In this newsletter we discuss a new initiative to improve research culture in the life and biomedical sciences. The SAFE Labs Handbook is a collection of 30 “commitments” spanning three broad areas – teams, policies, and careers – that can be implemented by a group leader to create a positive and equitable lab environment. Plus, a metabolite that controls cell size, and the double life of brown algae.
– Peter Rodgers, Chief Magazine Editor, eLife
Metastatic breast cancer cells invade lung tissue. Image credit: Gertler Lab, Koch Institute (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Creating more positive and equitable work environments is a growing priority for the scientific community. However, there are limited resources for group leaders to improve the culture in their labs. In this Feature Article, the researchers behind the SAFE Labs project introduce the SAFE Labs Handbook: a collection of 30 “commitments” that can be implemented by individual group leaders to improve the culture in their group or lab. The proposals in the SAFE Labs Handbook, they write, have “the potential to improve lab culture on a global scale”.
Nearly all cancers can spread to other parts of the body. Breast cancer cells, for instance, can metastasize to the lungs and other organs. However, the mechanisms by which these cells can survive in their new environment – which can be very different to their original environment – remain poorly understood. Now, as reported in eLife, researchers have discovered that chromosome structure might have a role in metastasis. A chromosome has two compartments: an active compartment containing genes that are available to be transcribed, and an inactive compartment where genes are tightly packed and silent. The researchers find that, prior to metastasis, specific parts of the genome switch between these compartments. In particular, the genome architecture of breast cancer cells that are destined for the lung changes to become similar to that of normal lung cells.
Changes in cell size in animals are controlled by kinases and transcription factors that reorganize metabolic networks to give priority to pathways that build biomass over those that consume nutrients. However, despite the central role of metabolism in controlling cell size, the influence of metabolites has largely been overlooked. Now, as explained in this Insight article, researchers have discovered that a metabolite called pyruvate is the dominant factor controlling the size of fat body cells in Drosophila and liver cells in mammals. Pyruvate, which is produced by the breakdown of sugars, can either be burned to provide energy, or converted to building blocks that enable cell growth. In particular, the researchers show that importing pyruvate into mitochondria overrides conventional signalling pathways to control cell size.
Many viruses mutate rapidly, allowing them to evade the immune responses of their hosts, and making it difficult to develop effective vaccines. Researchers often use macaques to study how HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, evolves and mutates as it interacts with the immune system. However, it is not clear if the evolution and mutation of the HIV virus in macaques resembles that seen in humans. Now, as reported in eLife, the fitness landscapes that influence the dynamics of the HIV virus are "remarkably similar" in humans and macaques that develop the broadly neutralizing antibodies that an effective HIV vaccine needs to stimulate. The results support the continued used of macaque models of infection and antibody development.
Most brown algae have life cycles that alternate between two generations: one that produces spores, and one that produces gametes. Brown algae are of interest to developmental biologists because the evolution of multicellularity in brown algae occurred independently of its evolution in land plants and animals. However, the genetic basis of development in these organisms remains poorly understood. Now, as reported in eLife, a study of ten species of brown algae has identified life-cycle-related patterns of gene expression that are conserved across the brown algae. Moreover, the total number of genes exhibiting life-cycle-related expression in each species was correlated with the degree of dimorphism between the two life-cycle generations of that species.
David Baltimore, who has died at the age of 87, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975 with Renato Dulbecco and Howard Temin for their work on tumour viruses – notably the discovery of reverse transcriptase. As George Daley writes in an obituary published in both Cell and Immunity, the discovery “overturned the prevailing simplification of the central dogma of molecular biology – that genetic information inexorably flowed from DNA to RNA to protein. As [Temin and Baltimore] reported, reverse transcriptase copied RNA into DNA.” Baltimore was, Daley writes, “a powerful intellectual force who defied categorization as a virologist, immunologist, or cancer biologist.” He was also the first president of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and president of the California Institute of Technology between 1997 and 2006.
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