What’s New?

What's New?

What’s New?     

What’s New?

What's New?

What’s New?     

What’s New?

What's New

What’s New?     

What’s New?

What's New

What’s New?     

What’s New?

Whats New?     

What��s New

What's New

What’s New     

What’s in a loop?

DNAs and proteins are major classes of biomolecules that differ in many aspects. However, a considerable number of their members also share a common architectural feature that enables the assembly of multi-protein complexes and thereby permits the effective processing of signals: loop structures of substantial sizes. Here we briefly review a few representative examples and suggest a functional classification of different types of loop structures. In proteins, these loops occur in protein regions classified as intrinsically disordered. Studying such loops, their binders and their interactions with other loops should reveal much about cellular information computation and signaling network architectures. It is also expected to provide critical information for synthetic biologists and bioengineers.     

First Issue of 2013: What’s New for JIPB

It is no exaggeration to say that 2012 was an eventful year.China has a new president, Xi Jinping, and the US re-elected Barack Obama. Gmail was ranked as the world’s number one email service, and astronomers measured light from the universe’s first stars. JIPB has also undergone     

What Explains Differences in Men’s and Women’s Production?

Researchers commonly use long-term average production inequalities to characterize cross-cultural patterns in foraging divisions of labor, but little is known about how the strategies of individuals shape such inequalities. Here, we explore the factors that lead to daily variation in how much men produce relative to women among Martu, contemporary foragers of the Western Desert of Australia. We analyze variation in foraging decisions on temporary foraging camps and find that the percentage of total camp production provided by each gender varies primarily as a function of men’s average bout successes with large, mobile prey. When men target large prey, either their success leads to a large proportional contribution to the daily harvest, or their failure results in no contribution. When both men and women target small reliable prey, production inequalities by gender are minimized. These results suggest that production inequalities among Martu emerge from stochastic variation in men’s foraging success on large prey measured against the backdrop of women’s consistent production of small, low-variance resources.

What’s “cool” on eriophyoid mites?

Fundamental knowledge on the morphology, biology, ecology, and economic importance of Eriophyoidea has been exhaustively compiled by Lindquist et al. (Eriophyoid mites—their biology, natural enemies and control; Elsevier, 1996). Since that time, the number of recognized species and the economic importance of the taxon have increased substantially. The aim of this paper is to analyze and briefly review new findings from eriophyoid mites’ literature after Lindquist et al. book, stressing persistent gaps and needs. Much recent attention has been given to sampling and detection, taxonomy and systematics, faunistic surveys, internal morphology, rearing techniques, biological and ecological aspects, biomolecular studies, and virus vectoring. Recommendations are made for integrating research and promoting broader dissemination of data among specialists and non-specialists.     

Understanding the somitogenesis clock: What’s missing?

The segmentation of vertebrate embryos depends on a complex genetic network that generates highly dynamic gene expression. Many of the elements of the network have been identified, but their interaction and their influence on segmentation remain poorly understood. A few mathematical models have been proposed to explain the dynamics of subsets of the network, but the mechanistic bases remain controversial. This review focuses on outstanding problems with the generation of somitogenesis clock oscillations, and the ways they could regulate segmentation. Proposals that oscillations are generated by a negative feedback loop formed by Lunatic fringe and Notch signaling are weighed against a model based on positive feedback, and the experimental basis for models of simple negative feedback involving Her/Hes genes or Wnt targets is evaluated. Differences are then made explicit between the many 'clock and wavefront' model variants that have been proposed to explain how the clock regulates segmentation. An understanding of the somitogenesis clock will require addressing experimentally the many questions that arise from the study of simple models.     

‘Straightening What’s Crooked’? Recognition as Moral Disruption in Indonesia’s Confucianist Revival

ABSTRACT

In 2006, the Indonesian state re-recognised Confucianism as an official religion, but this did not have the straightforwardly positive consequences that either Confucianist revivalists or some theorists of recognition might have predicted. Revivalists were often – but not always – gripped by feelings of outrage and moral torment, whilst the pace of the revival itself was very uneven. These varied outcomes reflect the complex politics pervading the lives of Indonesian Confucianists (and Chinese Indonesians more generally) as post-Suharto reforms force them to grapple with their diverse histories of accommodation and resistance to the New Order’s discriminatory policies. To fully understand such material, first-person moral perspectives must be incorporated into critical anthropological studies of recognition, as a complement to approaches focused on power and domination. Doing so reveals an important general truth about recognition – its capacity to be morally disruptive – and broadens our understanding of why recognition can hurt those it ostensibly stands to benefit.     

SH3 domain ligand binding: What’s the consensus and where’s the specificity?

An increasing number of SH3 domain-ligand interactions continue to be described that involve the conserved peptide-binding surface of SH3, but structurally deviate substantially from canonical docking of consensus motif-containing SH3 ligands. Indeed, it appears that that the relative frequency and importance of these types of interactions may have been underestimated. Instead of atypical, we propose referring to such peptides as type I or II (depending on the binding orientation) non-consensus ligands. Here we discuss the structural basis of non-consensus SH3 ligand binding and the dominant role of the SH3 domain specificity zone in selective target recognition, and review some of the best-characterized examples of such interactions.