The Scent of Jealousy! Interview with Meghan Laturney on mate-guarding behavior!!

You know of Hollywood plots where a man comes smelling of another woman, and his wife suspects him of cheating on her. The woman is relying on olfactory cues for keeping a tab on the guy's sexual behavior. Does this soap-opera behavior also occur in other species? Is smell used as a tool to guard against promiscuous behavior??

Meghan and her colleagues try to tease apart such behavior in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. They see that the male deposits specific scents on the female's body and inside her reproductive tract. Both these olfactory cues decrease the female's attractiveness to future mating partners. This increases the chances of the male's sperm fertilizing the female. The female, on the other hand, might actively try to remove these marking scent in order to continuing mating, which gives her eggs better to survive. To know more about this exciting arms race between the sexes, please listen to Meghan!


To know more on the topic, please refer to:
Drosophila melanogaster females restore their attractiveness after mating by removing male anti-aphrodisiac pheromones.
Laturney & Billeter. Nature Communications.  7, 12322 (2016)

What did you have for dinner last night? Interview with Vishnu Sreekumar on memory formation in the real world!

Isn't is difficult to remember what you had for dinner two night ago, but so easy to remember your first kiss! Why is it difficult to remember few experiences while other stay etched in our memory forever. Of course, we have limited brain capacity, so few things are removed at the expense of others, but how do we evaluate that information; how much decision making goes into paying attention to important tasks for remembering them later onward.

Vishnu Sreekumar and his team work on memory formation in the real world. They utilize information gathering using contemporary technologies to come-up with models that can explain what we look for in experiences when memories are being formed. Their exciting work not only helps model our day-to-day working, but can also help people with better memory retention and improving attention span. To know more, please listen to Vishnu.


For further information please refer to the following publication:
The Episodic Nature of Experience: A Dynamical Systems Analysis.
Sreekumar et al., Cognitive Science, 23 July 2016.

Piggyback Microbe and Cancer! Interview with Niranjan Nagarajan on role of microbiome in bile duct cancer.

Cancer is a very complex disease, with various genetic and environmental factors playing a role in its development and growth. Mutations within the cell and signaling among cells is well known to play vital roles. But could there be other players involved in the process. Of note, something which surrounds us at all times: our microbiome?

Our body is composed of as many microbiome as our own cells. A lot of it comes from the food we eat and the water we drink. Along with our meals, food related parasites might bring their own microbiome into our body, and these could in turn home into organs and modify the tissue microenviroment. This is what Niranjan and colleagues see for bile duct cancer - in which liver fluke parasite arriving from consumption of raw fish finds a home in the bile duct and increases the chance of developing cancer. Their work emphasizes an appreciation into the role of microbiota in cancer development. To know more, please listen to Niranjan.  



To learn more, please refer to:
Tissue Microbiome Profiling Identifies an Enrichment of Specific Enteric Bacteria in Opisthorchis viverrini Associated Cholangiocarcinoma
Chng et al., eBioMedicine, June 2016Volume 8, Pages 195–202.

A Mito coup d'cellule! Interview with Hansong Ma on selfish drive in mitochondria!!!

Mitochondria are the power generators of the cell. Each cell has thousands of them, and each has its own genome. The DNA it possesses is needed for survival, and it has to be replicated to generate new ones. This means that mitochondria that can replicate better can out-compete others with replicative disadvantage and, in extreme cases, take over the entire cellular compartment. Since, the cell is blind to such competition, 'bad' or non-functional mitochondria can take over, to their own benefit and to the cell's detriment; thereby leading to 'selfish behavior'. 

This is of particular importance to current human health. UK's decision to allow three-parent baby is a monumental step in curing a set of congenital diseases. In this the defective mitochondria is replaced with that from a healthy donor. But even if a few defective ones remain behind (from among thousands), this also creates a competition among the two populations. And if the selfish drive of the defective one is strong enough, it might again take over the cell, thereby increasing the chance of pathogenesis. A good donor should not only be healthy, but also strong in its selfish drive. To understand how such competition is accomplished, please listen to the interview with Hansong Ma.

For more information, please refer to:

Selfish drive can trump function when animal mitochondrial genomes compete.

Ma and O'Farrell. Nature Genetics 48, 798–802 (2016).