restored recall memory for movements to levels close to those of recognition memory performance. Thus, somatic information may enable retrieval of otherwise inaccessible motor memories.Environmental noise is a major source of selection on animal sensory and communication systems. The acoustic signals of other animals represent particularly potent sources of noise for chorusing insects, frogs, and birds, which contend with a multi-species analog of the human "cocktail party problem" (i.e., our difficulty following speech in crowds). However, current knowledge of the diverse adaptations that function to solve noise problems in nonhuman animals remains limited. Here, we show that a lung-to-ear sound transmission pathway in frogs serves a heretofore unknown noise-control function in vertebrate hearing and sound communication. Inflated lungs improve the signal-to-noise ratio for communication by enhancing the spectral contrast in received vocalizations in ways analogous to signal processing algorithms used in hearing aids and cochlear implants. Laser vibrometry revealed that the resonance of inflated lungs selectively reduces the tympanum's sensitivity to frequencies between the two spectral peaks present in conspecific mating calls. Social network analysis of continent-scale citizen science data on frog calling behavior revealed that the calls of other frog species in multi-species choruses can be a prominent source of environmental noise attenuated by the lungs. Physiological modeling of peripheral frequency tuning indicated that inflated lungs could reduce both auditory masking and suppression of neural responses to mating calls by environmental noise. Together, these data suggest an ancient adaptation for detecting sound via the lungs has been evolutionarily co-opted to create auditory contrast enhancement that contributes to solving a multi-species cocktail party problem.The characterization of cancer genomes has provided insight into somatically altered genes across tumors, transformed our understanding of cancer biology, and enabled tailoring of therapeutic strategies. However, the function of most cancer alleles remains mysterious, and many cancer features transcend their genomes. Consequently, tumor genomic characterization does not influence therapy for most patients. find more Approaches to understand the function and circuitry of cancer genes provide complementary approaches to elucidate both oncogene and non-oncogene dependencies. Emerging work indicates that the diversity of therapeutic targets engendered by non-oncogene dependencies is much larger than the list of recurrently mutated genes. Here we describe a framework for this expanded list of cancer targets, providing novel opportunities for clinical translation.Clonal hematopoiesis, defined as the presence of expanded somatic blood cell clones, is associated with about a doubling in the risk of coronary heart disease in humans. Heyde and colleagues now provide evidence that clonal hematopoiesis results largely from increased stem cell proliferation, which is, in turn, stimulated by atherosclerosis.Understanding what regulates CD8+ T cell responses is key to effectively harnessing these cells in human disease. In this issue of Cell, Huang et al. and Chen et al. use in vivo CRISPR screens to discover novel regulators of CD8+ T cell immunity to engineer a more efficacious response against cancer and infections.The de novo domestication has the potential to rapidly capitalize on desirable traits of wild plants. In this issue of Cell, Yu et al. report a route of de novo domestication of an allotetraploid rice, heralding the creation of a novel staple food crop to support global food security.The expanding field of stem cell metabolism has been supported by technical advances in metabolite profiling and novel functional analyses. While use of these methodologies has been fruitful, many challenges are posed by the intricacies of culturing stem cells in vitro, along with the distinctive scarcity of adult tissue stem cells and the complexities of their niches in vivo. This review provides an examination of the methodologies used to characterize stem cell metabolism, highlighting their utility while placing a sharper focus on their limitations and hurdles the field needs to overcome for the optimal study of stem cell metabolic networks.Recent evidence supports the notion that mitochondrial metabolism is necessary for the determination of stem cell fate. Historically, mitochondrial metabolism is linked to the production of ATP and tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle metabolites to support stem cell survival and growth, respectively. However, it is now clear that beyond these canonical roles, mitochondria as signaling organelles dictate stem cell fate and function. In this review, we focus on key conceptual ideas on how mitochondria control mammalian stem cell fate and function through reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, TCA cycle metabolite production, NAD+/NADH ratio regulation, pyruvate metabolism, and mitochondrial dynamics.