Publications by authors named "Descombes P"

Asynchronous migration of insect herbivores and their host plants towards higher elevations following climate warming is expected to generate novel plant-insect interactions. While the disassociation of specialised interactions can challenge species' persistence, consequences for specialised low-elevation insect herbivores encountering novel high-elevation plants under climate change remain largely unknown. To explore the ability of two low-elevation Lepidoptera species, and , to undergo shifts from low- to high-elevation host plants, we combined a translocation experiment performed at two elevations in the Swiss Alps with experiments conducted under controlled conditions.

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In the age of big data, scientific progress is fundamentally limited by our capacity to extract critical information. Here, we map fine-grained spatiotemporal distributions for thousands of species, using deep neural networks (DNNs) and ubiquitous citizen science data. Based on 6.

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Coffea arabica, an allotetraploid hybrid of Coffea eugenioides and Coffea canephora, is the source of approximately 60% of coffee products worldwide, and its cultivated accessions have undergone several population bottlenecks. We present chromosome-level assemblies of a di-haploid C. arabica accession and modern representatives of its diploid progenitors, C.

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Article Synopsis
  • The metabolome, which is critical for understanding plant structure and function, shows variability across different plant species, but its macroecological aspects are not well understood.
  • A study analyzed leaf metabolome variations in 457 tropical and 339 temperate plant species using five metabolic functional traits, identifying two main axes: chemical defense and leaf longevity.
  • Findings indicate that while both tropical and temperate plants exhibit similar patterns, metabolic traits offer new insights that expand the existing framework of functional traits related to plant life-history strategies.
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Microclimate research gained renewed interest over the last decade and its importance for many ecological processes is increasingly being recognized. Consequently, the call for high-resolution microclimatic temperature grids across broad spatial extents is becoming more pressing to improve ecological models. Here, we provide a new set of open-access bioclimatic variables for microclimate temperatures of European forests at 25 × 25 m resolution.

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The adaptive response to overfeeding is associated with profound modifications of gene expression in adipose tissue to support lipid storage and weight gain. The objective of this study was to assess in healthy lean men whether a supplementation with polyphenols could interact with these molecular adaptations. Abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue biopsies were sampled from 42 subjects participating to an overfeeding protocol providing an excess of 50% of their total energy expenditure for 31 days, and who were supplemented with 2 g/day of grape polyphenols or a placebo.

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Background: Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is one of the most promising processes for large-scale dissemination of elite varieties. However, for many plant species, optimizing SE protocols still relies on a trial and error approach. We report the first global scale transcriptome profiling performed at all developmental stages of SE in coffee to unravel the mechanisms that regulate cell fate and totipotency.

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Understanding the ecological rules structuring the organization of species interactions is a prerequisite to predicting how ecosystems respond to environmental changes. While the ecological determinants of single networks have been documented, it remains unclear whether network ecological rules are conserved along spatial and environmental gradients. To address this gap, we reconstructed 48 plant-herbivore interaction networks along six elevation gradients in the Central European Alps in Switzerland, using DNA metabarcoding on orthoptera faeces.

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The assessment of population vulnerability under climate change is crucial for planning conservation as well as for ensuring food security. Coffea canephora is, in its native habitat, an understorey tree that is mainly distributed in the lowland rainforests of tropical Africa. Also known as Robusta, its commercial value constitutes a significant revenue for many human populations in tropical countries.

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Sustained exposure to a young systemic environment rejuvenates aged organisms and promotes cellular function. However, due to the intrinsic complexity of tissues it remains challenging to pinpoint niche-independent effects of circulating factors on specific cell populations. Here, we describe a method for the encapsulation of human and mouse skeletal muscle progenitors in diffusible polyethersulfone hollow fiber capsules that can be used to profile systemic aging in vivo independent of heterogeneous short-range tissue interactions.

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Mitochondrial dysfunction induces a strong adaptive retrograde signaling response; however, many of the downstream effectors of this response remain to be discovered. Here, we studied the shared transcriptional responses to three different mitochondrial respiratory chain inhibitors in human primary skin fibroblasts using QuantSeq 3'-RNA-sequencing. We found that genes involved in the mevalonate pathway were concurrently downregulated, irrespective of the respiratory chain complex affected.

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Article Synopsis
  • Research discusses how current global climate models are based on air temperatures but fail to capture the soil temperatures beneath vegetation where many species thrive.
  • New global maps present soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at 1-km resolution for specific depths, revealing that mean annual soil temperatures can differ significantly from air temperatures by up to 10°C.
  • The findings indicate that relying on air temperature could misrepresent climate impacts on ecosystems, especially in colder regions, highlighting the need for more precise soil temperature data for ecological studies.
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Ecological research heavily relies on coarse-gridded climate data based on standardized temperature measurements recorded at 2 m height in open landscapes. However, many organisms experience environmental conditions that differ substantially from those captured by these macroclimatic (i.e.

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Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs involved in posttranscriptional regulation. miRNAs can be secreted and found in many body fluids, and although they are particularly abundant in breastmilk, their functions remain elusive. Human milk (HM) miRNAs start to raise considerable interest, but a comprehensive understanding of the repertoire and expression profiles along lactation has not been well characterized.

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Polymorphisms in genes related to the metabolism of vitamin B12 haven't been examined in a Brazilian population. To (a) determine the correlation between the local genetic ancestry components and vitamin B12 levels using ninety B12-related genes; (b) determine associations between these genes and their SNPs with vitamin B12 levels; (c) determine a polygenic risk score (PRS) using significant variants. This cross-sectional study included 168 children and adolescents, aged 9-13 years old.

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Article Synopsis
  • Extreme longevity is linked to healthy aging, as individuals over 105 largely avoid major age-related diseases.
  • A study sequenced the genomes of 81 supercentenarians (ages 105+) and 36 age-matched controls to find unique genetic traits associated with efficient DNA repair mechanisms.
  • Results were confirmed in another cohort, highlighting DNA repair and clonal hematopoiesis as key factors for promoting healthy aging and reducing cardiovascular risks.
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Caffeine is the most consumed alkaloid stimulant in the world. It is synthesized through the activity of three known N-methyltransferase proteins. Here we are reporting on the 422-Mb chromosome-level assembly of the Coffea humblotiana genome, a wild and endangered, naturally caffeine-free, species from the Comoro archipelago.

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Objective: The metabolic master-switch AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) mediates insulin-independent glucose uptake in muscle and regulates the metabolic activity of brown and beige adipose tissue (BAT). The regulatory AMPKγ3 isoform is uniquely expressed in skeletal muscle and potentially in BAT. Herein, we investigated the role that AMPKγ3 plays in mediating skeletal muscle glucose uptake and whole-body glucose clearance in response to small-molecule activators that act on AMPK via distinct mechanisms.

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To cope with environmental challenges, plants produce a wide diversity of phytochemicals, which are also the source of numerous medicines. Despite decades of research in chemical ecology, we still lack an understanding of the organization of plant chemical diversity across species and ecosystems. To address this challenge, we hypothesized that molecular diversity is not only related to species diversity, but also constrained by trophic, climatic, and topographical factors.

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Herbivory and plant defenses exhibit a coupled decline along elevation gradients. However, the current ecological equilibrium could be disrupted under climate change, with a faster upward range shift of animals than plants. Here, we experimentally simulated this upward herbivore range shift by translocating low-elevation herbivore insects to alpine grasslands.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how fructose affects the metabolism of pre-adipocytes compared to glucose, focusing on changes in DNA methylation and gene expression during adipocyte differentiation.
  • Time-dependent analysis revealed significant differences in DNA methylation patterns, with fructose-supplemented medium showing less variation in DMRs compared to glucose-added medium, indicating distinct regulatory mechanisms at play.
  • Lower concentrations of fructose (2.5 mM) were found to have a more pronounced impact on DNA methylation than higher concentrations (5 and 10 mM), suggesting that fructose may act as a signaling molecule at lower levels while serving primarily as a nutrient at higher levels.
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Above- and below-ground herbivory are key ecosystem processes that can be substantially altered by environmental changes. However, direct comparisons of the coupled variations of above- and below-ground herbivore communities along elevation gradients remain sparse. Here, we studied the variation in assemblages of two dominant groups of herbivores, namely, aboveground orthoptera and belowground nematodes, in grasslands along six elevation gradients in the Swiss Alps.

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Livestock farmers rely on a high and stable grassland productivity for fodder production to sustain their livelihoods. Future drought events related to climate change, however, threaten grassland functionality in many regions across the globe. The introduction of sustainable grassland management could buffer these negative effects.

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For decades coffees were associated with the genus Coffea. In 2011, the closely related genus Psilanthus was subsumed into Coffea. However, results obtained in 2017-based on 28,800 nuclear SNPs-indicated that there is not substantial phylogenetic support for this incorporation.

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