Our green planet is beginning to show a lot of signs of decay triggered by the demands of our modern lifestyle and constantly growing population numbers. It is our responsibility to try to balance these factors with a more sustainable way of life to keep our planet green. However, very often the proposed solutions are worse than the initial problems and trigger more damage. Focusing our efforts on technologies that take advantage of nature could be a more sensible approach to reach that aim. With that purpose, we have envisioned a collection for our magazine content exploring biological solutions that could be applied to reduce our CO2 emissions, get rid of plastics that are currently not degradable, produce food in a more sustainable manner or produce energy, among others. The image shows a close-up photograph of a leaf of Ficus lyrata.
Image Credit: Ines Alvarez-Garcia
Editorial
Make it easier to be green: Solutions for a more sustainable planet
PLOS Biology: published March 30, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002064
Essay
The potential of biofuels from first to fourth generation
PLOS Biology: published March 30, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002063
Unsolved Mysteries
Why have we not yet solved the challenge of plastic degradation by biological means?
PLOS Biology: published March 7, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001979
Dancing to a different tune, can we switch from chemical to biological nitrogen fixation for sustainable food security?
PLOS Biology: published March 14, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001982
Perspectives
Is it realistic to use microbial photosynthesis to produce electricity directly?
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001970
Mapping the multimodal connectome: On the architects of brain network science
PLOS Biology: published March 6, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002043
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Human microbiome research: Growing pains and future promises
PLOS Biology: published March 17, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002053
Microbially mediated carbon dioxide removal for sustainable mining
PLOS Biology: published March 21, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002026
Are bioplastics the solution to the plastic pollution problem?
PLOS Biology: published March 22, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002045
Save the planet with green industries using algae
PLOS Biology: published March 27, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002061
Primer
One strain may hide another: Cryptic male-killing Wolbachia
PLOS Biology: published March 30, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002076
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Research Articles
Phenotypic plasticity evolves at multiple biological levels in response to environmental predictability in a long-term experiment with a halotolerant microalga
PLOS Biology: published March 24, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001895
Bumblebees acquire alternative puzzle-box solutions via social learning
PLOS Biology: published March 7, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019
A male-killing Wolbachia endosymbiont is concealed by another endosymbiont and a nuclear suppressor
PLOS Biology: published March 22, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001879
Related Articles
Individuals with problem gambling and obsessive-compulsive disorder learn through distinct reinforcement mechanisms
PLOS Biology: published March 14, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002031
Illusory object recognition is either perceptual or cognitive in origin depending on decision confidence
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002009
Feature-specific reactivations of past information shift current neural encoding thereby mediating serial bias behaviors
PLOS Biology: published March 24, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002056
A deep hierarchy of predictions enables online meaning extraction in a computational model of human speech comprehension
PLOS Biology: published March 22, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002046
Local and global reward learning in the lateral frontal cortex show differential development during human adolescence
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002010
Suppression of distracting inputs by visual-spatial cues is driven by anticipatory alpha activity
PLOS Biology: published March 8, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002014
Microstructural and neurochemical plasticity mechanisms interact to enhance human perceptual decision-making
PLOS Biology: published March 10, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002029
Regulation of sleep by cholinergic neurons located outside the central brain in Drosophila
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002012
Hypothalamic Menin regulates systemic aging and cognitive decline
PLOS Biology: published March 16, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002033
Ependymal polarity defects coupled with disorganized ciliary beating drive abnormal cerebrospinal fluid flow and spine curvature in zebrafish
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002008
FGF signaling promotes spreading of fat body precursors necessary for adult adipogenesis in Drosophila
PLOS Biology: published March 22, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002050
The epithelial polarity genes frazzled and GUK-holder adjust morphogen gradients to coordinate changes in cell position with cell fate specification
PLOS Biology: published March 13, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002021
Targeting NAD+ regeneration enhances antibiotic susceptibility of Streptococcus pneumoniae during invasive disease
PLOS Biology: published March 16, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002020
CMPK2 is a host restriction factor that inhibits infection of multiple coronaviruses in a cell-intrinsic manner
PLOS Biology: published March 17, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002039
A succession of two viral lattices drives vaccinia virus assembly
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002005
Loss of the m6A methyltransferase METTL3 in monocyte-derived macrophages ameliorates Alzheimer’s disease pathology in mice
PLOS Biology: published March 7, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002017
TDP-43 and other hnRNPs regulate cryptic exon inclusion of a key ALS/FTD risk gene, UNC13A
PLOS Biology: published March 17, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002028
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TXNIP loss expands Myc-dependent transcriptional programs by increasing Myc genomic binding
PLOS Biology: published March 17, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001778
Short Reports
Neural activity induced by sensory stimulation can drive large-scale cerebrospinal fluid flow during wakefulness in humans
PLOS Biology: published March 30, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002035
Related Articles
An AI-guided screen identifies probucol as an enhancer of mitophagy through modulation of lipid droplets
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001977
EGR1 drives cell proliferation by directly stimulating TFEB transcription in response to starvation
PLOS Biology: published March 8, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002034
Methods and Resources
The hair cell analysis toolbox is a precise and fully automated pipeline for whole cochlea hair cell quantification
PLOS Biology: published March 22, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002041
Meta-Research Article
A field-wide assessment of differential expression profiling by high-throughput sequencing reveals widespread bias
PLOS Biology: published March 2, 2023 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002007