GENOMICS AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, PLANT BIOLOGY
Herbivory-induced volatiles function as defenses increasing fitness of the native plant Nicotiana attenuata in nature
Meredith C Schuman, Kathleen Barthel, Ian T Baldwin

A two-year field study has demonstrated that volatile compounds produced by plants when they are attacked by herbivores act as defenses by attracting predators to the herbivores and increasing the reproduction of the plants.
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See also: Insight by John Pickett

CELL BIOLOGY
A bacterial sulfonolipid triggers multicellular development in the closest living relatives of animals
Rosanna A Alegado, Laura W Brown, Shugeng Cao, Renee K Dermenjian, Richard Zuzow, Stephen R Fairclough, Jon Clardy, Nicole King

The development of colonies of cells in choanoflagellates, water-dwelling organisms that feed on bacteria, is triggered by the presence of very low concentrations of a lipid molecule produced by certain types of bacteria.
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See also: Insight by Michael G Hadfield

CELL BIOLOGY
The unfolded protein response in fission yeast modulates stability of select mRNAs to maintain protein homeostasis
Philipp Kimmig, Marcy Diaz, Jiashun Zheng, Christopher C Williams, Alexander Lang, Tomas Aragón, Hao Li, Peter Walter

A unique form of regulation has been observed in the unfolded protein response of S. pombe, along with a novel mechanism of post-transcriptional mRNA processing.
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See also: Insight by Benedict C Cross & David Ron

GENES AND CHROMOSOMES
The starvation hormone, fibroblast growth factor-21, extends lifespan in mice
Yuan Zhang, Yang Xie, Eric D Berglund, Katie Colbert Coate, Tian Teng He, Takeshi Katafuchi, Guanghua Xiao, Matthew J Potthoff, Wei Wei, Yihong Wan, Ruth T Yu, Ronald M Evans, Steven A Kliewer, David J Mangelsdorf

Transgenic mice with high levels of FGF21 live for longer than wild-type mice and do so without reducing food intake.
Full text (PMC) | PDF | Abstract & eLife Digest
See also: Insight by Cynthia Kenyon