01/16/2026
Research Article
Task knowledge can be organized hierarchically, enabling generalization to novel tasks through shared components. Woo-Tek Lee, Eliot Hazeltine and Jiefeng Jiang show that participants learned new complex tasks that shared a simple component faster; EEG decoding revealed associative representations of these shared simple components, linking neural association strength to behavioral generalization.
Image credit: pbio.3003613
Current Issue December 2025
01/16/2026
Short Reports
Many organisms carry non-essential, selfish B chromosomes that spread through super-Mendelian transmission, but opposing forces like drag can limit their accumulation. Patrick Ferree, Kassandra Soriano Martinez and co-workers show that the Paternal Sex Ratio (PSR) chromosome in the jewel wasp achieves successful inheritance through strong paternal drive, hidden female meiotic drag, and restriction to a single copy.
Image credit: pbio.3003599
01/12/2026
Methods and Resources
The prefrontal cortex is a key brain region for higher cognitive functions, but how do its circuits mature during postnatal development?. Hu Zheng, Keji Yan, Jinxia Dai, Leqiang Sun, Gang Cao and co-authors provide a transcriptomic resource for the mouse prefrontal cortex spanning 84 days of development, and offer insights into the dynamics of cell populations and expression of psychiatric risk genes.
Image credit: pbio.3003594
01/12/2026
Research Article
Brown adipose tissue is energetically important and has been linked to metabolic health. In a metabolomic and lipidomic study, Xing Zhang, Ting Jiang, Chunqing Wang, Changjian Feng, Meilian Liu and colleagues provide a detailed view of lipid metabolism in brown adipose tissue, showing how lipid dynamics are remodeled during periods of fasting and refeeding.
Image credit: pbio.3003593
01/12/2026
Research Article
In the cochlear nucleus, auditory nerve fibers provide convergent synaptic input onto globular bushy cells, but the size of these inputs is variable. Chunjian Wang, Ivan Milenkovic and co-workers show that variable input strength enhances rate coding at the expense of temporal precision, potentially creating diverse information streams for sensory encoding.
Image credit: pbio.3003587
01/09/2026
Research Article
Speech comprehension relies on predictive mechanisms, does the brain prioritize expected or unexpected information? Fabian Schneider and Helen Blank show that sharpening of sensory representations and prediction error processes co-exist at different hierarchical levels, with speaker-specific priors shaping sensory representations and higher-level linguistic prediction errors guiding adaptive perception.
Image credit: pbio.3003588
01/09/2026
Perspective
This Perspective highlights how systems biology approaches, including multi-omics profiling and perturbomics screening, are being used to advance our understanding of immunometabolism.
Image credit: pbio.3003570
01/05/2026
Essay
This Essay investigates how the study of immunometabolism has yielded insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying bacterial pulmonary infections.
Image credit: pbio.3003585
12/18/2025
Editorial
2025 was marked by upheaval and uncertainty for many within the life science community. In this Editorial, we reflect on the past year and highlight some of the many research achievements that give us reasons to be thankful.
Image credit: PLOS
12/08/2025
Perspective
The traditional pipeline view of academia no longer reflects the reality of scientific careers. This Perspective reframes success as a network of paths, recognizing excellence in its many forms to foster a more inclusive, resilient, and socially engaged research culture.
Image credit: Pixabay user GDJ
Recent technological advancements in omics have unveiled the mechanisms governing tumor progression across spatial and temporal scales. This collection reveals the complexities of the crosstalk between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment.
Neurotechnology offers unprecedented opportunities to treat neural disorders, restore brain function and enhance cognitive abilities. This collection explores the present and possible futures of neurotechnology to improve human health and cognition.
Translating conservation and biodiversity research from the field into the real world is a complex problem. This collection discusses issues around economics, policy, and how to do research that answers questions that decision makers have.
Symbiosis research has become a holistic and pervasive field with a mature theoretical basis. This collection showcases symbiotic relationships across the tree of life, exploring their evolutionary basis and underlying mechanisms.
PLOS Biology is 20 and we are celebrating with a collection that contains articles that look back at landmark studies that we published, others that look past and future, and others discussing how publishing and open science have evolved and what is to come.
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January 19 - 22
Meet Associate Editor Melissa Vazquez Hernandez (mvazquezhernandez@plos.org)
March 11 - 13
Meet Magazine section Senior Editor Joanna Clarke (jclarke@plos.org).
March 16 - 17
(Attended remotely) Contact Magazine section Senior Editor Joanna Clarke (jclarke@plos.org)
March 22 - 25
Meet Senior Editor Ines Alvarez-Garcia (ialvarez-garcia@plos.org)
May 5 - 7
Meet Editor in Chief Nonia Pariente (npariente@plos.org)
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