Pfaff, S. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2025

A genetically-defined population of amygdalofugal neurons promotes suckling and early postnatal growth

Suckling by newborns is an instinctive behavior defining the mammalian class. Yet, due to experimental difficulty in assessing neural function in the very young, little is known about the neural control of this fundamental behavior. Here we develop molecular-genetic approaches to interrogate neuronal connectivity and function in newborn mice and used these tools to identify a population of pro-dynorphin (PDYN) and somatostatin (SST) expressing neurons in the central amygdala that are activated during suckling. CeAPDYN+SST+ neurons connect with brainstem areas mediating oral sensorimotor and reward function in adults, and their ablation in newborns decreases suckling vigor and impairs growth. These results uncover the crucial role of a specific neuronal population of the central amygdala in maintaining the infants propensity to suckle and thrive throughout infancy.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

The landscape of chloroplast genome assembly tools

BackgroundChloroplasts are intracellular organelles that enable plants to conduct photosynthesis. They arose through the symbiotic integration of a prokaryotic cell into an eukaryotic host cell and still contain their own genomes with distinct genomic information. Plastid genomes accommodate essential genes and are regularly utilized in biotechnology or phylogenetics. Different assemblers that are able to assess the plastid genome have been developed. These assemblers often use data of whole genome sequencing experiments, which usually contain reads from the complete chloroplast genome. ResultsThe performance of different assembly tools has never been systematically compared. Here we present a benchmark of seven chloroplast assembly tools, capable of succeeding in more than 60% of known real data sets. Our results show significant differences between the tested assemblers in terms of generating whole chloroplast genome sequences and computational requirements. The examination of 105 data sets from species with unknown plastid genomes leads to the assembly of 20 novel chloroplast genomes. ConclusionsWe create docker images for each tested tool that are freely available for the scientific community and ensure reproducibility of the analyses. These containers allow the analysis and screening of data sets for chloroplast genomes using standard computational infrastructure. Thus, large scale screening for chloroplasts within genomic sequencing data is feasible.

bioinformatics↗