Lyrics do matter: how "coping songs" relate to well-being goals. The COVID pandemic case.

Introduction: In stressful times, people often listen to "coping songs" that help them reach emotional well-being goals. This paper is a first attempt to map the connection between an individual's well-being goals and their chosen coping song.

Methods: We assembled a large-scale dataset of 2,804 coping songs chosen by individuals from 11 countries during COVID-19 lockdown.

Dissecting the functional heterogeneity of glutamatergic synapses with high-throughput optical physiology.

Fluorescent reporters for glutamate release and postsynaptic Ca signaling are essential tools for quantifying synapse functional heterogeneity across neurons and circuits. However, leveraging these probes for neuroscience requires scalable experimental frameworks. Here, we devised a high-throughput approach to efficiently collect and analyze hundreds of optical recordings of glutaamate release activity at presynaptic boutons in cultured rat hippocampal neurons.

Deciphering bacterial protein functions with innovative computational methods.

Bacteria colonize every niche on Earth and play key roles in many environmental and host-associated processes. The sequencing revolution revealed the remarkable bacterial genetic and proteomic diversity and the genomic content of cultured and uncultured bacteria. However, deciphering functions of novel proteins remains a high barrier, often preventing the deep understanding of microbial life and its interaction with the surrounding environment.