Light promotes asexual reproduction and mediates transcriptomic changes in Pediastrum duplex.

The green alga Pediastrum duplex forms colonies through asexual reproduction and has a unique life cycle. To elucidate the mechanisms that regulate the asexual reproductive cycle in P. duplex, we analyzed the effects of light on the processes and gene expression involved in each step of the asexual reproductive cycle, revealing light irradiation to be essential for increasing the number of colonies.

[Optical Erasure of the Synaptic Ensemble that Underlies Learning and Memory].

Dentritic spines are small membrane protrusions. Their regulation is thought to be important for memory storage, but the links between dentric spines and memory have been largely correlational because of a luck of techniques for manipulating individual spines. To overcome this problem, we have developed a novel synaptic optoprobe, AS-PaRac1, which is unique not only because it specifically labels recently potentiated spines, but also because it becomes possible to selectively shrink spines containing AS-PaRac1.