Bdellovibrio and like organisms (BALOs) are predatory bacteria, which play crucial roles in shaping community structure and maintaining diversity in microbial ecosystems. However, functional and genetic variation among coexisting BALOs remains largely unexplored. Here, we characterised Bdellovibrio sp. BIS2 and Bacteriovorax sp. HI3, which were isolated from the same freshwater environment at different time points. Predation a...

Understanding the processes through which plant‐associated microbiomes influence host physiology and fitness is a central goal of plant–microbiome interaction research. While traditional model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana have provided foundational platforms to examine these processes, alternative model systems may address certain bottlenecks in current research. In recent years, duckweeds (family Lemnacea) have emerged...

Hypothermia is a condition in which body temperature falls below 35 °C, resulting from exposure to low environmental temperatures or underlying medical conditions. Postmortem examinations have revealed increased levels of fatty acids in blood and lipid droplet formation in renal tubules during hypothermia. However, the causes and implications of these findings are unclear. This study aimed to analyze the biological significanc...

Only a few human ovarian endometrioid carcinoma cell lines are currently available, partly due to the difficulty of establishing cell lines from low-grade cancers. Here, using a cell immortalization strategy consisting of i) inactivation of the p16 INK4a -pRb pathway by constitutive expression of mutant cyclin-dependent kinase 4 (R24C) (CDK4 R24C ) and cyclin D1, and ii) acquisition of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) a...

Charrs ( Salvelinus ) reach their southernmost distribution in Japan, and are uniquely adapted to the short, steep streams of this island archipelago. Southern Asian Dolly Varden ( Salvelinus curilus ) occur only in Hokkaido Island, whereas white-spotted charr ( Salvelinus leucomaenis ) range to southern Honshu. Both species diverged from an ancestral lineage during the late Pliocene/early Pleistocene, when lowered sea levels...

A human ovarian clear cell carcinoma cell line was established from a 46-year-old Japanese woman. That line, designated MTC-22, has proliferated continuously for over 6 months in conventional RPMI 1640 medium supplemented with 10% foetal bovine serum and has been passaged over 50 times. MTC-22 doubling-time is ~ 18 h, which is much shorter than most ovarian clear cell carcinoma lines reported to date. Morphologically, MTC-22 c...