资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

A neuromodulator produced by commensalProvidenciabacteria that colonize the gut ofCaenorhabditis elegansmimics the functions of the cognate host molecule to manipulate a sensory decision of the host.

Animals coexist in commensal, pathogenic or mutualistic relationships with complex communities of diverse organisms, including microorganisms(1). Some bacteria produce bioactive neurotransmitters that have previously been proposed to modulate nervous system activity and behaviours of their hosts(2,3). However, the mechanistic basis of this microbiota-brain signalling and its physiological relevance are largely unknown. Here we show that inCaenorhabditis elegans, the neuromodulator tyramine produced by commensalProvidenciabacteria, which colonize the gut, bypasses the requirement for host tyramine biosynthesis and manipulates a host sensory decision. Bacterially produced tyramine is probably converted to octopamine by the host tyramine beta-hydroxylase enzyme. Octopamine, in turn, targets the OCTR-1 octopamine receptor on ASH nociceptive neurons to modulate an aversive olfactory response. We identify the genes that are required for tyramine biosynthesis inProvidencia, and show that these genes are necessary for the modulation of host behaviour. We further find thatC. eleganscolonized byProvidenciapreferentially select these bacteria in food choice assays, and that this selection bias requires bacterially produced tyramine and host octopamine signalling. Our results demonstrate that a neurotransmitter produced by gut bacteria mimics the functions of the cognate host molecule to override host control of a sensory decision, and thereby promotes fitness of both the host and the microorganism.

Insights into the interactions between pro- and anti-vaccination clusters on Facebook can enable policies and approaches that attempt to interrupt the shift to anti-vaccination views and persuade undecided individuals to adopt a pro-vaccination stance.

Distrust in scientific expertise(1-14) is dangerous. Opposition to vaccination with a future vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19, for example, could amplify outbreaks(2-4), as happened for measles in 2019(5,6). Homemade remedies(7,8) and falsehoods are being shared widely on the Internet, as well as dismissals of expert advice(9-11). There is a lack of understanding about how this distrust evolves at the system level(13,14). Here we provide a map of the contention surrounding vaccines that has emerged from the global pool of around three billion Facebook users. Its core reveals a multi-sided landscape of unprecedented intricacy that involves nearly 100 million individuals partitioned into highly dynamic, interconnected clusters across cities, countries, continents and languages. Although smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral. Our theoretical framework reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade. Insights provided by this framework can inform new policies and approaches to interrupt this shift to negative views. Our results challenge the conventional thinking about undecided individuals in issues of contention surrounding health, shed light on other issues of contention such as climate change(11), and highlight the key role of network cluster dynamics in multi-species ecologies(15).

Data analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. Here we assess the effect of this flexibility on the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging by asking 70 independent teams to analyse the same dataset, testing the same 9 ex-ante hypotheses(1). The flexibility of analytical approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyse the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in the results of hypothesis tests, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of the analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Notably, a meta-analytical approach that aggregated information across teams yielded a significant consensus in activated regions. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset(2-5). Our findings show that analytical flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and identify factors that may be related to variability in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for performing and reporting multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches that could be used to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed.

The results obtained by seventy different teams analysing the same functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset show substantial variation, highlighting the influence of analytical choices and the importance of sharing workflows publicly and performing multiple analyses.