No, this editorial is not going to be about the famous question Juvenal posed: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (‘Who guards the guardians?’), though the shenanigans of president Trump after losing the November presidential election, and the way the GOP responded to those threats to democracy, might have prepared the reader to think so. Instead, I want to return to a previous editorial of mine, in

The hypothesis titled “Soft repression: subtle transcriptional regulation with global impact,”[1] introduces a novel perspective to our understanding of the function and impact of repressor complexes. According to Mitra, Raicu, and colleagues, specific transcriptional repressors provide a level of “soft repression,” in addition to their known ability to switch off gene expression. Such repression lightly

Emergence of the novel pathogenic coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 and its rapid pandemic spread presents challenges that demand immediate attention. Here, we describe the development of a semi‐quantitative high‐content microscopy‐based assay for detection of three major classes (IgG, IgA, and IgM) of SARS‐CoV‐2 specific antibodies in human samples. The possibility to detect antibodies against the entire viral

Sir, I read the manuscript entitled “Tissue‐disruption‐induced cellular stochasticity and epigenetic drift: Common origins of aging and cancer?” with great interest.[1] I agree with authors that tissue‐disruption‐induced cellular stochasticity associated with epigenetic drift is likely to be at the root of carcinogenesis. On the other hand, there are some points that must be clarified: The authors

As we embark upon another year of seemingly inevitable environmental degradation, it is the “bark” that I want to emphasize: specifically, the bark of a tree named “Prunus africana”, which, I discovered the other day, is now either an endangered species, or rapidly becoming so, depending on the information source. Used in a variety of traditional remedies, some of which seem to have support from clinical

Some of our body's microbes induce psychological stress, while other microbes enhance our resilience to it. This is the central hypothesis of the article in this issue by Aktipis and Guevara Beltran,[1] along with the proposition that these variable microbial communities derive great evolutionary benefit from their unique relationships with us as their naïve host. There is growing evidence for the

Korolev[1] points out the high potassium:sodium ratio in cells despite the almost universal[2] higher concentration of sodium than potassium in the environment of cells, and bases the requirement for potassium movement into the cytosol of bacteria on the chemiosmotic mechanism of energy transduction. Here oxidation‐reduction reactions in the plasma membrane pump protons from the cytosol into the external

Bone maintenance and repair are achieved through the maintenance and differentiation of rare skeletal stem cells (SSCs). Despite the development of numerous lineage tracing models and/or cell surface markers to label and track the in vivo SSCs, the in vivo identity and function of skeletal stem/progenitor cells remains largely elusive because these labeled populations are highly heterogeneous. In fact

INTRODUCTION The illustrious scientific career of Michael Polanyi, the Hungarian born scientist and polymath, encompassed topics ranging from chemical dynamics to the philosophy of science. In “Life's Irreducible Structure,” an article he published more than five decades ago, Professor Polanyi proposed that organic life, specifically human self‐conscious and rational life, could not be reduced to the

Microbes can influence host physiology and behavior in many ways. Here we review evidence suggesting that some microbes can contribute to host stress (and other microbes can contribute to increased resilience to stress). We explain how certain microbes, which we call “stress microbes,” can potentially benefit evolutionarily from inducing stress in a host, gaining access to host resources that can help

Theoretical minimal RNA rings are candidate primordial genes evolved for non‐redundant coding of the genetic code's 22 coding signals (one codon per biogenic amino acid, a start and a stop codon) over the shortest possible length: 29520 22‐nucleotide‐long RNA rings solve this min‐max constraint. Numerous RNA ring properties are reminiscent of natural genes. Here we present analyses showing that all

Why malignant selfish cell lines, i.e. cancer, emerge in multicellular organisms, remains a contentious and unresolved question. The theory of carcinogenesis as the result of a multi‐stage Darwinian somatic selection process, postulated in the 1950s,[1, 2] is now broadly accepted. Theoretical and empirical approaches have advanced since, and now incorporate the tissue environment of cancer cells, i

To end this year of BioEssays, I'm going to pick up a thread started by me at the beginning of 2019[1], continued by Sven Kurbel[2] later in that year, and then brought into stark relief like never before in 2020 by the COVID (SARS‐CoV‐2) pandemic. It's about time that we started making “memetics” (the study of development, transmission, and persistence of ideas – or “memes” – in society) a formal

At the end of the year we would like once again to express our deep thanks to the members of our Editorial Board listed below for their valuable input. We are grateful for their involvement in various aspects of the journal – especially during this very difficult year 2020. After ten years of service, we say goodbye to Gustavo Caetano‐Anolles and wish him all the best for his research. Luis Aragón

Gap junctions consist of an array of densely packed transmembrane channels that provide direct cell‐to‐cell communication. Gap junctions are widely distributed and contribute to multiple functions of cells from coordinating heartbeat, to insulin secretion, to neurological functions. Their importance for the coordination of multi‐cellular live is supported by the large number of existing connexins (the

Each year, photosynthetic microbes in the sun‐lit upper oceans are responsible for about half of the carbon dioxide that is fixed into organic biomass. Some of these cells die and sink. Others are grazed, and their contents are incorporated into animal tissues and rapidly‐sinking fecal pellets. Some of these organic particles sink through the ocean's mesopelagic “twilight” zone (∼100‐1000 m deep),