Sometimes it seems like a theme spontaneously emerges in pubs that I want to read for a given week like the set of single-cell analysis papers but there are diverse, other items including a striking day-night brain stem cell cycle paper and an interesting piece on identical twins who got COVID.
What are you reading these days?
Day/night cycle and activity of stem cells in the brain
Adult neural stem cell activation in mice is regulated by the day/night cycle and intracellular calcium dynamics, Cell. See graphic abstract below from Gengatharan, et al. The mammalian brain shifts modes at night. It definitely feels that way for us people too. How is that shift controlled at a cellular and molecular level? Does it impact neural stem cells? Notably, the authors found more NSC division during the day, as impacted in the day-night cycle negatively by melatonin.
Media items
- Twins With Covid Help Scientists Untangle the Disease’s Genetic Roots, NYT, Katherine J. Wu. From the article, “I want to know,” one twin said, “why did she have Covid worse than me?”
- Meet Eric Lander, Biden’s Pick For Science Adviser And A Polarizing Figure, Peter Aldhous, Buzz Feed Science.
Single-Cell studies
- Dissecting human embryonic skeletal stem cell ontogeny by single-cell transcriptomic and functional analyses, Cell Research.
- Single-cell analysis of Schistosoma mansoni identifies a conserved genetic program controlling germline stem cell fate, Nature Communications.
- Discriminating mild from critical COVID-19 by innate and adaptive immune single-cell profiling of bronchoalveolar lavages, Cell Research.
- Single-cell analysis of the developing human testis reveals somatic niche cell specification and fetal germline stem cell establishment, Cell Stem Cell, from a team led by Bradley Cairns and Amander Clark. Also included last week, but this one is fascinating and really worth a read. Developmental human studies, particularly of germ cells, are very rare and quite important. They provide insights into human development and in this case also into fertility and perhaps infertility treatments. Such studies face the extra hurdle of also being impeded by political policies, particularly during some administrations.
- Single-cell analysis reveals transcriptomic remodellings in distinct cell types that contribute to human prostate cancer progression, Nature Cell Biology.
More recommended pubs
- Activation of estrogen receptor beta signaling reduces stemness of glioma stem cells, Stem Cells.
- Selective antisense oligonucleotide inhibition of human IRF4 prevents malignant myeloma regeneration via cell cycle disruption, Cell Stem Cell. Targeting cancer stem cells.
- Multiple roles for Pax2 in the embryonic mouse eye, Developmental Biology.
- PI3K/Akt pathway and Nanog maintain cancer stem cells in sarcomas, Oncogenesis.