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Current Issue of PLoSBiology


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March 2024

Proteome analyses of the postsynaptic density (PSD), a specialized region beneath the postsynaptic membrane of excitatory synapses, have identified several thousand proteins. While proteins with predictable functions have been well studied, functionally uncharacterized proteins are mostly overlooked. In this study, Kaizuka et al. conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of 35 PSD proteome datasets, encompassing a total of 5,869 proteins. Employing a ranking methodology, they identified 97 proteins that remain inadequately characterized. From this selection, they focused more detailed analysis on the highest-ranked protein, FAM81A, finding that it interacts with PSD proteins, including PSD-95, SynGAP, and NMDA receptors, and promotes liquid–liquid phase separation of those proteins in cultured cells or in vitro. Down-regulation of FAM81A in cultured neurons causes a decrease in the size of PSD-95 puncta and the frequency of neuronal firing, suggesting that FAM81A plays a crucial role in facilitating the interaction and assembly of proteins within the PSD, and its presence is important for maintaining normal synaptic function. This image shows FAM81A-GFP (green) co-expressed with PSD-95-mCherry (red) and BFP (blue) in mouse hippocampal neurons. Droplets composed of coincident FAM81A and PSD-95 (white) can be seen at the tips of dendritic spines and within the cytoplasm.

Image Credit: Takeshi Kaizuka

Essays

Including environmental and climatic considerations for sustainable coral reef restoration

Heidi L. Burdett, Rebecca Albright, Gavin L. Foster, Tali Mass, Tessa M. Page, Buki Rinkevich, Verena Schoepf, Jacob Silverman, Nicholas A. Kamenos

Viral regulation of organelle membrane contact sites

William A. Hofstadter, Elene Tsopurashvili, Ileana M. Cristea

Consensus View

Recommendations for measuring and standardizing light for laboratory mammals to improve welfare and reproducibility in animal research

Robert J. Lucas, Annette E. Allen, George C. Brainard, Timothy M. Brown, Robert T. Dauchy, Altug Didikoglu, Michael Tri H. Do, Brianna N. Gaskill, Samer Hattar, Penny Hawkins, Roelof A. Hut, Richard J. McDowell, Randy J. Nelson, Jan-Bas Prins, Tiffany M. Schmidt, Joseph S. Takahashi, Vandana Verma, Vootele Voikar, Sara Wells, Stuart N. Peirson

Perspectives

The evolutionary safety of mutagenic drugs should be assessed before drug approval

Gabriela Lobinska, Vyacheslav Tretyachenko, Orna Dahan, Martin A. Nowak, Yitzhak Pilpel

Research Articles

Cross-frequency coupling in cortico-hippocampal networks supports the maintenance of sequential auditory information in short-term memory

Arthur Borderie, Anne Caclin, Jean-Philippe Lachaux, Marcela Perrone-Bertollotti, Roxane S. Hoyer, Philippe Kahane, Hélène Catenoix, Barbara Tillmann, Philippe Albouy

Value-related learning in the olfactory bulb occurs through pathway-dependent perisomatic inhibition of mitral cells

Sander Lindeman, Xiaochen Fu, Janine Kristin Reinert, Izumi Fukunaga

Attention to audiovisual speech shapes neural processing through feedback-feedforward loops between different nodes of the speech network

Patrik Wikman, Viljami Salmela, Eetu Sjöblom, Miika Leminen, Matti Laine, Kimmo Alho

FAM81A is a postsynaptic protein that regulates the condensation of postsynaptic proteins via liquid–liquid phase separation

Takeshi Kaizuka, Taisei Hirouchi, Takeo Saneyoshi, Toshihiko Shirafuji, Mark O. Collins, Seth G. N. Grant, Yasunori Hayashi, Toru Takumi

Communication between the stem cell niche and an adjacent differentiation niche through miRNA and EGFR signaling orchestrates exit from the stem cell state in the Drosophila ovary

Jiani Chen, Chaosqun Li, Yifeng Sheng, Junwei Zhang, Lan Pang, Zhi Dong, Zhiwei Wu, Yueqi Lu, Zhiguo Liu, Qichao Zhang, Xueying Guan, Xuexin Chen, Jianhua Huang

The scale of zebrafish pectoral fin buds is determined by intercellular K+ levels and consequent Ca2+-mediated signaling via retinoic acid regulation of Rcan2 and Kcnk5b

Xiaowen Jiang, Kun Zhao, Yi Sun, Xinyue Song, Chao Yi, Tianlong Xiong, Sen Wang, Yi Yu, Xiduo Chen, Run Liu, Xin Yan, Christopher L. Antos

Specification of distinct cell types in a sensory-adhesive organ important for metamorphosis in tunicate larvae

Christopher J. Johnson, Florian Razy-Krajka, Fan Zeng, Katarzyna M. Piekarz, Shweta Biliya, Ute Rothbächer, Alberto Stolfi

MYCN drives oncogenesis by cooperating with the histone methyltransferase G9a and the WDR5 adaptor to orchestrate global gene transcription

Zhihui Liu, Xiyuan Zhang, Man Xu, Jason J. Hong, Amanda Ciardiello, Haiyan Lei, Jack F. Shern, Carol J. Thiele

Proteasome inhibition triggers tissue-specific immune responses against different pathogens in C. elegans

Manish Grover, Spencer S. Gang, Emily R. Troemel, Michalis Barkoulas

Noncanonical and reversible cysteine ubiquitination prevents the overubiquitination of PEX5 at the peroxisomal membrane

Tânia Francisco, Ana G. Pedrosa, Tony A. Rodrigues, Tarad Abalkhail, Hongli Li, Maria J. Ferreira, Gerbrand J. van der Heden van Noort, Marc Fransen, Ewald H. Hettema, Jorge E. Azevedo

Developing inhibitory peptides against SARS-CoV-2 envelope protein

Ramsey Bekdash, Kazushige Yoshida, Manoj S. Nair, Lauren Qiu, Johnathan Ahdout, Hsiang-Yi Tsai, Kunihiro Uryu, Rajesh K. Soni, Yaoxing Huang, David D. Ho, Masayuki Yazawa

Neuronal ageing is promoted by the decay of the microtubule cytoskeleton

Pilar Okenve-Ramos, Rory Gosling, Monika Chojnowska-Monga, Kriti Gupta, Samuel Shields, Haifa Alhadyian, Ceryce Collie, Emilia Gregory, Natalia Sanchez-Soriano

SMARCAL1 ubiquitylation controls its association with RPA-coated ssDNA and promotes replication fork stability

Maïlyn Yates, Isabelle Marois, Edlie St-Hilaire, Daryl A. Ronato, Billel Djerir, Chloé Brochu, Théo Morin, Ian Hammond-Martel, Sari Gezzar-Dandashi, Lisa Casimir, Elliot Drobetsky, Laurent Cappadocia, Jean-Yves Masson, Hugo Wurtele, Alexandre Maréchal

Widespread prevalence of a methylation-dependent switch to activate an essential DNA damage response in bacteria

Aditya Kamat, Ngat T. Tran, Mohak Sharda, Neha Sontakke, Tung B. K. Le, Anjana Badrinarayanan

An ancient bacterial zinc acquisition system identified from a cyanobacterial exoproteome

Cristina Sarasa-Buisan, Jesús A. G. Ochoa de Alda, Cristina Velázquez-Suárez, Miguel Ángel Rubio, Guadalupe Gómez-Baena, María F. Fillat, Ignacio Luque

Engineering of Cas12a nuclease variants with enhanced genome-editing specificity

Peng Chen, Jin Zhou, Huan Liu, Erchi Zhou, Boxiao He, Yankang Wu, Hongjian Wang, Zaiqiao Sun, Chonil Paek, Jun Lei, Yongshun Chen, Xinghua Zhang, Lei Yin

Short Reports

Polyphosphate kinase regulates LPS structure and polymyxin resistance during starvation in E. coli

Kanchi Baijal, Iryna Abramchuk, Carmen M. Herrera, Thien-Fah Mah, M. Stephen Trent, Mathieu Lavallée-Adam, Michael Downey

Methods and Resources

An engineered bacterial symbiont allows noninvasive biosensing of the honey bee gut environment

Audam Chhun, Silvia Moriano-Gutierrez, Florian Zoppi, Amélie Cabirol, Philipp Engel, Yolanda Schaerli

Synaptic and dendritic architecture of different types of hippocampal somatostatin interneurons

Virág Takács, Zsuzsanna Bardóczi, Áron Orosz, Abel Major, Luca Tar, Péter Berki, Péter Papp, Márton I. Mayer, Hunor Sebők, Luca Zsolt, Katalin E. Sos, Szabolcs Káli, Tamás F. Freund, Gábor Nyiri

Low-cost, versatile, and highly reproducible microfabrication pipeline to generate 3D-printed customised cell culture devices with complex designs

Cathleen Hagemann, Matthew C. D. Bailey, Eugenia Carraro, Ksenia S. Stankevich, Valentina Maria Lionello, Noreen Khokhar, Pacharaporn Suklai, Carmen Moreno-Gonzalez, Kelly O’Toole, George Konstantinou, Christina L. Dix, Sudeep Joshi, Eleonora Giagnorio, Mads S. Bergholt, Christopher D. Spicer, Albane Imbert, Francesco Saverio Tedesco, Andrea Serio

IntAct: A nondisruptive internal tagging strategy to study the organization and function of actin isoforms

Maxime C. van Zwam, Anubhav Dhar, Willem Bosman, Wendy van Straaten, Suzanne Weijers, Emiel Seta, Ben Joosten, Jeffrey van Haren, Saravanan Palani, Koen van den Dries

Update Articles

Cep131-Cep162 and Cby-Fam92 complexes cooperatively maintain Cep290 at the basal body and contribute to ciliogenesis initiation

Zhimao Wu, Huicheng Chen, Yingying Zhang, Yaru Wang, Qiaoling Wang, Céline Augière, Yanan Hou, Yuejun Fu, Ying Peng, Bénédicte Durand, Qing Wei

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