Research Brief: Jewel beetles evolve to see new colors by duplicating their genes

New research probes the vibrant vision and complex evolutionary history of jewel beetles

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

 

IMAGE: CHRYSOCHROA RAJAH — ONE OF THE JEWEL BEETLE SPECIES IN THE STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: NATHAN LORD, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY

Jewel beetles are striking insects, easily recognized by their vivid colors and metallic sheen. Possessing large, well-developed eyes, jewel beetles use vision and color for a range of different behaviors, including finding mates and host plants.

Color vision in insects differs from our own. Special genes allow many insects to see ultraviolet (UV) light as well as blue and green. New research led by Camilla Sharkey, a postdoctoral associate at the Wardill Lab in the College of Biological Sciences, investigated the complex evolutionary history of jewel beetles’ vision.  The research team included Jorge Blanco, formerly with the Wardill Lab and now at University of Maryland, Nathan Lord of Louisiana State University, and Trevor Wardill, assistant professor at CBS.

Previous research by Dr. Sharkey has shown that before the evolution of modern beetles, their ancestors lost the ability to see blue light around 300 million years ago. This may have been the result of the beetle ancestor becoming nocturnal or living in low-light conditions. Later, as beetles diversified, they evolved duplicates of the ancestral genes that allow them to see the UV and green spectrum. These duplicate genes could further evolve, making new parts of the color spectrum visible and allowing more complicated and diverse color signals to be seen.

Researchers wanted to know if the duplicate genes have evolved, allowing beetles to see colors that their ancestors could not. Since jewel beetles are difficult to keep in a lab, they copied the genes and inserted them into fruit flies, replacing their normal visual genes. Using electrophysiology, they tested the color sensitivity each gene produced in the flies. They then looked for genetic changes that might underlie the shifts in color sensitivity using 3D protein modeling. The study found that:

• Jewel beetles have evolved additional blue and orange sensitivity by duplicating and evolving their UV and green visual genes. 
• This enables complex tetra-chromatic color sensitivity to UV, blue, green and orange wavelengths of light, similar to the color sensitivity of colorful birds. 
• Newly evolved genetic changes related to color detection were not found to shift sensitivities as predicted when visual genes were modified and retested.

All jewel beetle species studied so far have the four differing gene types that were isolated in the research, suggesting that all jewel beetles probably have complex color sensitivity. According to Sharkey, “the next step is to determine if specific types of color vision can be predicted from genes and how color vision is used by insects to better manage pest and pollinator insects, thus improving crop production.” Researchers also hope to understand the molecular basis of jewel beetle color sensitivity, which would provide a basis for predicting insect color sensitivity from the gene sequence. 

Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation and The University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences. The Wardill Lab is based in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Department in CBS.

Jewel beetle carapaces (IMAGE)

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

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Jewel beetle carapaces up close.

CREDIT  Nathan Lord, Louisiana State University

JOURNAL

Molecular Biology and Evolution

DOI

10.1093/molbev/msad023 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Jewel Beetle Opsin Duplication and Divergence Is the Mechanism for Diverse Spectral Sensitivities

Surprising similarities in stone tools of early humans and monkeys

Accidentally produced stone fragments made by macaques resemble some of the earliest hominin stone artifacts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY

 

IMAGE: EXAMPLE OF A LONG-TAILED MACAQUE USING A STONE TOOL TO ACCESS FOOD. view more 

CREDIT: © LYDIA V. LUNCZ

The research is based on new analyses of stone tools used by long-tailed macaques in the Phang Nga National Park in Thailand. These monkeys use stone tools to crack open hard-shelled nuts. In that process, the monkeys often break their hammerstones and anvils. The resulting assemblage of broken stones is substantial and widespread across the landscape. Moreover, many of these artefacts bear all of the same characteristics that are commonly used to identify intentionally made stone tools in some of the earliest archaeological sites in East Africa.

“The ability to intentionally make sharp stone flakes is seen as a crucial point in the evolution of hominins, and understanding how and when this occurred is a huge question that is typically investigated through the study of past artefacts and fossils. Our study shows that stone tool production is not unique to humans and our ancestors,” says lead author Tomos Proffitt, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “The fact that these macaques use stone tools to process nuts is not surprising, as they also use tools to gain access to various shellfish as well. What is interesting is that, in doing so they accidently produce a substantial archaeological record of their own that is partly indistinguishable from some hominin artefacts.”

New insights into the evolution of stone tool technology

By comparing the accidentally produced stone fragments made by the macaques with those from some of the earliest archaeological sites, the researchers were able to show that many of the artefacts produced by monkeys fall within the range of those commonly associated with early hominins. Co-lead author Jonathan Reeves highlights: “The fact that these artifacts can be produced through nut cracking has implications for the range of behaviours we associate with sharp edged flakes in the archaeological record..”

The newly discovered macaque stone tools offer new insights into how the first technology might have started in our earliest ancestors and that its origin may have been linked to similar nut cracking behaviour which could be substantially older than the current earliest archaeological record. “Cracking nuts using stone hammers and anvils, similar to what some primates do today, has been suggested by some as a possible precursor to intentional stone tool production. This study, along with previous ones published by our group, opens the door to being able to identify such an archaeological signature in the future,” says Lydia Luncz, senior author of the study and head of the Technological Primates Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “This discovery shows how living primates can help researchers investigate the origin and evolution of tool use in our own lineage”

Examples of sharp edged flakes produced unintentionally by long-tailed macaques.

CREDIT

© Proffitt et al, 2023

JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ade8159 

ARTICLE TITLE

Wild macaques challenge the origin of intentional tool production

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Mar-2023

SEE

The Part Played by Labor in the Transition From Ape to Man (marxists.org)

Where is your squid coming from? Most likely unregulated waters, according to a new international study

New research fuses multiple data sources to advance understanding of the expanding footprint of global squid fleets

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY AREA CONSIDERED IN THIS PAPER FOCUSED ON FOUR REGIONS: THE SOUTHWEST ATLANTIC OCEAN, NORTHWEST INDIAN OCEAN, AND THE NORTHWEST AND SOUTHEAST PACIFIC OCEAN. view more 

CREDIT: GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Scientists and policymakers have voiced growing concerns about the decline of global squid stocks, but little has been done to date to target squid fishing activities that are expanding into unregulated spaces, according to a new international study.

The study, lead-authored by Katherine Seto, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was published in Science Advances on March 10. It explores the unregulated nature of global squid fisheries across three oceans over a three-year period, and how these fisheries continue to grow and shift locations beyond the jurisdiction of management bodies. The research was conducted through a research partnership between Global Fishing Watch, the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at the University of Wollongong, and the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency.

Using satellite imagery, vessel tracking, and data monitoring, the study found that the fishing conducted by this globalized light-luring squid fishery was extensive, fishing between 149,000-251,000 vessel days annually, and that effort increased 68% over the study period from 2017-2020. 

“These squid fisheries are highly mobile, fishing multiple oceans within a given year,” said Seto. “While some conservation and management measures are in place to regulate this type of fishing, our research found that actors may take advantage of these fragmented regulations to maximize resource extraction. To address this, we need to address the factors that promote the growth and expansion of fishing efforts, and increase data sharing and communication between management entities.”

The study found that these squid fishing vessels fished largely (86%) in unregulated areas, equating to 4.4 million total hours of fishing time between 2017-2020. While unregulated fishing is not necessarily illegal, it presents challenges for fisheries sustainability and resource equity, and has been connected to questionable human rights and labor practices. 

"By synthesizing data from multiple sources, we created a robust picture of the fishing activity of the high seas squid fleets. Our analysis highlights the interconnectedness of fishing grounds used by the fleets,” said Nate Miller, head of applied research at Global Fishing Watch and co-author of the study. “It demonstrates the critical importance of comprehensive data sharing agreements between regional bodies for improving understanding of the movements of these vessels and quantifying their impacts on squid stocks.”

One major challenge has been the vessels freely fishing between regulated and unregulated spaces, fishing huge amounts of squid with little to no oversight or data reporting. Fishing in unregulated areas has also steadily increased and seems to be preferred despite concerns over stock status, according to the study. 

“These unregulated fishing activities require urgent action. They occur in our global commons, shared by all, yet few receive any benefit, and neighboring coastal States are increasingly concerned regarding the impact on their own shared fish stocks,” said study co-author Quentin Hanich, from the University of Wollongong. 

Masanori Miyahara, a co-author and advisor to the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, agrees.

“These catches are often not reported to domestic or international management bodies, nor are they incorporated into estimates of fishing effort, harvest, or stock status,” said Miyahara. “While it is good to see both the North Pacific Fisheries Commission and the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation strengthen their management, urgent responses are also required in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to ensure that fleets do not simply evade regulation by moving elsewhere.”

As we experience an increased demand for seafood products globally, we must understand the factors that facilitate the increase and expansion of fishing efforts to address the challenges of unregulated fishing, according to the study. 

“Like all activities in the global commons, fishing on the high seas should be fully regulated. Yet the regional bodies with the competence to adopt management measures are restrained by a handful of states whose self-interests are best served when such activities are unregulated or done with few limits,” said Osvaldo Urrutia S., professor of international law at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Chile. “The global squid fishery shows how important it is to strengthen regional management of high seas resources and to continue international calls for states and regional bodies to take this challenge seriously.”

 

For more information:

Lisa Tossey, Communications Manager, Global Fishing Watch

lisa.tossey@globalfishingwatch.org

Elisa Smith, Communications Lead, University of California, Santa Cruz

esmith16@ucsc.edu 

Notes to the editor:

• A copy of the paper, “Fishing through the cracks: The unregulated nature of global squid fisheries” can be found online at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak. Journalists will need their user ID and password to access this information.
• A summary brief of the paper can be accessed online here in PDF format

A global research university, UC Santa Cruz is part of the world’s most celebrated system of public higher education, earning international recognition for groundbreaking discoveries, creative scholarship, and an uncommon commitment to teaching and public service. https://www.ucsc.edu/ 

Global Fishing Watch is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea. By creating and publicly sharing map visualizations, data and analysis tools, we aim to enable scientific research and transform the way our ocean is managed. We believe human activity at sea should be public knowledge in order to safeguard the global ocean for the common good of all. www.globalfishingwatch.org

The University of Wollongong’s Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) is a globally recognised academic centre of excellence for ocean governance and fisheries management, maritime security, marine dispute resolution and maritime crime prevention. ANCORS is the primary, multidisciplinary centre for academic, professional and industry expertise in ocean law, policy and governance in the Southern Hemisphere. https://www.uow.edu.au/ancors/

Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA) is a public organization, established on April 1, 2016 through a merger of the Fisheries Research Agency (originated from 9 institutes of Fisheries Agency of Japan, Ministries of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries since 1949) and the National Fisheries University. The FRA aims to maximize research and development (R&D) outcomes as the only comprehensive fisheries R&D organization in Japan. The FRA is contributing to the revival of Japan as a nation of fisheries by maximizing R&D outcomes. https://www.fra.affrc.go.jp/eng/index.htm

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add8125 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Fishing through the cracks: the unregulated nature of global squid fisheries

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Mar-2023

Rutgers scientists identify substance that may have sparked life on earth

Research could provide clues to extraterrestrial life

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A COMPUTER RENDERING OF THE NICKELBACK PEPTIDE SHOWS THE BACKBONE NITROGEN ATOMS (BLUE) THAT BOND TWO CRITICAL NICKEL ATOMS (ORANGE). SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE IDENTIFIED THIS PART OF A PROTEIN BELIEVE IT MAY PROVIDE CLUES TO DETECTING PLANETS ON THE VERGE OF PRODUCING LIFE. view more 

CREDIT: THE NANDA LABORATOA team of Rutgers scientists dedicated to pinpointing the primordial origins of metabolism – a set of core chemical reactions that first powered life on Earth – has identified part of a protein that could provide scientists clues to detecting planets on the verge of producing life.The research, published in Science Advances, has important implications in the search for extraterrestrial life because it gives researchers a new clue to look for, said Vikas Nanda, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM) at Rutgers.

Based on laboratory studies, Rutgers scientists say one of the most likely chemical candidates that kickstarted life was a simple peptide with two nickel atoms they are calling “Nickelback” not because it has anything to do with the Canadian rock band, but because its backbone nitrogen atoms bond two critical nickel atoms. A peptide is a constituent of a protein made up of a few elemental building blocks known as amino acids. 

“Scientists believe that sometime between 3.5 and 3.8 billion years ago there was a tipping point, something that kickstarted the change from prebiotic chemistry – molecules before life – to­ living, biological systems,” Nanda said. “We believe the change was sparked by a few small precursor proteins that performed key steps in an ancient metabolic reaction. And we think we’ve found one of these ‘pioneer peptides’.”

The scientists conducting the study are part of a Rutgers-led team called Evolution of Nanomachines in Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors (ENIGMA), which is part of the Astrobiology program at NASA. The researchers are seeking to understand how proteins evolved to become the predominant catalyst of life on Earth.

When scouring the universe with telescopes and probes for signs of past, present or emerging life, NASA scientists look for specific “biosignatures” known to be harbingers of life. Peptides like nickelback could become the latest biosignature employed by NASA to detect planets on the verge of producing life, Nanda said.

An original instigating chemical, the researchers reasoned, would need to be simple enough to be able to assemble spontaneously in a prebiotic soup. But it would have to be sufficiently chemically active to possess the potential to take energy from the environment to drive a biochemical process.

To do so, the researchers adopted a “reductionist” approach: They started by examining existing contemporary proteins known to be associated with metabolic processes. Knowing the proteins were too complex to have emerged early on, they pared them down to their basic structure.

After sequences of experiments, researchers concluded the best candidate was Nickelback. The peptide is made of 13 amino acids and binds two nickel ions.

Nickel, they reasoned, was an abundant metal in early oceans. When bound to the peptide, the nickel atoms become potent catalysts, attracting additional protons and electrons and producing hydrogen gas. Hydrogen, the researchers reasoned, was also more abundant on early Earth and would have been a critical source of energy to power metabolism.

“This is important because, while there are many theories about the origins of life, there are very few actual laboratory tests of these ideas,” Nanda said. “This work shows that, not only are simple protein metabolic enzymes possible, but that they are very stable and very active – making them a plausible starting point for life.”

Other Rutgers researchers on the study include: Distinguished Professor Paul Falkowski and Jennifer Timm, a postdoctoral associate, in the Environmental Biophysics and Molecular Ecology Program, Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; Joshua Mancini, Douglas Pike, Saroj Poudel and Alexei Tyryshkin, postdoctoral associates, and doctoral student Jan Siess at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine and in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; and Kate Waldie, an assistant professor of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the School of Arts and Sciences.

Researchers from the City College of New York also participated in the study.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ade7701 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

Design of a minimal di-nickel hydrogenase peptide

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

10-Mar-2023

COI STATEMENT

U.S. Patent Application No. 18/047,822, “A Minimal Catalytic D-Nickel Peptide Capable of Sustained Hydrogen Evolution and Methods of Use Thereof”—current status: pending—was submitted on 19 October 2022 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Authors also listed as inventors on the patent are as follows: J.A.M., D.H.P., S.P., J.T., A.M.T., V.N., and P.G.F. The authors declare that they have no other competing interests.

Looking for risky viruses now to get ahead of future pandemics

Scientists propose framework to ID likely viral threats to human health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most of what scientists know about viruses in animals is the list of nucleotides that compose their genomic sequence – which, while valuable, offers very few hints about a virus’s ability to infect humans.

Rather than let the next outbreak take the world by surprise, two virologists say in a Science Perspective article published today (March 10, 2023) that the scientific community should invest in a four-part research framework to proactively identify animal viruses that might infect humans.

“A lot of financial investment has gone into sequencing viruses in nature and thinking that from sequence alone we’ll be able to predict the next pandemic virus. And I think that’s just a fallacy,” said Cody Warren, assistant professor of veterinary biosciences at The Ohio State University and co-lead author of the article.

“Experimental studies of animal viruses are going to be invaluable,” he said. “By measuring properties in them that are consistent with human infection, we can better identify those viruses that pose the greatest risk for zoonosis and then study them further. I think that’s a realistic way of looking at things that should also be considered.”

Warren co-authored the opinion piece with Sara Sawyer, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

One key message Warren and Sawyer want to get across is that knowing an animal virus can attach to a human cell receptor doesn’t paint the whole picture of its zoonotic potential.

They propose a series of experiments to assess an animal virus’s potential to infect a human: If it is found to enter human cells, can it use those host cells to make copies of itself and multiply? After viral particles are produced, can they get past human innate immunity? And have human immune systems ever been exposed to another virus from the same family?

Answering these questions could enable scientists to put a pre-zoonotic candidate virus “on the shelf” for further research – perhaps developing a quick way to diagnose the virus in humans if an unattributable illness surfaces and testing existing antivirals as possible treatments, Warren said.

“Where it becomes difficult is that there may be many animal viruses out there with signatures of human compatibility,” he said. “So which ones do you pick and choose to prioritize for further study? That’s something that needs to be carefully considered.”

A decent starting point, he and Sawyer suggest, would be operating on the assumption that viruses with the most risk to humans come from “repeat offender” viral families currently infecting mammals and birds. Those include coronaviruses, orthomyxoviruses (influenza) and filoviruses (causing hemorrhagic diseases like Ebola and Marburg). In 2018, the Bombali virus – a new ebolavirus – was detected in bats in Sierra Leone, but its potential to infect humans remains unknown.

And then there are arteriviruses, such as the simian hemorrhagic fever virus that exists in wild African monkeys, which Sawyer and Warren recently determined has decent potential to spill over to humans because it can replicate in human cells and subvert immune cells’ ability to fight back.

The 2020 worldwide lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is still a fresh and painful memory, but Warren notes that the terrible outcomes of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 could have been much worse. The availability of vaccines within a year of that lockdown was possible only because scientists had spent decades studying coronaviruses and knew how to attack them.

“So if we invest in studying animal viruses early and understand their biology in more detail, then in the case that they were to emerge in humans later, we’d be better poised to combat them,” Warren said.

“We are continually going to be exposed to the viruses of animals. Things are never going to change if we stay on the same trajectory,” he said. “And if we stay complacent and only study those animal viruses after they jump into humans, we’re constantly going to be working backwards. We’ll always be behind.”

Contact: Cody Warren, Warren.802@osu.edu

Written by Emily Caldwell, Caldwell.151@osu.edu

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ade6985 

ARTICLE TITLE

Identifying animal viruses in humans

Experiment unlocks bizarre properties of strange metals

International team finds unusual electrical behavior in material that holds promise for new technology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

 

IMAGE: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI THEORETICAL PHYSICIST YASHAR KOMIJANI WORKED WITH AN INTERNATIONAL TEAM OF EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICISTS TO EXPLORE THE PROPERTIES OF STRANGE METALS. view more 

CREDIT: ANDREW HIGLEY/UC

Physicists are learning more about the bizarre behavior of “strange metals,” which operate outside the normal rules of electricity.

Theoretical physicist Yashar Komijani, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, contributed to an international experiment using a strange metal made from an alloy of ytterbium, a rare earth metal. Physicists in a lab in Hyogo, Japan, fired radioactive gamma rays at the strange metal to observe its unusual electrical behavior.

Led by Hisao Kobayashi with the University of Hyogo and RIKEN, the study was published in the journal Science. The experiment revealed unusual fluctuations in the strange metal’s electrical charge.

“The idea is that in a metal, you have a sea of electrons moving in the background on a lattice of ions,” Komijani said. “But a marvelous thing happens with quantum mechanics. You can forget about the complications of the lattice of ions. Instead, they behave as if they are in a vacuum.”

Komijani for years has been exploring the mysteries of strange metals in relation to quantum mechanics.

“You can put something in a black box and I can tell you a lot about what’s inside it without even looking at it just by measuring things like resistivity, heat capacity and conductivity,” he said.

“But when it comes to strange metals, I have no idea why they are showing the behavior they do. The mystery is what is happening inside this strange system. That is the question.”

Strange metals are of interest to a wide range of physicists studying everything from particle physics to quantum mechanics. One reason is because of their oddly high conductivity, at least under extremely cold temperatures, which gives them potential as superconductors for quantum computing.

“The thing that is really exciting about these new results is that they provide a new insight into the inner machinery of the strange metal,” said study co-author Piers Coleman, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University.

“These metals provide the canvas for new forms of electronic matter — especially exotic and high temperature superconductivity,” he said.

Coleman said it’s too soon to speculate about what new technologies strange metals might inspire.

“It is said that after Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetism, the British Chancellor William Gladstone asked what it would be good for,” Coleman said. “Faraday answered that while he didn't know, he was sure that one day the government would tax it.”

Faraday’s discoveries opened a world of innovation.

“We feel a bit the same about the strange metal,” Coleman said. “Metals play such a central role today — copper, the archetypal conventional metal, is in all devices, all power lines, all around us.”

Coleman said strange metals one day could be just as ubiquitous in our technology.

The Japan experiment was groundbreaking in part because of the way that researchers created the gamma particles using a particle accelerator called a synchrotron.

“In Japan, they use a synchrotron like they have at CERN [the European Organization for Nuclear Research] that accelerates a proton and smashes it into a wall and it emits a gamma ray,” Komijani said. “So they have an on-demand source of gamma rays without using radioactive material.”

Researchers used spectroscopy to study the effects of gamma rays on the strange metal.

Researchers also examined the speed of the metal’s electrical charge fluctuations, which take just a nanosecond — a billionth of a second. That might seem incredibly fast, Komijani said.

“However, in the quantum world, a nanosecond is an eternity,” he said. “For a long time we have been wondering why these fluctuations are actually so slow. We came up with a theory with collaborators that there might be vibrations of the lattice and indeed that was the case.”

The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abc4787 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Observation of a critical charge mode in a strange metal