q-bio papers | Gist.Science

Back to roots: a phylogeographic assessment of the refugial mosaic of Western Eurasian Fagus L. (Fagaceae) in the Caucasus

This study utilizes fine-scale plastid sequencing of 252 beech populations to reveal that the Caucasus serves as a complex refugial mosaic preserving ancient, pre-Pliocene maternal lineages with distinct demographic histories between the Black and Caspian Sea drainage systems, underscoring the critical role of chloroplast DNA in conserving these unique evolutionary trajectories.

Jana Ekhvaia, Tamar Jolokhava, Arsen Bakhia, Aleksandre Gavashelishvili, Marco Cosimo Simeone, Guido W Grimm, Thomas Den (…)2026-10-23

🧬 biology

SNP-Based Evaluation of Genetic Diversity and Purity in Elite hybrid Maize breeding in Ethiopia

This study utilized 2,294 SNP markers to evaluate the genetic diversity and purity of 87 maize genotypes in Ethiopia, revealing that 64% of inbred lines lacked sufficient purity and required further inbreeding while identifying distinct genetic clusters to enhance breeding efficiency and seed quality control.

Azalech Oli, Solomon Benor, Gizachew Haile, Berhanu Tadesse, Manje Gowda2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Development and Laboratory Evaluation of a Standardized Procedure for Environmental Sampling and Molecular Detection of Human Papillomavirus

This study evaluates six key factors affecting environmental HPV detection in a laboratory setting, concluding that dry polyester swabs combined with dedicated viral transport media offer the most practical approach for molecular recovery, while surface material and ambient temperature are the primary determinants of detectability.

Xiuzhi Duan, Meng Yang, Yiyi Xie, Xuchu Wang, Liqing Xu, Zhihua Tao2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Deriving and Transferring the SPEARpesticide Bioindicator to a New Region: an Ecotoxicity-Based, Indigenous-Fauna Sensitivity Index Field-Validated in the Seomjin River, South Korea

This study successfully adapted and field-validated a pesticide-specific bioindicator for South Korea's Seomjin River by integrating toxicity data from 20 indigenous species, demonstrating that controlling for organic pollution gradients reveals a robust correlation between the index and pesticide exposure that standard diversity metrics cannot detect.

Jong-Hyeon Lee, Jang-Yeon Park, Su-Hyun Kim, Seung-Been Heo2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Data-Efficient Personalization of Gait Biomechanics: The Predominant Contribution of Subject-Specific Waveform Shape

This study demonstrates that personalizing gait biomechanics for lower-limb joint moments using limited subject-specific data is primarily driven by adapting the temporal waveform shape rather than the amplitude, resulting in significant prediction accuracy improvements over population-wide models.

Syed Riyas Ahamed, Sandip Saha, Awani Bhushan2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Intratumor Heterogeneity Through the Lens of Gene Regulatory Networks

By analyzing scRNA-seq data across multiple cancer types and treatment cohorts, this study infers clone-specific gene regulatory networks to demonstrate that tumor clones exhibit distinct regulatory architectures linked to fitness, where treatment-induced remodeling drives structural divergence yet functional convergence, ultimately revealing conserved and variable regulons associated with patient survival.

Narein Rao, Nicolae Sapoval, Luay Nakhleh, Hamim Zafar2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Inflammatory stimuli promote lipid accumulation in myelin-phagocytosing macrophages: effects of LXR, PPARγ and RXR agonists

This study demonstrates that inflammatory stimuli impair myelin clearance by promoting lipid accumulation in macrophages, a process that can be mitigated by agonists of the nuclear receptors LXR, PPARγ, and RXR, suggesting these receptors as potential therapeutic targets for CNS injuries involving lipid debris.

Lorenzo Romero-Ramírez, Natalia Díaz-Rubio, Alejandro Arriero-Cabañero, Jörg Mey2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Target-label design, not feature scarcity, drives cross-library transfer failure in CRISPRi/a guide-efficacy models

This study demonstrates that the failure of CRISPRi/a efficacy models to generalize across different guide libraries and cell lines is primarily driven by within-gene label normalization rather than a lack of chromatin features, as retraining with harmonized continuous labels significantly restored transfer performance.

Daniel Albuja2026-10-23

🧬 biology

Functional analysis of mango MiFCA2 gene involved in the regulation of flowering and stress response in Arabidopsis

This study characterizes two mango FCA2 genes (MiFCA2-SJ and MiFCA2-JH), demonstrating their nuclear localization, interaction with stress-related proteins, and distinct roles in promoting early flowering under temperature stress and modulating responses to drought and salt via the ABA signaling pathway.

Siyuan He, Yanshu Meng, Mingyang Shu, Zhixi He, Xiao Mo, Shuquan Chen, Wenjing Mo, Yuexing Zhang, Cong Luo, Xinhua He2026-10-23

🧬 biology

The necessity of data-driven optimization of the number of principal components in scRNA-seq analysis - examples on real and simulated data

This study demonstrates that while fixed defaults for the number of principal components often work, data-driven optimization is essential for scRNA-seq analysis due to variable optimal ranges across diverse datasets, and it provides practical recommendations for selecting these methods based on a comprehensive evaluation of real and simulated data.

Manja Grønberg, Alisa Pavel, Line Clemmensen2026-10-23

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