Behind the Paper
The real stories behind the latest research papers, from conception to publication, the highs and the lows
Extracellular vesicles, the rising stars in immunomodulation
In the past, most scholars think platelet-derived EVs are just the ashes from cells and had no idea about their functions. However, we are curious why activated platelets release so many EVs? We speculate that EVs may have holy missions during infection.
How do diatoms acclimate and adapt to changing temperatures?
Each phytoplankton species has its own characteristic thermal performance curve. For most species, growth rate increases gradually with increasing temperature until a critical temperature is reached, and then growth rate drops quickly with further increases in temperature. Right now, most researchers assume that individual species thermal response curves will stay fixed, so temperature increases will change the biogeographic distributions of species. To better understand how phytoplankton will respond to increasing ocean temperatures, we wanted to develop a mechanistic understanding of the effects of changing temperature on diatom metabolism.
HPV circRNAs: Transformation with no end in sight
Although circular RNAs (circRNAs) are abundant and can be encoded by viruses, the function of most circRNAs remain unclear. We describe the discovery of circRNAs in human papillomaviruses (HPVs) including a circular E7 RNA (circE7). CircE7 is translated and required for transformation in cervical cancer cells, providing strong evidence that circRNAs can be translated and have important biological functions.
Jiawei Zhao
Richard Wang
