Global S&T Development Trend Analysis Platform of Resources and Environment
The partial pressure of CO2 in the oceans has increased rapidly over the past century, driving ocean acidification and raising concern for the stability of marine ecosystems(1-3). Coral reef fishes are predicted to be especially susceptible to end-of-century ocean acidification on the basis of several high-profile papers(4,5) that have reported profound behavioural and sensory impairments-for example, complete attraction to the chemical cues of predators under conditions of ocean acidification. Here, we comprehensively and transparently show that-in contrast to previous studies-end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes, such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators, fish activity levels and behavioural lateralization (left-right turning preference). Using data simulations, we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.
The discovery of drivers of cancer has traditionally focused on protein-coding genes(1-4). Here we present analyses of driver point mutations and structural variants in non-coding regions across 2,658 genomes from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium(5) of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). For point mutations, we developed a statistically rigorous strategy for combining significance levels from multiple methods of driver discovery that overcomes the limitations of individual methods. For structural variants, we present two methods of driver discovery, and identify regions that are significantly affected by recurrent breakpoints and recurrent somatic juxtapositions. Our analyses confirm previously reported drivers(6,7), raise doubts about others and identify novel candidates, including point mutations in the 5'
PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) of between approximately 24 and 31 nucleotides in length guide PIWI proteins to silence transposons in animal gonads, thereby ensuring fertility(1). In the biogenesis of piRNAs, PIWI proteins are first loaded with 5 '
A silkworm model recapitulates key steps of Zucchini-mediated cleavage of pre-pre-piRNA and provides insights into Zucchini-mediated and -independent pathways that generate pre-piRNAs, which converge to a common piRNA maturation step.