Biology subjects

Paquet, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Paquet, M..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Lactate-fueled hydride transfer metabolon drives breast cancer metastasis

Metabolic plasticity of cancer cells plays a major role in metastasis. Use of alternative carbon fuels (e.g., lactate) boosts metabolic plasticity, but the underlying mechanisms remain obscure. We show that lactate dehydrogenase B (LDHB) cooperates with the hydride ion transfer complex (HTC) comprised of pyruvate carboxylase (PC), malic enzyme (ME1) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH1) to form a metabolon that confers metabolic flexibility through lactate assimilation under physiological conditions. HTC/LDHB metabolon assembles in the aggressive breast cancer subtypes and reprograms nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) metabolism to promote migration, invasion and escape from anoikis - thereby driving metastasis. Altogether, this work identifies a lactate-fueled metabolon that propels metastatic dissemination of breast cancer.

Cancer Biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Infanticide in a colonial cooperative bird is not associated with direct reproductive benefits

Infanticide, the killing of dependent young by adult conspecifics, is an extreme form of conflict that remains poorly understood. Previous studies suggest that it is associated with reproductive benefits, either by making breeders newly available for reproduction or by increasing offspring care and reducing competition for resources. In addition, infanticide may result from a reproductive trade-off, where parents kill their offspring if environmental conditions compromise their reproductive value. Here, we combine video, genetic and individual-level reproductive data collected over 12 years to describe infanticide in a highly social, cooperative bird, the sociable weaver Philetairus socius and to establish whether direct reproductive benefits or life-history trade-offs are possible motivators for this behaviour. We documented 50 cases of infanticide and identified 27 aggressors with known histories. These were mostly born outside the colonies where they committed infanticide (63%) and there was a bias towards younger individuals. Aggressors were usually not part of the victims breeding group (74%), but in two cases infanticide was committed by the breeding female, and in five by helpers. In most cases, aggressors were not reproducing at the time of the infanticide, were not recorded mating with any of the breeders or helpers from the attacked nest, nor occupied the nest from where the chicks were evicted. Only 13 of the known aggressors were confirmed as breeders after the attacks, and these mostly reproduced at the colony where the attacks were committed. Overall, we found no evidence for direct reproductive benefits of infanticide in sociable weavers. However, the younger age of aggressors, lack of genetic relatedness to the victims and future breeding at the colony suggest that competition between breeding groups, and hence indirect reproductive benefits, could provide motivation for infanticide in this population. Additional work over longer periods is needed to identify these possible indirect fitness benefits of infanticide.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Thermal and mechanical modalities converge in the noxious range

SummaryThere are competing theories on how nociceptive input is encoded by sensory fibers. That sensory modalities are exclusively conveyed by distinct populations of fibers is supported by ablation studies, indicating that TRPV1+and MrgprD+afferents selectively encode for heat and mechanical input, respectively. However, interpreting ablation results can be clouded by compensatory plasticity. Furthermore, a population-level parametric analysis of afferent response profiles to natural stimuliin vivois still scarce. Using functional imagingin vivoin mice, we found that most TRPV1+neurons responded to noxious heat, but not cooling. While none of them responded to innocuous mechanical input, about half were also sensitive to noxious mechanical stimuli. In contrast, 80% of MrgprD+neurons responded to noxious mechanical stimuli. Yet, 70% were also sensitive to noxious thermal stimuli. Of innocuous mechanosensitive MrgprD+neurons, <15% responded to innocuous warming and none to innocuous cooling. Polymodality in the innocuous thermal and mechanical range also occurred in <10% of all primary afferents. Acute silencing of TRPV1+or MrgprD+afferents inhibited both thermal and mechanical nociception. In contrast, ablation did not reproduce a combined loss of sensitivity, which appeared to be due to compensatory central disinhibition. Our findings reveal that modality separation dominates in the innocuous regime, while polymodality predominates in the noxious range.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Soil seed bank richness, abundance and density across spatial scales and global biomes

Soil seed banks are an important component of plant population and community dynamics, buffering temporal heterogeneity and allowing populations to recover following disturbance. At the same time, patterns in soil seed banks are likely to reflect scale-dependent patterns in above-ground vegetation, patterns that differ strongly across world regions. Here, we investigate components of diversity in the soil seed bank across global biomes and ecosystems. We found that patterns of species richness in the soil seed bank diverged from patterns of seed density, although there were high levels of uncertainty, especially at smaller spatial scales. Importantly, habitat degradation consistently led to lower richness, potentially limiting future ecosystem recovery. Among ecosystems, mediterranean and tropical regions had high species richness, but seed density m-2 in the soil was highest in wetlands and arable systems. Lower seed densities were found in both high-diversity tropical biomes that are characterised by short-lived seeds, and low-diversity boreal and tundra biomes with more stable established vegetation. Our findings of divergences between species richness and seed density across global biomes, and how they are impacted by habitat degradation, give valuable insights to the understanding of plant biodiversity worldwide.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Physiological predictors of reproductive performance in the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris): II. Multivariate Analysis

Physiological variation is generally thought or supposed to underlie variation in fitness related traits in wild animals, including reproductive effort, reproductive success, and survival. However, physiological markers of individual quality have proven elusive. In this paper and its companion, we use data on 14 physiological parameters measured in 152 observations of 93 individual European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) over 2 years in an attempt to understand how physiological variation relates to variation in current breeding productivity, future fecundity, and survival. The companion paper, focusing on univariate analysis, showed that individual physiological parameters have little relationship with these performance measures. Here, we used more sophisticated statistical approaches in an attempt to extract a multivariate signal from the biomarkers - physiological dysregulation as calculated via statistical distance, and a number of principal components analysis approaches. Broadly speaking, there was a surprising lack of association between physiology and performance: while some physiological summary measures were associated with some performance measures, the associations were not particularly strong or robust given the large number of statistical tests conducted. This implies either that there are relatively few links between physiology and performance, or, more likely, that the complexity of these relationships exceeds our ability to measure and model it, even using state-of-the-art statistical approaches. This is likely particularly true because our population was quite heterogeneous; we nonetheless urge caution regarding the over-interpretation of isolated significant findings in the literature.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Physiological predictors of reproductive performance in the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris): I. Univariate analysis

Costs of reproduction are assumed to be widespread, and to have a physiological basis, but the mechanisms driving decreased survival and future fecundity remain elusive. Our overall goals were to assess whether physiological variables are related to workload ability or immediate fitness consequences and if they mediate future survival or reproductive success. We investigated individual variation in physiological state at two breeding stages (incubation, chick-rearing) in female European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), for first-and second-broods over two years. Specifically, we measured a suite of 13 physiological traits related to aerobic/metabolic capacity, oxidative stress and muscle damage, intermediary metabolism and energy supply, and immune function. We tested for relationships to traits for workload (e.g. nest visit rate) and fitness (current reproduction, survival and future reproduction).\n\nThere was little co-variation among the 13 physiological traits, either in incubating or chick-rearing birds. There were some systematic differences in incubation versus chick-rearing physiology. Chick-rearing birds had lower hematocrit and plasma creatine kinase but higher hemoglobin, triglyceride and uric acid levels. Only plasma corticosterone was repeatable between incubation and chick-rearing. We assessed relationships in a univariate manner, and found very few significant relationships between incubation or chick-rearing physiology and measures of workload, current productivity, future fecundity or survival. Variability in ecological context may complicate the relationship between physiology and behavior. Additionally, individuals may regulate different aspects of their physiology independently, making detection of physiological mediators of cost of reproduction difficult. In a companion paper (Cohen et al. submitted) we explore the utility of multivariate analysis (Principal Components Analysis, Mahalanobis distance) of the same data to account for potentially complex physiological integration.

ecology↗