Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Manasi S. Gangan, Marcos M. Vasconcelos, Urbashi Mitra, Odilon Camara, James Q. Boedicker
Summary: Public goods are biomolecules that benefit cellular populations, and their production is energetically costly. This study investigates the regulation of a public good that increases carrying capacity. The timing of production has a significant impact on population fitness, balancing the cost and benefits of public good production.
Article
Microbiology
Kristopher Kieft, Karthik Anantharaman
Summary: Temperate phages (prophages) are dormant components of host cells before activating and lysing the host. It is challenging to identify if a prophage has activated. In this study, researchers developed an automated software tool called PropagAtE to estimate the lytic or lysogenic stage of prophage infection. Application of PropagAtE to various environments revealed distinct activation signatures of prophages and identified active prophage populations correlated with specific treatment groups.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Lucas Santana Souza, Yasuhiko Irie, Shigetoshi Eda
Summary: This study investigates the influence of partial privatization on the evolution of quorum sensing. The results suggest that unless autoinducers are costless, partial privatization cannot favor quorum sensing, leading to issues with the survival of specific strains and the inability to achieve metabolic specialization.
Article
Microbiology
Sian Owen, Nicolas Wenner, Charles L. Dulberger, Ella Rodwell, Arthur Bowers-Barnard, Natalia Quinones-Olvera, Daniel J. Rigden, Eric J. Rubin, Ethan C. Garner, Michael Baym, Jay C. D. Hinton
Summary: The research identified a family of prophage-encoded phage-defense proteins called BstA in diverse Gram-negative bacteria. BstA protein localizes to sites of exogenous phage DNA replication and mediates abortive infection to suppress competing phage epidemic. It allows prophages to defend host cells against exogenous phage attack without affecting lytic replication.
CELL HOST & MICROBE
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Emma K. Bueren, Alaina R. Weinheimer, Frank O. Aylward, Bryan B. Hsu, David C. Haak, Lisa K. Belden
Summary: This study examines the prophage community in the gut of European honeybees and honey bee pathogens. Results show that prophages can have beneficial effects on bacterial hosts and play a role in maintaining the stability of the gut microbiome. The number and composition of prophages vary among different bacterial species, with some species having higher prophage counts and composition than others.
Article
Ecology
Anouk van't Padje, Malin Klein, Victor Caldas, Loreto Oyarte Galvez, Cathleen Broersma, Nicky Hoebe, Ian R. Sanders, Thomas Shimizu, E. Toby Kiers
Summary: This study used arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis to investigate the effects of fungal relatedness on host and fungal benefits, finding that less-related fungi were associated with increased fungal growth, lower nutrient transport, and reduced plant benefits. The research demonstrates how symbiont relatedness can mediate the benefits of symbiotic relationships.
Review
Engineering, Environmental
Robert A. Montgomery, Jamie Raupp, Methodius Mukhwana, Ashley Greenleaf, Tutilo Mudumba, Philip Muruthi
Summary: Efforts have been made to reduce elephant crop raiding through interventions such as chili peppers and crop guarding combined with deterrents, which have been reported as most effective. However, further research is needed to evaluate the scalability of these interventions across different elephant populations.
Article
Economics
Muhammad Asali, Aamer Abu-Qarn, Michael Beenstock
Summary: This article provides theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for the complex interplay between violence and cooperation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The study finds evidence of asymmetric cycles of cooperation alongside cycles of violence, and highlights the causal effect of cooperation on reducing violence.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
(2024)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Matthew C. Johnson, Logan T. Hille, Benjamin P. Kleinstiver, Alexander J. Meeske, Joseph Bondy-Denomy
Summary: This article questions the research findings of Lin et al. on CRISPR immunity and Acr proteins, highlighting inconsistencies in the study including inaccurate bioinformatics analyses and the impossibility of constructing certain bacterial strains.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Isma Gul, Saima Kausar, Qiuxiang You, Wei Sun, Zekun Li, Muhammad Nadeem Abbas, Hongjuan Cui
Summary: The Nimrod family genes play a crucial role in host defense by positively regulating the antibacterial immune response in silkworm B. mori. Knockdown of BmDraper decreased bacterial clearance and increased replication, contributing to increased mortality rates, while knockdown of BmNimrod-B had no significant effect on these outcomes. The genes did not significantly affect the production of antimicrobial peptides following E. coli infection.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL MACROMOLECULES
(2021)
Article
Microbiology
Gamaliel Lopez-Leal, Laura Carolina Camelo-Valera, Juan Manuel Hurtado-Ramirez, Jerome Verleyen, Santiago Castillo-Ramirez, Alejandro Reyes-Munoz
Summary: This study extracted a large number of prophages from prokaryotic genomes, revealing the diversity of prophages and their relationships with their hosts. Pathogens are an important source of prophages, and the relatedness of prophages and the range of genomic hosts are influenced by the evolutionary relationships of their hosts.
Article
Ecology
Rong Xia, Mingming Sun, Jose Luis Balcazar, Pingfeng Yu, Feng Hu, Pedro J. J. Alvarez
Summary: This study investigated the interactions between earthworm intestinal phages and their bacteria under different benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) concentrations using metagenomics and metatranscriptomics. The results showed that low-level BaP stress stimulated microbial metabolism and enhanced the antiphage defense system, while high-level BaP exposure disrupted microbial metabolism and suppressed the antiphage systems. Overall, these findings expand our knowledge of complex phage-bacterium interactions in pollution-stressed worm guts and deepen our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary roles of phages.
Article
Business
Sheshadri Chatterjee, Ranjan Chaudhuri, Patrick Mikalef, David Sarpong
Summary: This study aims to investigate the impact of coopetition on firms in the platform-based sharing economy from ethical and performance perspectives. By performing an empirical analysis on a dataset of 328 Indian platform-based firms, the study found that the environment of cooperation and competition in the platform-based sharing economy creates conflicts and increases firms' ethical dilemmas, leading to decreased performance.
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Tianyi Chen, Tang Liu, Zongzhi Wu, Bingxue Wang, Qian Chen, Mi Zhang, Enhang Liang, Jinren Ni
Summary: Bacterial pathogens and viruses in the South-to-North Water Diversion Canal in China are limited by low phosphorus content, leading to adaptive strategies in viruses and suppressed growth potential in bacterial pathogens. These findings highlight the potential of virus-pathogen dynamics for water self-purification and sustainable water resource management.
Article
Geography
Aslak Veierud Busch
Summary: The rapidly changing Arctic region has gained international consensus on the necessity of safeguarding its environment and ensuring a conflict-free region. However, discussions on Arctic politics often involve competitive and contentious terms due to divergent understandings among actors about what the region represents.
