Article discusses how lipid droplets, also known as oil bodies or lipid bodies, are plant organelles that compartmentalize neutral lipids as a hydrophobic matrix covered by proteins embedded in a phospholipid monolayer. The authors review the growing body of knowledge about lipid droplets in plant cells, describe the evolutionary similarity and divergence in their associated subcellular machinery, and point to gaps that deserve future attention.

Article describes how pathogenic germline variants in the protection of telomeres 1 gene (POT1) have been associated with predisposition to a range of tumor types, including melanoma, glioma, leukemia and cardiac angiosarcoma. The authors sequenced all coding exons of the POT1 gene in 2928 European-descent melanoma cases and 3298 controls, identifying 43 protein-changing genetic variants.

Authors of the article assert that isoflavonoids play important roles in plant defense and also exhibit a range of mammalian health-promoting activities. They emphasize that understanding the structural basis of isoflavone biosynthesis will facilitate the engineering of new bioactive isoflavonoids.

Article says that while the main thrust of quantum computing research in materials science is to accurately measure the classically intractable electron correlation effects due to Coulomb repulsion, designing optimal quantum algorithms for simpler problems with well-understood solutions is a useful tactic to advance our quantum “toolbox”. In this paper, the authors adopt a direct space approach, using a novel hybrid first/second-quantized qubit mapping which allows us to construct a single Hamiltonian, and a single cost-function, suitable for solving the entire electronic band structure.

Article asserts that oilseed rape (Brassica napus) is an important crop that is cultivated for the oil (mainly triacylglycerol; TAG) it produces in its seeds. The author's results show that up-regulation of these key enzymes differentially affects lipid composition and distribution as well as lipid-associated gene expression, providing important information which could be used to improve crop properties by metabolic engineering.

Article discusses how fungal specialized metabolites play an important role in the environment and have impacted human health and survival significantly. This review illustrates the biosynthesis of specialized metabolites where the localization of all, or some, of the biosynthetic enzymes have been determined and describes the methods used to identify the sub-cellular localization.

Article describes how prebiotic/probiotic supplementation represents a viable option for addressing elevated systemic inflammation and chronic disease risk in overweight individuals. The key findings support that 90-day prebiotic/probiotic supplementation may be associated with reduced adipose tissue inflammation, reduced systemic inflammation, and reduced chronic disease risk.

Article describes how the soil moisture daily diagnostic equation (SMDE) evaluates the relationship between the loss function coefficient and the summation of the weighted average of precipitation. The study has confirmed that using actual solar radiation data in the soil moisture daily diagnostic equation can improve its accuracy.

Article expresses how the cadmium-contaminated water body is a worldwide concern for the environment and toxic to human beings and the removal of cadmium ions from drinking and groundwater sustainably and cost-effectively is important. The results showed that synthesized CS-KAC-Ag was a biocompatible and versatile porous filtering material for the decontamination of different toxic metal ions.

Article asserts that polyunsaturated N-acylethanolamines (NAEs) can be hydrolyzed by fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) or oxidized by lipoxygenase (LOX). Altogether, the authors conclude that the growth of cotton seedlings involves fine-tuning of 9-NAE-HOD levels via FAAH-mediated hydrolysis and LOX-mediated production, expanding the mechanistic understanding of plant growth modulation by NAE oxylipins to a perennial crop species.

Article discusses a new europium-based complex, K[Eu(hfa)4] with hfa = hexafluoroacetylacetonate is synthesized and its structure confirmed via X-ray crystallography. Based on the data collected, a highly stable, brightly red-emissive Eu(III) complex with the ability to differentiate concentrations of CO2 in solution is hereby developed and characterized with benefits for various CO2 sensing applications.

Article discusses how free-ranging dogs are of major conservation concern worldwide as they negatively affect wildlife. Although scientists and governmental agencies are aware of the problem and responsible pet ownership strategies are beginning to be implemented, the tourism sector must be explicitly integrated into wildlife conservation management strategies.

Article describes how proanthocyanidins (PAs) are natural flavan-3-ol polymers that contribute protection to plants under biotic and abiotic stress, benefits to human health, and bitterness and astringency to food products. This review extends the conventional understanding with recent findings that provide new insights to address lingering questions and focus strategies for manipulating PA traits in plants.

Article asserts that Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands include some of the world’s most extreme and pristine terrestrial habitats. The authors studied the habitat preferences and the life history of P. steinenii in Lake Kitiesh, Fildes Peninsula, King George Island over the austral summer seasons from 2014 to 2019, during short (several weeks) field expeditions.

Article discusses how the chemical coupling between moist CO oxidation and transformation of gaseous potassium salts (KCl or KOH) in the presence and absence of SO2 was investigated experimentally and through chemical kinetic modeling. Analysis of the calculations indicates that sulfation pathways in the model involving KOSO3 contribute to the overprediction, but both the thermodynamic properties and rate constants in the model involve significant uncertainties and more work is required to resolve the discrepancy.

Article describes post-flame sulfation of gaseous sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium chloride (NaCl) was investigated with optical in situ measurements at 850 to 1475°C. The combined experimental data, chemical equilibrium calculations and kinetic modeling of the present study support that sulfation of alkali species can occur in the gas phase through homogeneous reactions.

Article discusses how the global sequencing of microRNA (miRNA; miR) and integration to downstream mRNA expression profiles in early life stages (ELS) of fish following exposure to crude oil determined consistently dysregulated miRNAs regardless of the oil source or fish species. The overlay of differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs into in silico software determined that the key roles of these miRNAs were predicted to be involved in cardiovascular, neurological and visually-mediated pathways.

Authors of the article discuss that to uncover genes and pathways involved in the differential clinical manifestations of COVID-19 they developed a novel gene co-expression network-based pipeline that uses gene expression obtained from different SARS-CoV-2 infected human tissues. Their study shines a new light on genes and their networks (modules) that drive the progression of COVID-19 from moderate to extremely severe condition, which could aid development of new therapeutics to combat COVID-19.

Article describes a new taxon of terrestrial bird of the genus Aphrastura (rayaditos) inhabiting the Diego Ramírez Archipelago, the southernmost point of the American continent. The authors state that the discovery of this endemic passerine highlights the need to monitor and conserve this still-pristine archipelago devoid of exotic species, which is now protected by the recently created Diego Ramírez Islands-Drake Passage Marine Park.

The editors have retracted their article Gold Nanoparticles-enabled Efficient Dual Delivery of Anticancer Therapeutics to HeLa cells. Concerns were brought to the attention of the Editors with respect to apparent inappropriate manipulation of the data in seven of the nine panels shown in Figure 7. The Editors no longer have confidence in the data reported in this Article.

Article states that chiral materials, similarly to human hands, have distinguishable right-handed and left-handed enantiomers which may behave differently in response to external stimuli, so for the first time the authors use an approach based on the density functional theory (DFT)+PAOFLOW calculations to quantitatively estimate the so-called collinear Rashba–Edelstein effect (REE) that generates spin accumulation parallel to charge current and can manifest as chirality-dependent charge-to-spin conversion in chiral crystals. The authors reveal that the spin accumulation induced in the bulk by an electric current is intrinsically protected by the quasi-persistent spin helix arising from the crystal symmetries present in chiral systems with the Weyl spin–orbit coupling.

Authors of the article systematically investigated how the membrane charge populations affect permselectivity by decoupling their effects from the impact of the pore structure using a multivariate strategy for constructing covalent-organic-framework membranes. The complex interplay between pore-pore interactions in response to charge variations for ion transport across the upscaled nanoporous membranes helps explain the obtained results. This study has far-reaching implications for the rational design of ionic membranes to augment energy extraction rather than intuitively focusing on achieving high densities.

Article describes how both biochemically and genetically, that ascorbate (AsA) is an alternative “starter unit” to flavan-3-ol monomers for leucocyanidin-derived (+)-catechin subunit extension in the Arabidopsis thaliana anthocyanidin synthase (ans) mutant. The authors' findings advance the knowledge of (+)-catechin-type PA extension and indicate that PA oligomerization does not necessarily proceed by sequential addition of a single extension unit. AsA-[C]n defines a new type of PA intermediate which we term “sub-PAs”.

Article discusses the authors' investigation the hypothesis that exposure to inhaled diesel exhaust particles alters the gut microbiome and promotes microbial-related inflammation and cardiovascular disease biomarkers. To determine whether probiotics could prevent diet or DEP exposure mediated alterations in the gut microbiome or systemic outcomes, a subset of animals on the HF diet were treated orally with 0.3 g/day (~ 7.5 × 108 CFU/day) of Winclove Ecologic® Barrier probiotics throughout the study.