137 papers
Physiology explores how living systems function, from the microscopic signals inside a single cell to the complex rhythms of an entire organism. This field seeks to understand the mechanical, physical, and biochemical processes that keep life moving, offering crucial insights into health, disease, and the body's remarkable ability to adapt.
On Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category from bioRxiv to make these rapid discoveries accessible to everyone. For each study, we provide both a clear, plain-language explanation and a detailed technical summary, ensuring that whether you are a curious student or a seasoned researcher, you can grasp the latest findings without getting lost in jargon.
The papers listed below represent the newest physiological research recently shared on bioRxiv, ready for you to explore.
This study demonstrates that inhibiting the enzyme AKR1C3 selectively reduces the activation of 11-oxygenated androgens, but not classic androgens, in both systemic circulation and adipose tissue of women, offering a targeted therapeutic strategy for androgen excess conditions like PCOS.
This paper challenges the assumption that clinical deep sleep metrics reliably predict neurobehavioral recovery by demonstrating that continuous slow-wave activity (SWA) exhibits a context-dependent "dual indeterminacy," where SWA levels during baseline sleep and subsequent wakefulness show opposing associations with fatigue, thereby explaining the failure of traditional staging and proposing a new framework based on continuous electrophysiology.
This study demonstrates that while hepatocyte PPARγ is dispensable for fasting- and refeeding-induced regulation of methionine metabolism, its upregulation during diet-induced obesity acts as a negative regulator of key methionine metabolism genes (such as *Bhmt* and *Cbs*), thereby contributing to the development of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH).
This study identifies distinct subpopulations of LeprGlp1r neurons in the arcuate and dorsomedial hypothalamic nuclei that independently regulate food intake and blood pressure, respectively, revealing a molecular basis for dissociating metabolic and cardiovascular control.
By combining advanced imaging and biosensors, this study reveals how the mouse vas deferens coordinates muscular contraction with distinct kinase signaling pathways (ROCK/PKA for global contraction and ERK for distal remodeling) to transform a collapsed, wrinkled duct into an open channel for directional sperm transport during ejaculation.
This study on Manduca sexta larvae demonstrates that while dietary iron supplementation significantly increases hemolymph iron levels, it does not necessarily exacerbate bacterial infections, as the effect on survival varies depending on the pathogen type and the presence of antibiotics, thereby challenging the hypothesis that extra iron universally worsens infection severity.
This study demonstrates that mental fatigue impairs cycling endurance performance by increasing the perception of effort, rather than by altering muscle activation or motor command.
This study demonstrates that blind adults living near the equator exhibit significantly higher rates of circadian entrainment than previously observed in temperate regions, proving that exceptionally regular environmental cues can sustain robust biological rhythms in the absence of light.
This study demonstrates that the extracellular matrix retains a "memory" of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) that persists after decellularization, actively promoting steatosis, fibrosis, and metabolic dysfunction in both in vitro and in vivo settings, thereby confirming that diseased ECM can drive disease progression even when repopulated with healthy cells.
This study demonstrates that above-chance decoding of emotion from single-trial EEG during imagined vocalisation is largely driven by involuntary facial muscle activity, particularly for happiness, rather than purely neural speech signals.