Emerging Topics in Life Sciences

Electron cryotomography enables the direct visualisation of biological specimens without stains or fixation, revealing complex molecular landscapes at high resolution. However, identifying specific proteins within these crowded environments is challenging. Molecular tagging offers a promising solution by attaching visually distinctive markers to proteins of interest, differentiating them from the background. This review explores available tagging strategies, including gold nanoparticles, metal-binding proteins, nucleic acid nanostructures and protein-based tags. The identification and targeting strategies for each approach are discussed, highlighting their respective advantages and limitations. Future directions for advancing these tagging techniques to expand their applicability to broader research questions are also considered.

Emma Silvester

Lindsay A. Baker

Molecular tags for electron cryo-tomography

电子冷冻断层扫描的分子标签

Microplastics are small (<5 mm) plastic particles of varying shapes and polymer types that are now widespread global contaminants of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Various estimates suggest that several trillions of microplastic particles are present in our global oceanic system, and that these are readily ingested by a wide range of marine and freshwater species across feeding modes and ecological niches. Here, we present some of the key and pressing issues associated with these globally important contaminants from a microbiological perspective. We discuss the potential mechanisms of pathogen attachment to plastic surfaces. We then describe the ability of pathogens (both human and animal) to form biofilms on microplastics, as well as dispersal of these bacteria, which might lead to their uptake into aquatic species ingesting microplastic particles. Finally, we discuss the role of a changing oceanic system on the potential of microplastic-associated pathogens to cause various disease outcomes using numerous case studies. We set out some key and imperative research questions regarding this globally important issue and present a methodological framework to study how and why plastic-associated pathogens should be addressed.

Jake Bowley

Craig Baker-Austin

Steve Michell

Ceri Lewis

Pathogens transported by plastic debris: does this vector pose a risk to aquatic organisms?

塑料碎片携带的病原体：这一载体对水生生物构成风险吗？

To date, much effort has been placed on quantifying plastic pollution and understanding its negative environmental effects, arguably to the detriment of research and evaluation of potential interventions. This has led to piecemeal progress in interventions to reduce plastic pollution, which do not correspond to the pace of emissions. For substances that are used on a global scale and identified as hazardous, there is a need to act before irreversible damage is done. For example, the history of dichlorodiphenyltrichloethane's (DDT) use has demonstrated that legacy chemicals with properties of persistence can still be found in the environment despite being first prohibited 50 years ago. Despite the growing evidence of harm, evidence to inform actions to abate plastic pollution lag behind. In part, this is because of the multifaceted nature of plastic pollution and understanding the connections between social, economic and environmental dimensions are complex. As such we highlight the utility of integrative systems approaches for addressing such complex issues, which unites a diversity of stakeholders (including policy, industry, academia and society), and provides a framework to identify to develop specific, measurable and time-bound international policies on plastic pollution and meet the ambitious yet necessary goals of the UN Plastic Treaty.

Winnie Courtene-Jones

Nathaniel J. Clark

Richard C. Thompson

Plastic pollution requires an integrative systems approach to understand and mitigate risk

塑料污染需要综合系统方法来理解和缓解风险

Models of episodic memory are successfully established using spontaneous object recognition tasks in rodents. In this review, we present behavioral techniques devised to investigate this type of memory, emphasizing methods based on associations of places and temporal order of items explored by rats and mice. We also provide a review on the areas and circuitry of the medial temporal lobe underlying episodic-like memory, considering that a large number of neurobiology data derived from these protocols. Although spontaneous recognition tasks are commonplace in this field, there is need for careful evaluation of factors affecting animal performance. Such as the ongoing development of tools for investigating the neural basis of memory, efforts should be put in the refinement of experimental designs, in order to provide reliable behavioral evidence of this complex mnemonic system.

Flávio Freitas Barbosa

Rochele Castelo-Branco

Assessing episodic memory in rodents using spontaneous object recognition tasks

评估啮齿动物情景记忆的自发物体识别任务

Mental health disorders affect a substantial proportion of the worldwide population, and currently available treatments do not work for all affected individuals. Understanding the psychological and biological mechanisms that underlie mental health disorders will facilitate treatment development, and the use of translational animal models is potentially transformative for this. Structured around the US National Institute of Mental Health's ‘Research Domain Criteria’ (RDoC) approach, this special issue showcases reviews that consider how animal models can best be used to understand and treat the processes that go awry in mental health disorders.

Amy L. Milton

Editorial introduction: animal models relevant to mental health disorders

编者按：与精神健康障碍相关的动物模型

Metal ions such as zinc and copper play important roles in host–microbe interactions and their availability can drastically affect the survival of pathogenic bacteria in a host niche. Mechanisms of metal homeostasis protect bacteria from starvation, or intoxication, defined as when metals are limiting, or in excess, respectively. In this mini-review, we summarise current knowledge on the mechanisms of resistance to metal stress in bacteria, focussing specifically on the homeostasis of cellular copper and zinc. This includes a summary of the factors that subvert metal stress in bacteria, which are independent of metal efflux systems, and commentary on the role of small molecules and metabolic systems as important mediators of metal resistance.

Matthew J. Sullivan

Ignacio Terán

Kelvin G.K. Goh

Glen C. Ulett

Resisting death by metal: metabolism and Cu/Zn homeostasis in bacteria

抵抗金属致死：细菌中的代谢与铜/锌稳态

This review systematically assesses the impact of sleep on memory and cognition in healthy individuals across different life stages. It specifically examines how sleep affects memory processes in children, adults, and older adults. The methodology involved a comprehensive literature search, starting with 46 known papers. Keywords and Mesh terms related to sleep and memory consolidation were derived using the Word Frequency Analysis tool in SR Accelerator and Mesh on Demand. A detailed search on PubMed yielded a large set of records. Classifier training on 4854 decisions, these were narrowed down to 1437 papers for full-text screening, culminating in 19 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Sleep enhances memory consolidation, especially for complex declarative information. While the role of sleep in procedural memory consolidation in children remains less robust compared to declarative memory, findings suggest potential but inconsistent benefits. Sleep improves prospective memory consolidation and aids in complex associative memory tasks. Memory reactivation during sleep, specifically slow-wave sleep, and spindles are implicated in memory consolidation. Meta-analytic evidence suggests that while sleep benefits both emotional and neutral memory consolidation, there is no strong preferential effect of sleep on emotional memory in comparison to neutral memory. In older adults, there is a noticeable reduction in sleep-dependent memory consolidation, particularly for declarative memory, likely linked to a decline in slow-wave sleep. This suggests a decrease in the benefits of sleep for memory consolidation with aging. Overall, the review underscores the importance of sleep in memory processes across all ages, highlighting variations in its impact on different types of memory and across age groups. It points to future research directions for enhancing understanding and practical applications in clinical and educational settings.

Anna Weighall

Ian Kellar

Sleep and memory consolidation in healthy, neurotypical children, and adults: a summary of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

健康、神经正常的儿童和成人中的睡眠与记忆巩固：系统综述和元分析总结

Obstructive sleep apnoea-hypopnoea syndrome (OSAHS) is a common disorder characterised by repetitive episodes of the complete or partial collapse of the pharyngeal airway during sleep. This results in cessation (apnoea) or reduction (hypopnoea) of airflow, leading to oxygen desaturation and sleep fragmentation. An individual's disposition to develop OSAHS depends on the collapsibility of a segment of the upper airway. The degree of collapsibility can be quantified by the balance between occluding or extraluminal pressures of the surrounding tissues. Patients can experience snoring, unrefreshing sleep, witnessed apnoeas, waking with a choking sensation and excessive daytime sleepiness. OSAHS has a broad range of consequences, including cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurocognitive sequelae. Treatment options include lifestyle measures, in particular weight loss, and strategies to maintain upper airway patency overnight, including continuous positive airway pressure, mandibular advancement devices and positional modifiers.

Nicola Read

Callum Jennings

Alanna Hare

Obstructive sleep apnoea–hypopnoea syndrome

阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停低通气综合征

Until recently, understanding the neurobiology of dreaming has relied upon on correlating a subjective dream report with a measure of brain activity or function sampled from a different occasion. As such, most assumptions about dreaming come from the neuroscience of rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep from which many, but not all, dream reports are recalled. Core features of REM sleep (intense emotional activation, a reduction in activity in most frontal regions, particularly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, along with increased dopamine, acetylcholine, cholinergic activation) align with typical dream characteristics (characterised by fear, reduced reality monitoring, increased bizarreness and hyperassociativity, respectively). The default mode network offers a way of understanding the nature of dreaming more independently from a REM sleep context, and electroencephalography methods paired with serial awakenings to elicit dream reports demonstrate how high-frequency activity in posterior regions may be associated with dreaming. Nevertheless, all measures of dreaming rely fundamentally on recall processes, so our understanding of dreaming must embrace and address memory's crucial involvement in dream report production.

Caroline L. Horton

The neurocognition of dreaming: key questions and foci

梦境的神经认知：关键问题与焦点

Abbreviation	Emerg. Top. Life. Sci.
Journal Impact	3.54
Quartiles(Global)	BIOLOGY(Q1)

ISSN	2397-8554, 2397-8562
h-index	32

Publication Information	Publisher: Portland Press Ltd，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 2017，Proportion of original research papers: 1.72%，Self Citation Rate:0.00%， Gold OA Rate: 47.68%

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences

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Molecular tags for electron cryo-tomography

Pathogens transported by plastic debris: does this vector pose a risk to aquatic organisms?

Plastic pollution requires an integrative systems approach to understand and mitigate risk

Assessing episodic memory in rodents using spontaneous object recognition tasks

Editorial introduction: animal models relevant to mental health disorders

Molecular tags for electron cryo-tomography

Resisting death by metal: metabolism and Cu/Zn homeostasis in bacteria

Sleep and memory consolidation in healthy, neurotypical children, and adults: a summary of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Obstructive sleep apnoea–hypopnoea syndrome

The neurocognition of dreaming: key questions and foci