The Arabidopsis root apical meristem is an excellent model for studying plant organ growth. This involves a coordinated process of cell division, elongation, and differentiation, with each tissue type developing according to its own schedule. Among these tissues, the protophloem is particularly important, differentiating early to supply nutrients and signalling molecules to the growing root tip. The OCTOPUS (OPS) protein and its homologue OPS-LIKE 2 (OPL2) are essential for proper root protophloem differentiation and, probably through this role, indirectly promote root growth. Here, we explored the roles of the other three OPS homologues in Arabidopsis, OPL1, OPL3, and OPL4. OPS/OPL genes exhibited overlapping expression patterns and functions, with a high degree of redundancy among them. Although higher order mutants did not display more severe phloem defects, they exhibited significantly reduced root growth compared with the ops opl2 mutant. These results indicate a direct contribution of the investigated OPL genes to meristematic activity. While our focus was on root growth, the OPS/OPL gene family also plays a positive role in regulating shoot growth, emphasizing its broader impact on plant development. Furthermore, our analyses reiterate the central role of OPS and the phloem domain in controlling overall plant growth.

Plant meristems require a constant supply of photoassimilates and hormones to the dividing meristematic cells. In the growing root, such supply is delivered by protophloem sieve elements. Due to its preeminent function for the root apical meristem, protophloem is the first tissue to differentiate. This process is regulated by a genetic circuit involving in one side the positive regulators DOF transcription factors, OCTOPUS (OPS) and BREVIX RADIX (BRX), and in the other side the negative regulators CLAVATA3/EMBRYO SURROUNDING REGION RELATED (CLE) peptides and their cognate receptors BARELY ANY MERISTEM (BAM) receptor-like kinases. brx and ops mutants harbor a discontinuous protophloem that can be fully rescued by mutation in BAM3, but is only partially rescued when all three known phloem-specific CLE genes, CLE25/26/45 are simultaneously mutated. Here we identify a CLE gene closely related to CLE45, named CLE33. We show that double mutant cle33cle45 fully suppresses brx and ops protophloem phenotype. CLE33 orthologs are found in basal angiosperms, monocots, and eudicots, and the gene duplication which gave rise to CLE45 in Arabidopsis and other Brassicaceae appears to be a recent event. We thus discovered previously unidentified Arabidopsis CLE gene that is an essential player in protophloem formation.

Octopuses, like humans, sleep in two stages

The biodiversity of mollusks, particularly cephalopods, has not been exhaustively determined in the Revillagigedos ecoregion, which is a biodiversity hotspot for several marine groups located in the Tropical East Pacific Province. In our study, we detected and examined ocellate octopuses from Socorro and Clarion Islands, and determined their identity using morphological criteria and molecular data from two mitochondrial genes (COIII and COI). The taxon identified was Octopus oculifer, a species considered endemic to the Galapagos Archipelago. In addition, according to our analyses, O. mimus, O. hubbsorum and O. oculifer are very closely related and may represent a species complex comprised of three morphotypes. We found that the evolutionary relationships among octopuses are not determined by the presence of ocelli. This study is the first to report a clade represented by ocellate and non-ocellate species, in addition, the identity of cephalopods in the Revillagigedos was determined with analytical support.

How octopuses taste with their arms — all eight of them

How octopuses taste with their tentacles

Now I Know the Truth about Octopuses (and the Lies We Tell Our Children)

Octopus vulgaris neural modulatory capacity and its molecular fingerprint: the contribution of Biogenic Amines to cephalopod Neural complexity, Plasticity and Molecular Evolution

Variation in Catch Size and Changes in Reproductive Biology of Common Octopus Octopus vulgaris in the Coastal Waters Off Gyeongnam, Korea

Data for MS Tracking the international provenance of octopus using chemical profiling

A Reservoir of Pluripotent Phloem Cells Safeguards the Linear Developmental Trajectory of Protophloem Sieve Elements.

Consider the Octopus Niina Pollari (bio) The Octopus Museum Brenda Shaughnessy Knopf www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/599692/ 96 Pages; Print, $17.00 Brenda Shaughnessy's fifth collection The Octopus Museum is a dispatch from a precipitous near-future. In prose poems, the narrator details how octopodes arrived on land and yanked the wheel from the humans who'd been busy merrily ruining everything. They tapped into the internet—their brains perfectly suited for its machinations, their tentacles adept at typing— and people soon lost control, barely even comprehending while it happened, as is our unfortunate pattern (I'm revising this paragraph the day Facebook announced Libra, its entry into the global cryptocurrency market, which seems like a Supremely Bad Idea). The cephalopods operate as a slightly creepy collective ("There Is No I in 'Sea'"), giving the reader a vague sense of an alienating corporate overlord, with "countless eyes watching us,... arms radiating out in all directions, feeling for what's next." The few remaining humans live in assigned houses, eating a can of beets a week as a treat and leaving the decisions we used to thoughtlessly make to those smarter than ourselves. A lone archivist sends out letters to no one—like the single horror-movie survivor on the ham radio, reaching nobody where there used to be listeners. "If you want to know what we all could have done differently to prevent the situation we're in now," he asks, "I have one word for you: everything." Of course you know it now, after the fact, now that it doesn't help at all. The book provides a dark forecast, but these are not poems with a clinical sci-fi atmosphere. The octopodes' dominion is not the main conflict; it's simply what is. The book doesn't depend on the details of this particular bleak future to keep the reader hurtling forward. What happened isn't even really the point. Rather, Shaughnessy gives us first-person poems about domestic matters against a backdrop of confusing dystopia, and though aspects of this future are chilling, the thing that sticks is the lingering feeling that we're all careening in a system that's totally outside our control—a relatable sensation in 2020. The narrator is a poet, mother, and human being, and the poems are rooted in the moments of her human apprehension and wonderment at how her children still grow and flourish in spite of everything. "A fierce zip of pride bites my heart," says the narrator about the daughter. "She demands more because she knows there's more in the world and she believes she should have it all." This pride is the kind everyone secretly judges parents for—is your child really that extraordinary? But in an unstable system with diminishing resources, ego is what's compelling. The child's audacity to demand more pulls the parent into the future. It's also worth saying that the world these poems are set in doesn't feel all that unlikely, somehow. This is an achievement, since the idea of supersmart sea creatures taking over is a far-fetched one. But the purpose the octopodes serve, really, is to be a kind of distant, unrelatable other that wrested control from us and turned everything unfamiliar. The octopus, and its intelligence and abilities, is almost as alien to us as an actual alien, and in some ways, this book could just as well be about the aftermath of an invasion from the sky. But the aliens of our cultural imagination are usually humanoid in shape, so the idea of being overthrown by soft, small, malleable creature we thought we knew is absurd and even silly. We can imagine a sort of Homo superior, but the idea of being made second-class citizens by something we used to subjugate (or hardly consider) is extra unfamiliar to our collective imagination. The octopus doesn't even have a skull. In Shaughnessy's dystopia, we're punished because we failed to see the obvious—that intelligence can take shapes unlike ours. The dystopia is an analog for the times we're living in, where we would let anything happen because we...

Rosy octopuses are more warty the deeper they dwell in the sea

A Cellular Insulator against CLE45 Peptide Signaling

El objetivo del trabajo es analizar cómo recolectores de pulpo (pulperos) construyeron lugar, y dieron sentido de lugar a un camino de terracería en un tramo paralelo y lindero a la costa atlántica patagónica de 1950 a 1970. Se utilizó una metodología cualitativa y participativa, basada en estas técnicas etnográficas: entrevistas, entrevistas en profundidad, recorridos de campo y referenciación geográfica de los parajes reconocidos por los pulperos. Como resultado, los informantes identificaron parajes donde se establecían los pulperos, que se cartografiaron, y se les asignó topónimos reconocidos por ellos. La limitante es que no se profundizó en las trasformaciones del camino, aunque la originalidad radica en el uso de los conceptos paraje (lugar), sentido de lugar y paisaje en la reconstrucción del camino, a partir de una actividad productiva artesanal. En conclusión, los afectos que residen en la memoria de los pulperos resultaron centrales en la construcción social del camino y los parajes como lugar, en el sentido geográfico.

Mather argues convincingly for the existence of minds in octopuses based largely on laboratory experiments. Many of these experiments are highly invasive and involve mutilation and death. Moreover, octopuses are now being hailed as a "new model" for biological research and are being enthusiastically bred in captivity, both for research and for food. We argue that the compelling evidence for mind in octopuses must be accompanied by intense scrutiny of the ethics that shape how we treat them and that the intrinsic value of their individual lives must be recognized.

Sensory and Nutritional Characteristics of Seasoned Laver Pyropia yezoensis with Concentrates of Octopus Octopus vulgaris Cooking Effluent

It is gratifying to see the thorough discussion of whether octopuses have a mind, though perhaps a mind that is different from those of “higher” vertebrates. It stimulates us to look at the welfare of these animals and challenges us to find better ways to test mindfulness and cognition across animals with widely differing natural histories and sensory and motor capacities.

The first part of this commentary attempts to get "inside" the octopus mind a little further than Mather does, drawing on her description of octopus cognition in many places but diverging in others. The second part outlines other disagreements with her account of the animals, especially in the area of social behavior.

An octopus has more neurons in their peripheral nervous system (PNS) than in their brain. PNS neurons could participate in forming cognitive networks with the central brain in the same way that the cerebellum is now thought to contribute to mammalian cognition. However, cephalopods lack myelinated fibres, which might decrease the ability of the PNS to participate in cognitive networks. The lack of myelinated fibres may also select for a less integrated brain, with an increased emphasis on local information processing. Alternatively, integration may still occur across distant neural centers, but proceed more slowly in cephalopods than in mammals.