by Hana Rozhoňová, Carlos Martí-Gómez, David M. McCandlish, Joshua L. Payne The standard genetic code defines the rules of translation for nearly every life form on Earth. It also determines the amino acid changes accessible via single-nucleotide mutations, thus influencing protein evolvability—the ability of mutation to bring forth adaptive variation...

by Huagen Wang, Xiaoyan Wu, Jiahua Xu, Ruida Zhu, Sihui Zhang, Zhenhua Xu, Xiaoqin Mai, Shaozheng Qin, Chao Liu People tend to intervene in others’ injustices by either punishing the transgressor or helping the victim. Injustice events often occur under stressful circumstances. However, how acute stress affects a third party’s intervention in injustice...

by Davide Crombie, Martin A. Spacek, Christian Leibold, Laura Busse The processing of sensory information, even at early stages, is influenced by the internal state of the animal. Internal states, such as arousal, are often characterized by relating neural activity to a single “level” of arousal, defined by a behavioral indicator such as pupil...

by Chun-Chih Tseng, Thomas E. Woolley, Ting-Xin Jiang, Ping Wu, Philip K. Maini, Randall B. Widelitz, Chuong Cheng-Ming Periodic patterning requires coordinated cell–cell interactions at the tissue level. Turing showed, using mathematical modeling, how spatial patterns could arise from the reactions of a diffusive activator-inhibitor pair in an...

by Marie Morin, Mathias Jönsson, Conan K. Wang, David J. Craik, Sandie M. Degnan, Bernard M. Degnan Animals are influenced by the season, yet we know little about the changes that occur in most species throughout the year. This is particularly true in tropical marine animals that experience relatively small annual temperature and daylight changes....

by Cristina Sáez, Israel Pagán All plant viruses were thought to encode in its genome a movement protein that acts as a “passport,” allowing active movement within the host. A new study in PLOS Biology characterizes the first plant virus that can colonize its host without encoding this protein. All plant viruses were thought to encode in its...