New and Exciting in PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine

Monday - the day when PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology publish new articles, among others, these:

Persistent Leatherback Turtle Migrations Present Opportunities for Conservation :

Highly migratory marine animals routinely cross international borders during extensive migrations over thousands of kilometers, thus requiring conservation strategies with information about habitat use and movement patterns. Critically endangered leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in the eastern Pacific have suffered a severe population decline in recent years. In this study, we present the largest multi-year satellite tracking data set for leatherback turtles (n = 46 turtles, 12,095 days) to describe the migrations, habitats, and dispersal of female leatherbacks tagged at Playa Grande, Costa Rica. Leatherbacks followed a migration corridor southward from Costa Rica into the South Pacific Gyre in each year of our study. In the equatorial region, leatherbacks experienced strong ocean currents that influenced the direction of their movements; leatherbacks responded to current deflection with rapid, directed movements to maintain their southward heading. After passing through this equatorial current field, turtles dispersed broadly within a low-energy, low-productivity region of the South Pacific. Our analyses revealed that ocean currents shaped the migration corridor and influenced the scope of turtle dispersal in the South Pacific--results that provide a biological rationale for the development of multi-scale conservation strategies. These strategies could involve improved and enhanced monitoring of leatherback-fisheries interactions as well as dynamic time-area fisheries closures and protected area designations within the high seas of the South Pacific.

Next Stop, Don't Block the Doors: Opening Up Access to Clinical Trials Results:

2008 has been a good year for access to research. Effective New Year's Day, both the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [1] and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute [2] require publicly accessible archiving of papers published by their grantees. Also in January, the European Research Council announced its European Union-wide open-access mandate [3]. In February, the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to give the University a worldwide license to exercise copyright in each faculty member's scholarly articles for the purpose of making these articles freely available [4]; Harvard Law School committed to mandatory free access in May [5]. In March, the European University Association endorsed open-access repositories [6], and in April the United States National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy [7] took effect, bringing America's leading sponsor of biomedical research into the impressive circle of agencies that require archiving of papers resulting from the research they fund. Judging by the ever-increasing number of submissions to PLoS journals, authors appear to be voting with their manuscripts for open access to research.

Controlling Size in Multicellular Organs: Focus on the Leaf:

Leaf size depends on cell number and size. However, leaves are not simply the sum of cell size and number; rather, they are under the control of an unknown, organ-wide integration system. The existence of such a system is strongly suggested by two mysterious phenomena: compensation and high-ploidy syndrome. Compensation is characterized by cell enlargement triggered by a significant decrease in cellular proliferation, while plants with high-ploidy syndrome have more than eight sets of homologous chromosomes (8C), resulting in an increase in cell volume, but smaller leaves. Determining the mechanisms underlying these phenomena will provide important insight into the mechanism of multicellular organogenesis.

Considering the First Steps toward a Stable and Orderly Way of Bacterial Life:

Bacteria are small unicellular organisms who could well enjoy a bohemian life--moving independently wherever and whenever they want to and existing with no regard for conventional rules of behavior. In spite of this apparent freedom, most bacteria abandon their footloose lifestyle as soon as they come into contact with a surface. Irrespective of whether the surface is of biotic or abiotic origin, they clinch to it, forgoing independence in favor of settling down. Similar to animals that gather in flocks and people who live in societies, surface-attached microbes can form networks as multicellular communities called biofilms. Bacterial biofilms are heterogeneous structures of increasing complexity that consist of differently specialized cells enclosed in a self-produced polymeric matrix associated with the surface.