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Like humans and animals, plants have a microbiota that shapes their health and thanks to which they assimilate nutrients from the soil. How is this microbiota assembled? Using an innovative approach, scientists at the Max Planck Institute and INRAE have discovered three genes essential for bacteria to colonise plants and live in and on plant roots.

Contrary to all expectations, GluD1 - a receptor considered to be excitatory - has been shown in the brain to play a major role in controlling neuron inhibition. Given that alterations in the GluD1 gene are encountered in a certain number of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism (ASD) and schizophrenia, this discovery opens up new therapeutic avenues to combat the imbalances between excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmissions associated with these disorders.

3D light-sheet microscope image of a lacrimal gland of a tissue-cleared 12-week-old human embryo. The different elements of the gland were coloured using virtual reality software.

Improving our knowledge of the development of the complex structures that make up the human head, and thus gaining a better understanding of the congenital anomalies that cause malformations: this is the challenge that a team of researchers from Inserm, CNRS and Sorbonne Université at the Institut de la vision, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Hospices civils de Lyon is well on the way to meeting.

Beef currently accounts for 21% of the world's meat consumption, placing it third after poultry and pork. It therefore plays a crucial role in the global food system, with great economic and cultural importance in many countries. However, its production has a high environmental impact, mainly due to greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Publication of the LBMC in the journal Science on November 9, 2023. Communication of CNRS Biology on November 10, 2023. When sperm cells are formed, they eliminate the histone proteins that package the DNA in all our other cells, replacing them with protamines, special proteins found in the sperm nucleus.

In the spring, Alpine glaciers sometimes don a sheer red or orangish veil. Known as 'red snow' or 'blood snow', this phenomenon is caused by the blooming of Sanguina nivaloides , a microscopic alga. Scientists from the CNRS, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Météo-France, INRAE, and Université Grenoble Alpes 1 turned their attention to this organism, which forms the pillar of a snowy ecosystem still poorly understood.

In spring, Alpine glaciers sometimes turn a thin layer of red or orange. This phenomenon, known as "glacier blood", is due to the proliferation of a microscopic alga called Sanguina nivaloides . Scientists 1 from CNRS, CEA, Météo-France, INRAE and Grenoble Alpes University have been studying this organism, which forms the backbone of a little-known snow ecosystem.

Scientists from INRAE and the CEA have taken a giant step towards lifting the veil on plant reproduction, by identifying proteins that are essential for the creation of new plant varieties. Their results were published on 16 November in Nature Plants. The scientists have delved into the way plants reproduce.

A better understanding of how bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics is a key research issue in tackling the major public health problem of antibiotic resistance. The main mechanism by which these resistances are disseminated is called "DNA transfer by bacterial conjugation". Until now, this was thought to occur only between bacteria in direct contact with each other.

French, Singaporean and British researchers, led by Prof. Florent Ginhoux, head of a research team at Gustave Roussy/Inserm, have succeeded in demonstrating in a neuronal organoid the role of the brain's immune environment in its formation and development. The development of these three-dimensional structures integrating neuronal cells and the immune environment is, to date, one of the most complete in vitro models of the human brain.

Glioblastomas are highly aggressive brain tumors whose treatment consists of surgery and radiochemotherapy. A new medical imaging technique could improve patients' prognosis, according to a recent clinical trial led by élisabeth Moyal, Professor at Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University and Head of the Radiotherapy Department at the IUCT-Oncopole.

Unlike animals, plants have cells that are all surrounded by a strong wall. This protects them but also encloses them in a rigid skeleton. So how can they grow despite this wall? Scientists from INRAE and the CNRS, in collaboration with Swiss and Belgian teams, have now unlocked part of this secret.

Neuroscientists from Inserm, CNRS and Université de Bordeaux in France, along with Swiss researchers and neurosurgeons (EPFL/CHUV/UNIL), have designed and tested a "neuroprosthesis” to correct the gait disorders associated with Parkinson's disease. In a study published in Nature Medicine , the scientists describe the development process of the device they used to treat a Parkinson's disease patient for the first time, enabling him to walk fluidly, confidently, and without falling.

Before modern humans settled definitively in Europe, other human populations left Africa for Europe beginning approximately 60,000 years ago, albeit without settling for the long term. This was due to a major climatic crisis 40,000 years ago, combined with a super-eruption originating from the Phlegraean Fields volcanic area near current-day Naples, subsequently precipitating a decline in ancient European populations.

When we sleep we are not completely cut off from our environment: we are still able to hear and understand words. These observations, resulting from the close collaboration between researchers from Inserm, CNRS, Sorbonne Université and AP-HP at the Brain Institute and the Department of Sleep Disorders at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, call into question the very definition of sleep and the clinical criteria that distinguish between its different stages.

French and Chinese scientists have made surprising discoveries about the crucial roles of soil fungi in forest ecosystems. This work arose from an international collaboration between researchers at INRAE, the University of Lorraine, the University of Aix-Marseille, Beijing Forestry University, the Kunming Institute of Botany, and the Yunnan Key Laboratory for Fungal Diversity and Green Development.

Cancer and aging are closely linked processes, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are still not well understood. By studying immune cells in the lung, researchers from Institut Curie and Inserm have provided new knowledge on the topic. They show that targeting ruptures of the nuclear envelope of these cells would represent a new opportunity for therapeutic intervention in age-related diseases, in particular cancer, thus improving the quality of life of the elderly in the long term.

The brain impacts of infection with SARS-CoV-2, responsible for COVID-19, are increasingly well documented in the scientific literature. Researchers from Inserm, Lille University Hospital and Université de Lille, at the Lille Neuroscience & Cognition unit, in collaboration with their colleagues at Imperial College London, focused more specifically on the impacts of this infection on a population of neurons known for regulating sexual reproduction via the hypothalamus (the neurons that express the GnRH hormone).

Researchers at Toulouse University Hospital, Inserm and Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University have recently made a breakthrough in the understanding and treatment of chronic kidney disease, a pathology affecting millions of people worldwide. Published in Science Translational Medicine, this promising scientific breakthrough is based on the identification of the responsibility of an inflammatory protein in the serious complications of the disease, paving the way for a new therapeutic approach.