August 2018

Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants, and for many non-legume crops the requirement for nitrogen is primarily met by the use of inorganic fertilizers. These fertilizers are produced from fossil fuel by energy-intensive processes that are estimated to use 1% to 2% of the total global energy supply and produce an equivalent share of greenhouse gases. Because maize (Zea mays L.) is a significant recipient of nitrogen fertilization, a research goal for decades has been to identify or engineer mechanisms for biological fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in association with this crop. In this study by Van Deynze et al. the authors show that for one such maize landrace grown in nitrogen-depleted fields near Oaxaca, Mexico, 29%-82% of the plant nitrogen is derived from atmospheric nitrogen. High levels of nitrogen fixation are supported, at least in part, by the abundant production of a sugar-rich mucilage associated with aerial roots that provides a home to a complex nitrogen-fixing microbiome. The image shows mucilage dripping from the aerial roots of one of these plants. Van Deynze et al.

Image Credit: Howard-Jana Shapiro

Essay

Compositionality in animals and humans

Simon W. Townsend, Sabrina Engesser, Sabine Stoll, Klaus Zuberbühler, Balthasar Bickel

PLOS Biology: published August 15, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006425

Unsolved Mystery

Why is congenital Zika syndrome asymmetrically distributed among human populations?

Jimena Barbeito-Andrés, Lavínia Schuler-Faccini, Patricia Pestana Garcez

PLOS Biology: published August 24, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006592

Perspectives

Provenance and risk in transfer of biological materials

Jane Nielsen, Tania Bubela, Don R. C. Chalmers, Amber Johns, Linda Kahl, Joanne Kamens, Charles Lawson, John Liddicoat, Rebekah McWhirter, Ann Monotti, James Scheibner, Tess Whitton, Dianne Nicol

PLOS Biology: published August 13, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006031

Reconciling corruption with conservation triage: Should investments shift from the last best places?

Craig Packer, Stephen Polasky

PLOS Biology: published August 31, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005620

Primers

Why are RNA virus mutation rates so damn high?

Siobain Duffy

PLOS Biology: published August 13, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000003

HAP2/GCS1: Mounting evidence of our true biological EVE?

Theodore Clark

PLOS Biology: published August 20, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000007

The importance of being persistent: The first true resident gut symbiont in Drosophila

Dali Ma, François Leulier

PLOS Biology: published August 2, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006945

Phase-coding memories in mind

Nicole Hakim, Edward K. Vogel

PLOS Biology: published August 29, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000012

Community Page

Best Match: New relevance search for PubMed

Nicolas Fiorini, Kathi Canese, Grisha Starchenko, Evgeny Kireev, Won Kim, Vadim Miller, Maxim Osipov, Michael Kholodov, Rafis Ismagilov, Sunil Mohan, James Ostell, Zhiyong Lu

PLOS Biology: published August 28, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005343

Research Articles

Within-host competition can delay evolution of drug resistance in malaria

Mary Bushman, Rustom Antia, Venkatachalam Udhayakumar, Jacobus C. de Roode

PLOS Biology: published August 21, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005712

Leaky resistance and the conditions for the existence of lytic bacteriophage

Waqas N. Chaudhry, Maroš Pleška, Nilang N. Shah, Howard Weiss, Ingrid C. McCall, Justin R. Meyer, Animesh Gupta, Călin C. Guet, Bruce R. Levin

PLOS Biology: published August 16, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005971

The mammalian decidual cell evolved from a cellular stress response

Eric M. Erkenbrack, Jamie D. Maziarz, Oliver W. Griffith, Cong Liang, Arun R. Chavan, Mauris C. Nnamani, Günter P. Wagner

PLOS Biology: published August 24, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005594

Evolutionary diversification of the HAP2 membrane insertion motifs to drive gamete fusion across eukaryotes

Juliette Fedry, Jennifer Forcina, Pierre Legrand, Gérard Péhau-Arnaudet, Ahmed Haouz, Mark Johnson, Felix A. Rey, Thomas Krey

PLOS Biology: published August 13, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006357

Nitrogen fixation in a landrace of maize is supported by a mucilage-associated diazotrophic microbiota

Allen Van Deynze, Pablo Zamora, Pierre-Marc Delaux, Cristobal Heitmann, Dhileepkumar Jayaraman, Shanmugam Rajasekar, Danielle Graham, Junko Maeda, Donald Gibson, Kevin D. Schwartz, Alison M. Berry, Srijak Bhatnagar, Guillaume Jospin, Aaron Darling, Richard Jeannotte, Javier Lopez, Bart C. Weimer, Jonathan A. Eisen, Howard-Yana Shapiro, Jean-Michel Ané, Alan B. Bennett

PLOS Biology: published August 7, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006352

Timescales of influenza A/H3N2 antibody dynamics

Adam J. Kucharski, Justin Lessler, Derek A. T. Cummings, Steven Riley

PLOS Biology: published August 20, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004974

Heterogeneity and longevity of antibody memory to viruses and vaccines

Alice Antia, Hasan Ahmed, Andreas Handel, Nichole E. Carlson, Ian J. Amanna, Rustom Antia, Mark Slifka

PLOS Biology: published August 10, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006601

Serial representation of items during working memory maintenance at letter-selective cortical sites

Ali Bahramisharif, Ole Jensen, Joshua Jacobs, John Lisman

PLOS Biology: published August 15, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003805

Representational interactions during audiovisual speech entrainment: Redundancy in left posterior superior temporal gyrus and synergy in left motor cortex

Hyojin Park, Robin A. A. Ince, Philippe G. Schyns, Gregor Thut, Joachim Gross

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006558

The memory for time and space differentially engages the proximal and distal parts of the hippocampal subfields CA1 and CA3

Zachery Beer, Peter Vavra, Erika Atucha, Katja Rentzing, Hans-Jochen Heinze, Magdalena M. Sauvage

PLOS Biology: published August 28, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006100

Learning from the past: A reverberation of past errors in the cerebellar climbing fiber signal

Marc Junker, Dominik Endres, Zong Peng Sun, Peter W. Dicke, Martin Giese, Peter Thier

PLOS Biology: published August 1, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004344

Axonal sodium channel Na_V1.2 drives granule cell dendritic GABA release and rapid odor discrimination

Daniel Nunes, Thomas Kuner

PLOS Biology: published August 20, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003816

The taste of ribonucleosides: Novel macronutrients essential for larval growth are sensed by Drosophila gustatory receptor proteins

Dushyant Mishra, Natasha Thorne, Chika Miyamoto, Christopher Jagge, Hubert Amrein

PLOS Biology: published August 7, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005570

FSP1-positive fibroblasts are adipogenic niche and regulate adipose homeostasis

Rui Zhang, Yuan Gao, Xiaotong Zhao, Mei Gao, Yanjun Wu, Yingying Han, Yuemei Qiao, Zheng Luo, Li Yang, Jianfeng Chen, Gaoxiang Ge

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001493

Canonical PRC2 function is essential for mammary gland development and affects chromatin compaction in mammary organoids

Ewa M. Michalak, Michael J. G. Milevskiy, Rachel M. Joyce, Johanna F. Dekkers, Paul R. Jamieson, Bhupinder Pal, Caleb A. Dawson, Yifang Hu, Stuart H. Orkin, Warren S. Alexander, Geoffrey J. Lindeman, Gordon K. Smyth, Jane E. Visvader

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004986

A non-cell-autonomous actin redistribution enables isotropic retinal growth

Marija Matejčić, Guillaume Salbreux, Caren Norden

PLOS Biology: published August 10, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006018

A high-throughput screen of real-time ATP levels in individual cells reveals mechanisms of energy failure

Bryce A. Mendelsohn, Neal K. Bennett, Maxwell A. Darch, Katharine Yu, Mai K. Nguyen, Daniela Pucciarelli, Maxine Nelson, Max A. Horlbeck, Luke A. Gilbert, William Hyun, Martin Kampmann, Jean L. Nakamura, Ken Nakamura

PLOS Biology: published August 27, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004624

Symptoms of systemic lupus erythematosus are diagnosed in leptin transgenic pigs

Junchen Chen, Weiqi Zeng, Weirong Pan, Cong Peng, Jianglin Zhang, Juan Su, Weihu Long, Heng Zhao, Xiaoxia Zuo, Xiaoyun Xie, Jing Wu, Ling Nie, Hong-Ye Zhao, Hong-Jiang Wei, Xiang Chen

PLOS Biology: published August 31, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005354

Protein aggregates encode epigenetic memory of stressful encounters in individual Escherichia coli cells

Sander K. Govers, Julien Mortier, Antoine Adam, Abram Aertsen

PLOS Biology: published August 28, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2003853

Prd1 associates with the clathrin adaptor α-Adaptin and the kinesin-3 Imac/Unc-104 to govern dendrite pruning in Drosophila

Wenhui Zong, Yan Wang, Quan Tang, Heng Zhang, Fengwei Yu

PLOS Biology: published August 24, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004506

A dual-specific macrophage colony-stimulating factor antagonist of c-FMS and α_vβ₃ integrin for osteoporosis therapy

Yuval Zur, Lior Rosenfeld, Chen Anna Keshelman, Nofar Dalal, Gali Guterman-Ram, Ayelet Orenbuch, Yulia Einav, Noam Levaot, Niv Papo

PLOS Biology: published August 24, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2002979

Tissue-specific degradation of essential centrosome components reveals distinct microtubule populations at microtubule organizing centers

Maria D. Sallee, Jennifer C. Zonka, Taylor D. Skokan, Brian C. Raftrey, Jessica L. Feldman

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005189

KDM5 histone demethylases repress immune response via suppression of STING

Lizhen Wu, Jian Cao, Wesley L. Cai, Sabine M. Lang, John R. Horton, Daniel J. Jansen, Zongzhi Z. Liu, Jocelyn F. Chen, Meiling Zhang, Bryan T. Mott, Katherine Pohida, Ganesha Rai, Stephen C. Kales, Mark J. Henderson, Xin Hu, Ajit Jadhav, David J. Maloney, Anton Simeonov, Shu Zhu, Akiko Iwasaki, Matthew D. Hall, Xiaodong Cheng, Gerald S. Shadel, Qin Yan

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006134

Surf4 (Erv29p) binds amino-terminal tripeptide motifs of soluble cargo proteins with different affinities, enabling prioritization of their exit from the endoplasmic reticulum

Ying Yin, Mekka R. Garcia, Alexander J. Novak, Allison M. Saunders, Raira S. Ank, Anna S. Nam, Larry W. Fisher

PLOS Biology: published August 7, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005140

The lysolipid transporter Mfsd2a regulates lipogenesis in the developing brain

Jia Pei Chan, Bernice H. Wong, Cheen Fei Chin, Dwight L. A. Galam, Juat Chin Foo, Loo Chin Wong, Sujoy Ghosh, Markus R. Wenk, Amaury Cazenave-Gassiot, David L. Silver

PLOS Biology: published August 3, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006443

BRAF and AXL oncogenes drive RIPK3 expression loss in cancer

Ayaz Najafov, Ioannis K. Zervantonakis, Adnan K. Mookhtiar, Patricia Greninger, Ryan J. March, Regina K. Egan, Hoang Son Luu, Daniel G. Stover, Ursula A. Matulonis, Cyril H. Benes, Junying Yuan

PLOS Biology: published August 29, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005756

FusC, a member of the M16 protease family acquired by bacteria for iron piracy against plants

Rhys Grinter, Iain D. Hay, Jiangning Song, Jiawei Wang, Don Teng, Vijay Dhanesakaran, Jonathan J. Wilksch, Mark R. Davies, Dene Littler, Simone A. Beckham, Ian R. Henderson, Richard A. Strugnell, Gordon Dougan, Trevor Lithgow

PLOS Biology: published August 2, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006026

Short Reports

Repeated translocation of a gene cassette drives sex-chromosome turnover in strawberries

Jacob A. Tennessen, Na Wei, Shannon C. K. Straub, Rajanikanth Govindarajulu, Aaron Liston, Tia-Lynn Ashman

PLOS Biology: published August 27, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006062

Centromeric signaling proteins boost G1 cyclin degradation and modulate cell size in budding yeast

Joan M. Martínez-Láinez, David F. Moreno, Eva Parisi, Josep Clotet, Martí Aldea

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005388

The mitochondrial transporter SLC25A25 links ciliary TRPP2 signaling and cellular metabolism

Alexis Hofherr, Claudia Seger, Fiona Fitzpatrick, Tilman Busch, Elisabeth Michel, Jingting Luan, Lea Osterried, Frieder Linden, Albrecht Kramer-Zucker, Barbara Wakimoto, Conny Schütze, Nils Wiedemann, Anna Artati, Jerzy Adamski, Gerd Walz, Edmund R. S. Kunji, Craig Montell, Terry Watnick, Michael Köttgen

PLOS Biology: published August 6, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005651

Methods and Resources

Transcriptional programming of lipid and amino acid metabolism by the skeletal muscle circadian clock

Kenneth Allen Dyar, Michaël Jean Hubert, Ashfaq Ali Mir, Stefano Ciciliot, Dominik Lutter, Franziska Greulich, Fabiana Quagliarini, Maximilian Kleinert, Katrin Fischer, Thomas Oliver Eichmann, Lauren Emily Wright, Marcia Ivonne Peña Paz, Alberto Casarin, Vanessa Pertegato, Vanina Romanello, Mattia Albiero, Sara Mazzucco, Rosario Rizzuto, Leonardo Salviati, Gianni Biolo, Bert Blaauw, Stefano Schiaffino, N. Henriette Uhlenhaut

PLOS Biology: published August 10, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005886

Plasmodium vivax-like genome sequences shed new insights into Plasmodium vivax biology and evolution

Aude Gilabert, Thomas D. Otto, Gavin G. Rutledge, Blaise Franzon, Benjamin Ollomo, Céline Arnathau, Patrick Durand, Nancy D. Moukodoum, Alain-Prince Okouga, Barthélémy Ngoubangoye, Boris Makanga, Larson Boundenga, Christophe Paupy, François Renaud, Franck Prugnolle, Virginie Rougeron

PLOS Biology: published August 24, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006035

Research Matters

Emerging plant disease epidemics: Biological research is key but not enough

Rodrigo P. P. Almeida

PLOS Biology: published August 22, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2007020

The small things can matter

Norman R. Pace

PLOS Biology: published August 24, 2018 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000009

Cover

Nitrogen fixation in a landrace of maize is supported by a mucilage-associated diazotrophic microbiota

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