Article describes the devastating effects of nuclear radiation and its long-lasting consequences on Earth’s ecosystems. The authors call upon all scientists to communicate the importance of the environmental impacts of such an event to all life forms on Earth, including humankind.

Article describes how products of plant secondary metabolism, such as phenolic compounds, flavonoids, alkaloids, and hormones, play an important role in plant growth, development, stress resistance. The authors state that the overall goal of this study was to develop a high-throughput workflow to identify and quantify plant polyphenols.

Article discusses the Mexican cavefish Astyanax mexicanus, has lost moderate-to-vigorous activity following cave colonization, reaching basal swim speeds ~3.7-fold slower than their river-dwelling counterpart. Collectively, the authors reveal broad skeletal muscle changes following cave colonization, displaying an adaptive skeletal muscle phenotype reminiscent to mammalian disuse and high-fat models while simultaneously maintaining a unique capacity for sustained muscle contraction via enhanced glycogen metabolism.

Article asserts that the world’s population is projected to increase by two billion by 2050, resulting in food and energy insecurity. This review provides a summary of the current knowledge of oil metabolism and discusses how photochemical activity and unconventional pathways can contribute to high carbon conversion efficiency in seeds.

Article states that gene editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 are often thought of as a means to prevent gene expression; however, a more subtle and yet powerful approach is the enhancement of gene expression by precise deletion of repressor sites within a gene of interest. Authors argue that gene editing of miRNA target sites is preferable over deletion of the miRNA genes themselves, given that it avoids the pitfalls of unspecific derepression of miRNA target(s) beyond the gene of interest.