12th Japan-US Seminar in Plant Pathology Meeting Report.

The 12th iteration of the Japan-US Seminar in Plant Pathology was held in Ithaca, New York at Cornell University in the fall of 2022. Presentations covered a range of topics under the theme "Remodeling of the Plant-Microbe Environment During Disease, Defense, and Mutualism," and the meeting included a panel discussion of best practices in science communication. This report presents highlights of the meeting, from the perspective of early career participants of the seminar. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

Investigating plant-microbe interactions within the root.

A diverse lineage of microorganisms inhabits plant roots and interacts with plants in various ways. Further, these microbes communicate and interact with each other within the root microbial community. These symbioses add an array of influences, such as plant growth promotion or indirect protection to the host plant. Omics technology and genetic manipulation have been applied to unravel these interactions. Recent studies probed plants' control over microbes. However, the activity of the root microbial community under host influence has not been elucidated enough. In this mini-review, we discussed the recent advances and limits of omics technology and genetics for dissecting the activity of the root-associated microbial community. These materials may help us formulate the correct experimental plans to capture the entire molecular mechanisms of the plant-microbe interaction.

The human hippocampus is not sexually-dimorphic: Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes.

Hippocampal atrophy is found in many psychiatric disorders that are more prevalent in women. Sex differences in memory and spatial skills further suggest that males and females differ in hippocampal structure and function. We conducted the first meta-analysis of male-female difference in hippocampal volume (HCV) based on published MRI studies of healthy participants of all ages, to test whether the structure is reliably sexually dimorphic. Using four search strategies, we collected 68 matched samples of males' and females' uncorrected HCVs (in 4418 total participants), and 36 samples of male and female HCVs (2183 participants) that were corrected for individual differences in total brain volume (TBV) or intracranial volume (ICV). Pooled effect sizes were calculated using a random-effects model for left, right, and bilateral uncorrected HCVs and for left and right HCVs corrected for TBV or ICV. We found that uncorrected HCV was reliably larger in males, with Hedges' g values of 0.545 for left hippocampus, 0.526 for right hippocampus, and 0.557 for bilateral hippocampus. Meta-regression revealed no effect of age on the sex difference in left, right, or bilateral HCV. In the subset of studies that reported it, both TBV (g=1.085) and ICV (g=1.272) were considerably larger in males. Accordingly, studies reporting HCVs corrected for individual differences in TBV or ICV revealed no significant sex differences in left and right HCVs (Hedges' g ranging from +0.011 to -0.206). In summary, we found that human males of all ages exhibit a larger HCV than females, but adjusting for individual differences in TBV or ICV results in no reliable sex difference. The frequent claim that women have a disproportionately larger hippocampus than men was not supported.