In nature, insect herbivores eat plants and other insects parasitize the herbivore insects, creating a tritrophic system. Ye and colleagues investigated how volatile chemicals (odorant molecules) affect one such tritrophic system—corn herbivory by moth larvae (caterpillars) of Spodoptera littoralis and the parasitism of the caterpillars by the wasp Microplitis rufiventris (Figure 1). The moth lays eggs … Read more
Scars are the body’s response to skin injury. Sometimes too much of the protein collagen is produced at the site of the injury, resulting in excessively large thick scars that can be disfiguring, uncomfortable, and compromise function by restricting mobility. These can either be hypertrophic scars, which are thickened but limited to the injured area, … Read more
Rejection is a reality for scientists, and a major responsibility of journal editors. Researchers performing good science—well controlled studies with solid methodologies that produce clear, reproducible results that advance scientific knowledge or extend scientific findings—can find themselves struggling to be published. A selective journal with a relatively high acceptance rate of 20% will be sending … Read more
Neuropathic pain can be caused by an excessive nerve response to non-harmful (innocuous) touch. Dhandapani and colleagues combined a molecule that binds to the neurons and a light-activated phototoxic chemical to create a treatment that uses light (specifically near infrared light) to alleviate neuropathic pain in a mouse model. To develop this treatment, the authors … Read more
Many proteins have multiple roles. Often, the key to effective therapy is specificity. Not only does the treatment need to be specific for a particular physiological target, often a protein, but the therapeutic effects involve only a single function or subset of the target’s functions or needs to affect the target only within a specific … Read more