TY - JOUR AB - The plant hormones auxin and cytokinin mutually coordinate their activities to control various aspects of development [1-9], and their crosstalk occurs at multiple levels [10, 11]. Cytokinin-mediated modulation of auxin transport provides an efficient means to regulate auxin distribution in plant organs. Here, we demonstrate that cytokinin does not merely control the overall auxin flow capacity, but might also act as a polarizing cue and control the auxin stream directionality during plant organogenesis. Cytokinin enhances the PIN-FORMED1 (PIN1) auxin transporter depletion at specific polar domains, thus rearranging the cellular PIN polarities and directly regulating the auxin flow direction. This selective cytokinin sensitivity correlates with the PIN protein phosphorylation degree. PIN1 phosphomimicking mutations, as well as enhanced phosphorylation in plants with modulated activities of PIN-specific kinases and phosphatases, desensitize PIN1 to cytokinin. Our results reveal conceptually novel, cytokinin-driven polarization mechanism that operates in developmental processes involving rapid auxin stream redirection, such as lateral root organogenesis, in which a gradual PIN polarity switch defines the growth axis of the newly formed organ. AU - Marhavy, Peter AU - Duclercq, Jérôme AU - Weller, Benjamin AU - Feraru, Elena AU - Bielach, Agnieszka AU - Offringa, Remko AU - Friml, Jirí AU - Schwechheimer, Claus AU - Murphy, Angus AU - Benková, Eva ID - 1934 IS - 9 JF - Current Biology TI - Cytokinin controls polarity of PIN1-dependent Auxin transport during lateral root organogenesis VL - 24 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The existence of complex (multiple-step) genetic adaptations that are "irreducible" (i.e., all partial combinations are less fit than the original genotype) is one of the longest standing problems in evolutionary biology. In standard genetics parlance, these adaptations require the crossing of a wide adaptive valley of deleterious intermediate stages. Here, we demonstrate, using a simple model, that evolution can cross wide valleys to produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations by making use of previously cryptic mutations. When revealed by an evolutionary capacitor, previously cryptic mutants have higher initial frequencies than do new mutations, bringing them closer to a valley-crossing saddle in allele frequency space. Moreover, simple combinatorics implies an enormous number of candidate combinations exist within available cryptic genetic variation. We model the dynamics of crossing of a wide adaptive valley after a capacitance event using both numerical simulations and analytical approximations. Although individual valley crossing events become less likely as valleys widen, by taking the combinatorics of genotype space into account, we see that revealing cryptic variation can cause the frequent evolution of complex adaptations. AU - Trotter, Meredith AU - Weissman, Daniel AU - Peterson, Grant AU - Peck, Kayla AU - Masel, Joanna ID - 1932 IS - 12 JF - Evolution TI - Cryptic genetic variation can make "irreducible complexity" a common mode of adaptation in sexual populations VL - 68 ER - TY - JOUR AB - (Figure Presented) Data acquisition, numerical inaccuracies, and sampling often introduce noise in measurements and simulations. Removing this noise is often necessary for efficient analysis and visualization of this data, yet many denoising techniques change the minima and maxima of a scalar field. For example, the extrema can appear or disappear, spatially move, and change their value. This can lead to wrong interpretations of the data, e.g., when the maximum temperature over an area is falsely reported being a few degrees cooler because the denoising method is unaware of these features. Recently, a topological denoising technique based on a global energy optimization was proposed, which allows the topology-controlled denoising of 2D scalar fields. While this method preserves the minima and maxima, it is constrained by the size of the data. We extend this work to large 2D data and medium-sized 3D data by introducing a novel domain decomposition approach. It allows processing small patches of the domain independently while still avoiding the introduction of new critical points. Furthermore, we propose an iterative refinement of the solution, which decreases the optimization energy compared to the previous approach and therefore gives smoother results that are closer to the input. We illustrate our technique on synthetic and real-world 2D and 3D data sets that highlight potential applications. AU - Günther, David AU - Jacobson, Alec AU - Reininghaus, Jan AU - Seidel, Hans AU - Sorkine Hornung, Olga AU - Weinkauf, Tino ID - 1930 IS - 12 JF - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics TI - Fast and memory-efficient topological denoising of 2D and 3D scalar fields VL - 20 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The development of the vertebrate brain requires an exquisite balance between proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitors. Notch signaling plays a pivotal role in regulating this balance, yet the interaction between signaling and receiving cells remains poorly understood. We have found that numerous nascent neurons and/or intermediate neurogenic progenitors expressing the ligand of Notch retain apical endfeet transiently at the ventricular lumen that form adherens junctions (AJs) with the endfeet of progenitors. Forced detachment of the apical endfeet of those differentiating cells by disrupting AJs resulted in precocious neurogenesis that was preceded by the downregulation of Notch signaling. Both Notch1 and its ligand Dll1 are distributed around AJs in the apical endfeet, and these proteins physically interact with ZO-1, a constituent of the AJ. Furthermore, live imaging of a fluorescently tagged Notch1 demonstrated its trafficking from the apical endfoot to the nucleus upon cleavage. Our results identified the apical endfoot as the central site of active Notch signaling to securely prohibit inappropriate differentiation of neural progenitors. AU - Hatakeyama, Jun AU - Wakamatsu, Yoshio AU - Nagafuchi, Akira AU - Kageyama, Ryoichiro AU - Shigemoto, Ryuichi AU - Shimamura, Kenji ID - 1933 IS - 8 JF - Development TI - Cadherin-based adhesions in the apical endfoot are required for active Notch signaling to control neurogenesis in vertebrates VL - 141 ER - TY - JOUR AB - A wealth of experimental evidence suggests that working memory circuits preferentially represent information that is behaviorally relevant. Still, we are missing a mechanistic account of how these representations come about. Here we provide a simple explanation for a range of experimental findings, in light of prefrontal circuits adapting to task constraints by reward-dependent learning. In particular, we model a neural network shaped by reward-modulated spike-timing dependent plasticity (r-STDP) and homeostatic plasticity (intrinsic excitability and synaptic scaling). We show that the experimentally-observed neural representations naturally emerge in an initially unstructured circuit as it learns to solve several working memory tasks. These results point to a critical, and previously unappreciated, role for reward-dependent learning in shaping prefrontal cortex activity. AU - Savin, Cristina AU - Triesch, Jochen ID - 1931 IS - MAY JF - Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience TI - Emergence of task-dependent representations in working memory circuits VL - 8 ER -