UMass Biology Publications for December 2025

January 20, 2026

The following publications from the Biology Department appeared in PubMed in December 2025. You can find more here.

  1. Guest SL, Velle KB, Jacques SM, Park Y, Man J, Titus MA, Fritz-Laylin LK. Myosin 2 drives actin contractility in fast-crawling species outside of the amorphean lineage. Curr Biol. 2025 Dec 1;35(23):5696-5708.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.10.022. Epub 2025 Nov 12. PMID: 41232538; PMCID: PMC12650166.
  2. Ahi EP, Sturmbauer C, Albertson RC, Singh P. Molecular basis of variations in facial soft tissues: insights from cichlid fishes. Dev Biol. 2026 Jan;529:200-212. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2025.10.014. Epub 2025 Oct 17. PMID: 41109471.
  3. Regish AM, O'Donnell MJ, Letcher BH, Lambert TD, Hall DJ, McCormick SD. Longer exposure to warm water increases subsequent thermal tolerance of brook trout in cold water: acclimation timing and physiology. Conserv Physiol. 2025 Dec 10;13(1):coaf082. doi: 10.1093/conphys/coaf082. PMID: 41384234; PMCID: PMC12695145.
  4. Dey G, Fritz-Laylin L, Oliferenko S, Tromer EC. Evolutionary cell biology comes of age. J Cell Sci. 2024 Dec 15;138(24):jcs264348. doi: 10.1242/jcs.264348. Epub 2025 Dec 19. PMID: 41416614.
  5. Barnaby W, O'Malley S, Downes GB. GABA A α4 is expressed in cerebrospinal fluid-contacting neurons and regulates swim behavior in developing zebrafish. MicroPubl Biol. 2025 Dec 1;2025:10.17912/micropub.biology.001882. doi: 10.17912/micropub.biology.001882. PMID: 41416012; PMCID: PMC12709366.
  6. Medina EM, Elting MW, Fritz-Laylin L. Cellularization in chytrid fungi uses distinct mechanisms from conventional cytokinesis and cellularization in animals and yeast. Curr Biol. 2025 Dec 15:S0960-9822(25)01558-1. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.048. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41401808; PMCID: PMC12714308.
  7. Bernadskaya YY, Kuan A, Tjärnberg A, Brandenburg J, Zhang P, Wiechecki K, Kaplan N, Failla M, Bikou M, Madilian O, Bruderer N, Wang W, Christiaen L. Cell cycle-driven transcriptome maturation confers multilineage competence to cardiopharyngeal progenitors. EMBO J. 2025 Dec;44(24):7649-7676. doi: 10.1038/s44318-025-00613-y. Epub 2025 Nov 3. PMID: 41184589; PMCID: PMC12705688.
  8. Razifard H, Visa S, Menda N, Mueller L, Tieman D, van der Knaap E, Caicedo AL. The Evolutionary Dynamics of Genetic Mutational Load Throughout Tomato Domestication History. Mol Ecol. 2025 Dec;34(24):e70024. doi: 10.1111/mec.70024. Epub 2025 Jul 15. PMID: 40662302; PMCID: PMC12717970.