A newly characterized calcium-activated chloride channel has been implicated in the immune system of Drosophila, shedding light on an enigmatic family of transmembrane proteins that are ubiquitous in nature.
Single-cell transcriptomics of immune cells demonstrates that populations evolve inducible defences when infection rates are low and constitutive defences when infection is common.
While antimicrobial cocktails are highly effective for defence against pathogenic microbes, the innate immune response may instead employ highly specific peptidic antibiotics to combat certain natural enemies.
The same host–virus interactions can evolve multiple times in nature, due to the high effective mutation rate of viruses, and provide interesting systems of study.
The first genomic view of beetle luciferase evolution indicates evolutionary independence of luciferase between fireflies and click-beetles, and provide valuable datasets which will accelerate the discovery of new biotechnological tools.
Seipin oligomers dynamically interact with small, nascent lipid droplets near the endoplasmic reticulum to convert them into larger, mature lipid droplets in a newly identified step of lipid droplet formation.
New reconstruction methods are used to create a publicly available dense reconstruction of the neurons and chemical synapses of central brain of Drosophila, with analysis of its graph properties.
Sex-specific characteristics of the fruit fly courtship behavior are not specified by a single binary switch, but as a combination of traits that are modularly specified by separable genetic switches.
A series of genetically-encoded fluorescent reporters that allow imaging of neuropeptide release in vivo, with sub-second temporal and nerve terminal-level spatial resolution are developed.
