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Current Issue of PLoSBiology

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February 2025

Cover

Capsid transfer of the retrotransposon Copia controls structural synaptic plasticity in Drosophila
Issue Image

Transposons are parasitic genome elements that can also serve as raw material for the evolution of new cellular functions. However, how retrotransposons are selected and domesticated by host organisms to modulate synaptic plasticity remains largely unknown. M’Angale, Lemieux, Liu et al. show that the Ty1 retrotransposon Copia forms virus-like capsids in vivo and transfers between cells. Copia is enriched at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction and transported across synapses, and disrupting its expression promotes both synapse development and structural synaptic plasticity. The authors show that proper synaptic plasticity is maintained in Drosophila by the balance of Copia and the Arc1 homolog. High-resolution cryogenic-electron microscopy imaging shows that the structure of the Copia capsid has a large capacity and pores like retroviruses but is distinct from domesticated capsids such as dArc1. Their results suggest a fully functional transposon mediates synaptic plasticity, possibly representing an early stage of domestication of a retrotransposon. The image shows the structure of the Copia capsid, as determined by cryo-electronmicroscopy.

Image Credit: Travis Thomson and Brian Kelch

Essay

Innovations in noninvasive sensory stimulation treatments to combat Alzheimer’s disease

Jung M. Park, Li-Huei Tsai

PLOS Biology: published February 28, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003046

Perspectives

A call for broadening the altmetrics tent to democratize science outreach

Ivan Jarić, Pavel Pipek, Ana Novoa

PLOS Biology: published February 7, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003010

New solutions for antibiotic discovery: Prioritizing microbial biosynthetic space using ecology and machine learning

Marnix H. Medema, Gilles P. van Wezel

PLOS Biology: published February 28, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003058

Primers

Evolutionary origin of lubricated joints at the dawn of jawed vertebrates

J. Gage Crump

PLOS Biology: published February 26, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003044

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Neural development goes retro: Gags as essential modulators of synapse formation

Yung-Heng Chang, Josh Dubnau

PLOS Biology: published February 19, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003032

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The placenta as a cradle, but not source, of blood?

Julie Y. Chen, Kyle M. Loh

PLOS Biology: published February 6, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003021

Community Page

GitHub enables collaborative and reproducible laboratory research

Katharine Y. Chen, Maria Toro-Moreno, Arvind Rasi Subramaniam

PLOS Biology: published February 14, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003029

Research Articles

Landscape-level human disturbance results in loss and contraction of mammalian populations in tropical forests

Ilaria Greco, Lydia Beaudrot, Chris Sutherland, Simone Tenan, Chia Hsieh, Daniel Gorczynski, Douglas Sheil, Jedediah Brodie, Mohammad Firoz Ahmed, Jorge Ahumada, Rajan Amin, Megan Baker-Watton, Ramie Husneara Begum, Francesco Bisi, Robert Bitariho, Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, Elildo A. R. Carvalho Jr, Daniel Cornélis, Giacomo Cremonesi, Virgínia Londe de Camargos, Iariaella Elimanantsoa, Santiago Espinosa, Adeline Fayolle, Davy Fonteyn, Abishek Harihar, Harry Hilser, Alys Granados, Patrick A. Jansen, Jayasilan Mohd-Azlan, Caspian Johnson, Steig Johnson, Dipankar Lahkar, Marcela Guimarães Moreira Lima, Matthew Scott Luskin, Marcelo Magioli, Emanuel H. Martin, Adriano Martinoli, Ronaldo Gonçalves Morato, Badru Mugerwa, Lain E. Pardo, Julia Salvador, Fernanda Santos, Cédric Vermeulen, Patricia C. Wright, Francesco Rovero

PLOS Biology: published February 13, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002976

Shallow seamounts are “oases” and activity hubs for pelagic predators in a large-scale marine reserve

Sam B. Weber, Andrew J. Richardson, Christopher D. H. Thompson, Judith Brown, Fabio Campanella, Brendan J. Godley, Nigel E. Hussey, Jessica J. Meeuwig, Paul Rose, Nicola Weber, Matthew J. Witt, Annette C. Broderick

PLOS Biology: published February 4, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003016

Synovial joints were present in the common ancestor of jawed fish but lacking in jawless fish

Neelima Sharma, Yara Haridy, Neil Shubin

PLOS Biology: published February 25, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002990

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PLOS Biology: published February 11, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003012

Hippocampal damage disrupts the latent decision-making processes underlying approach-avoidance conflict processing in humans

Willem Le Duc, Christopher R. Butler, Georgios P. D. Argyropoulos, Sonja Chu, Cendri Hutcherson, Anthony C. Ruocco, Rutsuko Ito, Andy C. H. Lee

PLOS Biology: published February 11, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003033

Capsid transfer of the retrotransposon Copia controls structural synaptic plasticity in Drosophila

P. Githure M’Angale, Adrienne Lemieux, Yumeng Liu, Shuhao Wang, Max Zinter, Gimena Alegre, Alfred Simkin, Vivian Budnik, Brian A. Kelch, Travis Thomson

PLOS Biology: published February 18, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002983

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mRNA stability fine-tunes gene expression in the developing cortex to control neurogenesis

Lucas D. Serdar, Jacob R. Egol, Brad Lackford, Brian D. Bennett, Guang Hu, Debra L. Silver

PLOS Biology: published February 6, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003031

Toll-1-dependent immune evasion induced by fungal infection leads to cell loss in the Drosophila brain

Deepanshu N. D. Singh, Abigail R. E. Roberts, Xiaocui Wang, Guiyi Li, Enrique Quesada Moraga, David Alliband, Elizabeth Ballou, Hung-Ji Tsai, Alicia Hidalgo

PLOS Biology: published February 13, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003020

Gap junctions allow transfer of metabolites between germ cells and somatic cells to promote germ cell growth in the Drosophila ovary

Caroline Vachias, Camille Tourlonias, Louis Grelée, Nathalie Gueguen, Yoan Renaud, Parvathy Venugopal, Graziella Richard, Pierre Pouchin, Emilie Brasset, Vincent Mirouse

PLOS Biology: published February 18, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003045

Macrophage invasion into the Drosophila brain requires JAK/STAT-dependent MMP activation in the blood–brain barrier

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PLOS Biology: published February 20, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003035

Caspase 3 and caspase 7 promote cytoprotective autophagy and the DNA damage response during non-lethal stress conditions in human breast cancer cells

Gayathri Samarasekera, Nancy E. Go, Courtney Choutka, Jing Xu, Yuka Takemon, Jennifer Chan, Michelle Chan, Shivani Perera, Samuel Aparicio, Gregg B. Morin, Marco A. Marra, Suganthi Chittaranjan, Sharon M. Gorski

PLOS Biology: published February 21, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003034

RIPK1 is required for ZBP1-driven necroptosis in human cells

Oluwamuyiwa T. Amusan, Shuqi Wang, Chaoran Yin, Heather S. Koehler, Yixun Li, Tencho Tenev, Rebecca Wilson, Benjamin Bellenie, Ting Zhang, Jian Wang, Chang Liu, Kim Seong, Seyedeh L. Poorbaghi, Joseph Yates, Yuchen Shen, Jason W. Upton, Pascal Meier, Siddharth Balachandran, Hongyan Guo

PLOS Biology: published February 21, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002845

The exocytosis regulator complexin controls spontaneous synaptic vesicle release in a CAPS-dependent manner at C. elegans excitatory synapses

Ya Wang, Chun Hin Chow, Yu Zhang, Mengjia Huang, Randa Higazy, Neeraja Ramakrishnan, Lili Chen, Xuhui Chen, Yixiang Deng, Sheng Wang, Cuntai Zhang, Cong Ma, Shuzo Sugita, Shangbang Gao

PLOS Biology: published February 6, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003023

The cholesterol 24-hydroxylase CYP46A1 promotes α-synuclein pathology in Parkinson’s disease

Lijun Dai, Jiannan Wang, Lanxia Meng, Xingyu Zhang, Tingting Xiao, Min Deng, Guiqin Chen, Jing Xiong, Wei Ke, Zhengyuan Hong, Lihong Bu, Zhentao Zhang

PLOS Biology: published February 18, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002974

VANGL2 alleviates inflammatory bowel disease by recruiting the ubiquitin ligase MARCH8 to limit NLRP3 inflammasome activation through OPTN-mediated selective autophagy

Huaji Jiang, Yingchao Xie, Zhiqiang Hu, Jiansen Lu, Jiahuan Zhang, Hongyu Li, Ke Zeng, Wenqiang Peng, Cheng Yang, Junsheng Huang, Zelong Han, Xiaochun Bai, Xiao Yu

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Tonic ubiquitination of the central body weight regulator melanocortin receptor 4 (MC4R) promotes its constitutive exit from cilia

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PLOS Biology: published February 3, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003025

Detailed characterisation of the trypanosome nuclear pore architecture reveals conserved asymmetrical functional hubs that drive mRNA export

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PLOS Biology: published February 3, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003024

The HCF101 protein is an important component of the cytosolic iron–sulfur synthesis pathway in Toxoplasma gondii

Eléa A. Renaud, Ambre J. M. Maupin, Laurence Berry, Julie Bals, Yann Bordat, Vincent Demolombe, Valérie Rofidal, Florence Vignols, Sébastien Besteiro

PLOS Biology: published February 6, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003028

Short Reports

Incomplete recombination suppression fuels extensive haplotype diversity in a butterfly colour pattern supergene

Rishi De-Kayne, Ian J. Gordon, Reinier F. Terblanche, Steve Collins, Kennedy Saitoti Omufwoko, Dino J. Martins, Simon H. Martin

PLOS Biology: published February 28, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003043

Methods and Resources

vmTracking enables highly accurate multi-animal pose tracking in crowded environments

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PLOS Biology: published February 10, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003002

HCNetlas: A reference database of human cell type-specific gene networks to aid disease genetic analyses

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PLOS Biology: published February 5, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002702

Discovery Reports

Unprecedented female mutation bias in the aye-aye, a highly unusual lemur from Madagascar

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PLOS Biology: published February 7, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003015

Bacteriocin-like peptides encoded by a horizontally acquired island mediate Neisseria gonorrhoeae autolysis

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PLOS Biology: published February 5, 2025 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003001