Despite the importance of the Galápagos archipelago as a key site for the study of biodiversity and evolution, significant components of its invertebrate biodiversity, particularly Hymenoptera, remain...

Recent years have witnessed a rapid expansion in bacterial defense mechanisms. Alongside established defenses against molecular parasites, hundreds of novel mechanisms are being described annually, contributing to an ever-expanding ‘bacterial immune system’. Terms like ‘defense’ and ‘immune’ are often used as shorthand for an observed anti-infection phenotype, but can also imply an evolutionary adaptation with a specific anti-infection function. Despite the field’s growth, no agreed-upon framework exists for identifying defense adaptations. When is a defense mechanism an evolved adaptation? Here, we review prior debates in evolutionary biology and propose a four-part framework to evaluate the case for a defense mechanism being an evolved adaptation. Beyond bacterial immunity, these criteria offer a research roadmap to address functional controversies across microbiology.

Flagellin is the structural protein of the bacterial flagellar filament, an extracellular propeller that rotates to drive swimming in many bacteria. The structure of flagellin allows for outer domain ...

Retrosynthesis is the process of designing chemical pathways from a set of reactants to a set of desired products. However, when both the pools of potential reactants and products grow to a substantia...

Auxotrophic metabolic sensors (AMS) are vital for bioengineering but are often time-consuming to develop. Here, the authors present a workflow for designing versatile AMS, demonstrating their use for ...

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Photoperiodic time measurement is the ability of plants and animals to measure differences in day versus night length (photoperiod) and use that information to anticipate critical seasonal transformat...

Posts about Antibiotic resistance written by Rebekka, georgiadittemore, Disha Tandon, Guest author, Shruchi Singh, Raphael Hans Lwesya, janagomez, and Sarah Jacks

When maize plants are attacked by pests, they release chemicals that prime and subsequently induce the defense mechanisms of other nearby plants.

Mutations in the protein SNAP25, which are associated with epilepsy and developmental delays, disrupt how neurons communicate in distinct ways.