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Mining is a key driver of land-use change and environmental degradation globally, with the variety of mineral extraction methods used impacting biodiversity across scales. We use IUCN Red List threat assessments of all vertebrates to quantify the current biodiversity threat from mineral extraction, map the global hotspots of threatened biodiversity, and investigate the links between species' habitat use and life-history traits and threat from mineral extraction. Nearly 8% (4,642) of vertebrates are assessed as threatened by mineral extraction, especially mining and quarrying, with fish at particularly high risk. The hotspots of mineral extraction-induced threat are pantropical, as well as a large proportion of regional diversity threatened in northern South America, West Africa, and the Arctic. Species using freshwater habitats are particularly at risk, while the effects of other ecological traits vary between taxa. As the industry expands, it is vital that mineral resources in vulnerable biodiversity regions are managed in accordance with sustainable development goals., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests D.P.E. is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Current Biology., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The global restoration agenda can help solve the biodiversity extinction crisis by regenerating biodiversity-rich ecosystems, maximising conservation benefits using natural regeneration. Yet, conservation is rarely the core objective of restoration, and biodiversity is often neglected in restoration projects targeted towards carbon sequestration or enhancing ecosystem services for improved local livelihoods. Here, we synthesise evidence to show that promoting biodiversity in restoration planning and delivery is integral to delivering other long-term restoration aims, such as carbon sequestration, timber production, enhanced local farm yields, reduced soil erosion, recovered hydrological services and improved human health. For each of these restoration goals, biodiversity must be a keystone objective to the entire process. Biodiversity integration requires improved evidence and action, delivered via a socio-ecological process operating at landscape scales and backed by supportive regulations and finance. Conceiving restoration and biodiversity conservation as synergistic, mutually reinforcing partners is critical for humanity's bids to tackle the global crises of climate change, land degradation and biodiversity extinction., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests David Edwards is on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Current Biology and Rainforest Builder., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

An analysis of over 1 million old-growth tropical forest trees reveals that ∼2.2% of species comprise 50% of the individuals in Africa, Amazonia, and Southeast Asia, suggesting that the ecological mechanisms underpinning tree community assembly are ubiquitous across the tropics., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Intact tropical forests have a high conservation value. 1 Although perceived as wild, 2 they have been under long-term human influence. 3 As global area-based conservation targets increase, the ecological contributions of Indigenous peoples through their governance institutions and practices 4 are gaining mainstream interest. Indigenous lands-covering a quarter of Earth's surface 5 and overlapping with a third of intact forests 6 -often have reduced deforestation, degradation, and carbon emissions, compared with non-protected areas and protected areas. 7 , 8 A key question with implications for the design of more equitable and effective conservation policies is to understand the impacts of Indigenous lands on forest integrity and long-term use, as critical measures of ecosystem health included within the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. 9 Using the forest landscape integrity index 10 and Anthromes 11 datasets, we find that high-integrity forests tend to be located within the overlap of protected areas and Indigenous lands (protected-Indigenous areas). After accounting for location biases through statistical matching and regression, protected-Indigenous areas had the highest protective effect on forest integrity and the lowest land-use intensity relative to Indigenous lands, protected areas, and non-protected controls pan-tropically. The protective effect of Indigenous lands on forest integrity was lower in Indigenous lands than in protected areas and non-protected areas in the Americas and Asia. The combined positive effects of state legislation and Indigenous presence in protected-Indigenous areas may contribute to maintaining tropical forest integrity. Understanding management and governance in protected-Indigenous areas can help states to appropriately support community-governed lands., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Biodiversity is facing a global extinction crisis that will reduce ecological trait diversity, evolutionary history, and ultimately ecosystem functioning and services. 1-4 A key challenge is understanding how species losses will impact morphological and phylogenetic diversity at global scales. 5 , 6 Here, we test whether the loss of species threatened with extinction according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) leads to morphological and phylogenetic homogenization 7 , 8 across both the whole avian class and within each biome and ecoregion globally. We use a comprehensive set of continuous morphological traits extracted from museum collections of 8,455 bird species, including geometric morphometric beak shape data, 9 and sequentially remove species from those at most to least threat of extinction. We find evidence of morphological, but not phylogenetic, homogenization across the avian class, with species becoming more alike in terms of their morphology. We find that most biome and ecoregions are expected to lose morphological diversity at a greater rate than predicted by species loss alone, with the most imperiled regions found in East Asia and the Himalayan uplands and foothills. Only a small proportion of assemblages are threatened with phylogenetic homogenization, in particular parts of Indochina. Species extinctions will lead to a major loss of avian ecological strategies, but not a comparable loss of phylogenetic diversity. As the decline of species with unique traits and their replacement with more widespread generalist species continues, the protection of assemblages at most risk of morphological and phylogenetic homogenization should be a key conservation priority., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) regulates international legal trade to prevent the detrimental harvest of wildlife. We assess the volumes of threatened and non-threatened bird, mammal, amphibian, and reptile species in the CITES-managed trade and how this trade responded to category changes of species in the IUCN Red List between 2000 and 2018. In this period, over a thousand wild-sourced vertebrate species were commercially traded. Species of least conservation concern had the highest yearly trade volumes (excluding birds), whereas species in most Red List categories showed an overall decrease in trade reoccurrence and volume through time, with most species unlikely to reoccur in recent trade. Charismatic species with populations split-listed between Appendices I and II were traded in substantially lower yearly volumes when sourced from the more-threatened Appendix I populations. Species trade volumes did not systematically respond to changes in the Red List category, with 31.0% of species disappearing from trade before changing category and the majority of species revealing no difference in trade volumes from pre- to post-change. Just 2.7% (12/432) of species volumes declined and 2.1% (9/432) of volumes increased after a category change. Our findings highlight that non-threatened species dominate trade but reveal small numbers of highly threatened species in trade and a disconnect between species trade volumes and changing extinction risk. We highlight potential drawbacks in the current regulation of trade in listed species and urgently call for open and accessible assessments-non-detriment findings-robustly evidencing the sustainable use of threatened and non-threatened species alike., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration offers immense potential to return hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded tropical landscapes to functioning ecosystems. Well-designed restoration can tackle multiple Sustainable Development Goals, driving synergistic benefits for biodiversity, ecosystem services, agricultural and timber production, and local livelihoods at large spatial scales. To deliver on this potential, restoration efforts must recognise and reduce trade-offs among objectives, and minimize competition with food production and conservation of native ecosystems. Restoration initiatives also need to confront core environmental challenges of climate change and inappropriate planting in savanna biomes, be robustly funded over the long term, and address issues of poor governance, inadequate land tenure, and socio-cultural disparities in benefits and costs. Tackling these issues using the landscape approach is vital to realising the potential for restoration to break the cycle of land degradation and poverty, and deliver on its core environmental and social promises., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Effectively managing farming to meet food demand is vital for the future of biodiversity. 1 , 2 Increasing yields on existing farmland can allow the abandonment (sparing) of low-yielding areas that subsequently recover as secondary forest. 2-5 A key question is whether such "secondary sparing" conserves biodiversity more effectively than retaining wildlife-friendly habitat within farmland ("land sharing"). Focusing on the Colombian Choco-Andes, a global hotspot of threatened biodiversity, 6 and on cattle farming, we examined the outcomes of secondary sparing and land sharing via simulated scenarios that maintained constant landscape-wide production and equal within-pasture yield: (1) for species and functional diversity of dung beetles and birds; (2) for avian phylogenetic diversity; and (3) across different stages of secondary forest regeneration, relative to spared primary forests. Sparing older secondary forests (15-30 years recovery) promotes substantial species, functional, and phylogenetic (birds only) diversity benefits for birds and dung beetles compared to land sharing. Species of conservation concern had higher occupancy estimates under land-sparing compared to land-sharing scenarios. Spared secondary forests accumulated equivalent diversity to primary forests for dung beetles within 15 years and within 15-30 years for birds, highlighting the need for longer term protection to maximize the biodiversity gains of secondary sparing. Promoting the recovery and protection of large expanses of secondary forests under the land-sparing model provides a critical mechanism for protecting tropical biodiversity, with important implications for concurrently assisting in the delivery of global targets to restore 350 million hectares of forested landscapes. 7 , 8 ., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Over five million hectares of tropical forest were cleared across mainland Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa for rubber plantations between 2003 and 2017 [1, 2]. Millions of hectares of further clearance are predicted as rubber demand rises, which will have major consequences for biodiversity [3]. A key question is how to reconcile rubber expansion with biodiversity conservation. We assessed the feasibility of simultaneously meeting global future demand for rubber with conservation of extinction-threatened amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles. We compared the spatial congruence of rubber bioclimatic suitability with extinction vulnerability [4] in Africa, Asia, and New Guinea, where large-scale rubber cultivation is viable, and simulated rubber expansion under different scenarios. We found no "win-win" areas with highest rubber suitability and lowest extinction vulnerability. Projected rubber demand could be met by allowing expansion primarily in New Guinea and African Guinea. However, New Guinea has high ecosystem intactness and both regions are rich in endemics. Scenarios suggest converting only areas suitable for cultivation would cause the largest biodiversity losses, including endangered species, whereas prioritizing conservation would result in only the conversion of highly unsuitable land. Compromise scenarios that balance production with conservation could cut biodiversity losses by two-thirds, protecting most endangered species while maintaining high rubber suitability. Development of high-yielding hardy clones expands the amount of win-win areas, as well as suitable areas with high extinction risk. These trade-offs reveal that clonal research and development, strategic corporate and government land-use policies, and rigorous impact assessments are needed to prevent severe biodiversity losses from rubber development., Competing Interests: Declaration of Interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

It has long been appreciated that genetic analysis of fetal or trophoblast cells in maternal blood could revolutionize prenatal diagnosis. We implemented a protocol for single circulating trophoblast (SCT) testing using positive selection by magnetic-activated cell sorting and single-cell low-coverage whole-genome sequencing to detect fetal aneuploidies and copy-number variants (CNVs) at ∼1 Mb resolution. In 95 validation cases, we identified on average 0.20 putative trophoblasts/mL, of which 55% were of high quality and scorable for both aneuploidy and CNVs. We emphasize the importance of analyzing individual cells because some cells are apoptotic, in S-phase, or otherwise of poor quality. When two or more high-quality trophoblast cells were available for singleton pregnancies, there was complete concordance between all trophoblasts unless there was evidence of confined placental mosaicism. SCT results were highly concordant with available clinical data from chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or amniocentesis procedures. Although determining the exact sensitivity and specificity will require more data, this study further supports the potential for SCT testing to become a diagnostic prenatal test., (Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

If current trends continue, the tropical forests of the Anthropocene will be much smaller, simpler, steeper and emptier than they are today. They will be more diminished in size and heavily fragmented (especially in lowland wet forests), have reduced structural and species complexity, be increasingly restricted to steeper, less accessible areas, and be missing many heavily hunted species. These changes, in turn, will greatly reduce the quality and quantity of ecosystem services that tropical forests can provide. Driving these changes will be continued clearance for farming and monoculture forest plantations, unsustainable selective logging, overhunting, and, increasingly, climate change. Concerted action by local and indigenous communities, environmental groups, governments, and corporations can reverse these trends and, if successful, provide future generations with a tropical forest estate that includes a network of primary forest reserves robustly defended from threats, recovering logged and secondary forests, and resilient community forests managed for the needs of local people. Realizing this better future for tropical forests and people will require formalisation of land tenure for local and indigenous communities, better-enforced environmental laws, the widescale roll-out of payments for ecosystem service schemes, and sustainable intensification of under-yielding farmland, as well as global-scale societal changes, including reduced consumerism, meat consumption, fossil fuel reliance, and population growth. But the time to act is now, while the opportunity remains to protect a semblance of intact, hyperdiverse tropical forests., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Amphibians are among the most highly threatened lineages, with at least 2,000 species estimated to be in danger of extinction [1, 2]. Alarmingly, another ∼2,200 species (∼25% of all ∼7,900 known species) are data deficient or not evaluated (hereinafter termed data deficient) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) [1]. Without an estimate of their status, data-deficient species are usually overlooked in conservation planning and resource allocation [3]. Amphibians have the highest proportion of data-deficient species of any vertebrate group [1, 4], which highlights the need to estimate their threat status considering potentially imminent extinctions. We apply a trait-based spatio-phylogenetic statistical framework [5] to predict threat status for data-deficient species. Because ecological, geographical, and evolutionary attributes increase extinction risk [6, 7], we used geographic distribution data [1, 8], phylogenetically imputed ecological traits, and an amphibian phylogeny [9] to provide initial baseline predictions. We estimate that half of the ∼2,200 data-deficient species are threatened with extinction (vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered), primarily in the Neotropics and Southeast Asia. This increases the number of amphibian species estimated to be threatened with extinction by ∼50%. Of these, we predict that ∼500 species are endangered or critically endangered, and three may be extinct already. We highlight families that are most at risk and suggest where urgent conservation is needed to avert their loss. We show that some of the most vulnerable species may also be the most poorly known and offer an analytical framework for preliminary analysis of their threat status in the face of deficient empirical data., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The conversion of natural habitats to farmland is a major driver of the global extinction crisis. Two strategies are promoted to mitigate the impacts of agricultural expansion on biodiversity: land sharing integrates wildlife-friendly habitats within farmland landscapes, and land sparing intensifies farming to allow the offset of natural reserves. A key question is which strategy would protect the most phylogenetic diversity--the total evolutionary history shared across all species within a community. Conserving phylogenetic diversity decreases the chance of losing unique phenotypic and ecological traits and provides benefits for ecosystem function and stability. Focusing on birds in the threatened Chocó-Andes hotspot of endemism, we tested the relative benefits of each strategy for retaining phylogenetic diversity in tropical cloud forest landscapes threatened by cattle pastures. Using landscape simulations, we find that land sharing would protect lower community-level phylogenetic diversity than land sparing and that with increasing distance from forest (from 500 to >1,500 m), land sharing is increasingly inferior to land sparing. Isolation from forest also leads to the loss of more evolutionarily distinct species from communities within land-sharing landscapes, which can be avoided with effective land sparing. Land-sharing policies that promote the integration of small-scale wildlife-friendly habitats might be of limited benefit without the simultaneous protection of larger blocks of natural habitat, which is most likely to be achieved via land-sparing measures., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Defining the molecular networks that drive breast cancer has led to therapeutic interventions and improved patient survival. However, the aggressive triple-negative breast cancer subtype (TNBC) remains recalcitrant to targeted therapies because its molecular etiology is poorly defined. In this study, we used a forward genetic screen to discover an oncogenic network driving human TNBC. SCYL1, TEX14, and PLK1 ("STP axis") cooperatively trigger degradation of the REST tumor suppressor protein, a frequent event in human TNBC. The STP axis induces REST degradation by phosphorylating a conserved REST phospho-degron and bridging REST interaction with the ubiquitin-ligase βTRCP. Inhibition of the STP axis leads to increased REST protein levels and impairs TNBC transformation, tumor progression, and metastasis. Expression of the STP axis correlates with low REST protein levels in human TNBCs and poor clinical outcome for TNBC patients. Our findings demonstrate that the STP-REST axis is a molecular driver of human TNBC., (Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Structural and functional details of the N-terminal activation function 1 (AF1) of most nuclear receptors are poorly understood due to the highly dynamic intrinsically disordered nature of this domain. A hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX) mass-spectrometry-based investigation of TATA box-binding protein (TBP) interaction with various domains of progesterone receptor (PR) demonstrate that agonist-bound PR interaction with TBP via AF1 impacts the mobility of the C-terminal AF2. Results from HDX and other biophysical studies involving agonist- and antagonist-bound full-length PR and isolated PR domains reveal the molecular mechanism underlying synergistic transcriptional activation mediated by AF1 and AF2, dominance of PR-B isoform over PR-A, and the necessity of AF2 for full AF1-mediated transcriptional activity. These results provide a comprehensive picture elaborating the underlying mechanism of PR-TBP interactions as a model for studying nuclear receptor (NR)-transcription factor functional interactions., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The ubiquitin-proteasome and autophagy-lysosome systems are major proteolytic pathways, whereas function of the Ub-independent proteasome pathway is yet to be clarified. Here, we investigated roles of the Ub-independent REGγ-proteasome proteolytic system in regulating metabolism. We demonstrate that mice deficient for the proteasome activator REGγ exhibit dramatic autophagy induction and are protected against high-fat diet (HFD)-induced liver steatosis through autophagy. Molecularly, prevention of steatosis in the absence of REGγ entails elevated SirT1, a deacetylase regulating autophagy and metabolism. REGγ physically binds to SirT1, promotes its Ub-independent degradation, and inhibits its activity to deacetylate autophagy-related proteins, thereby inhibiting autophagy under normal conditions. Moreover, REGγ and SirT1 dissociate from each other through a phosphorylation-dependent mechanism under energy-deprived conditions, unleashing SirT1 to stimulate autophagy. These observations provide a function of the REGγ proteasome in autophagy and hepatosteatosis, underscoring mechanistically a crosstalk between the proteasome and autophagy degradation system in the regulation of lipid homeostasis., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Chromatin immunoprecipitation studies have mapped protein occupancies at many genomic loci. However, a detailed picture of the complexity of coregulators (CoRs) bound to a defined enhancer along with a transcription factor is missing. To address this, we used biotin-DNA pull-down assays coupled with mass spectrometry-immunoblotting to identify at least 17 CoRs from nuclear extracts bound to 17β-estradiol (E2)-liganded estrogen receptor-α on estrogen response elements (EREs). Unexpectedly, these complexes initially are biochemically stable and contain certain atypical corepressors. Addition of ATP dynamically converts these complexes to an "activated" state by phosphorylation events, primarily mediated by DNA-dependent protein kinase. Importantly, a "natural" ERE-containing enhancer and nucleosomal EREs recruit similar complexes. We further discovered the mechanism whereby H3K4me3 stimulates ERα-mediated transcription as compared with unmodified nucleosomes. H3K4me3 templates promote specific CoR dynamics in the presence of ATP and AcCoA, as manifested by CBP/p300 and SRC-3 dismissal and SAGA and TFIID stabilization/recruitment., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Steroid hormones have rapid nongenomic effects on cell-signaling pathways, but the receptor mechanisms responsible for this are not understood. We have identified a specific polyproline motif in the amino-terminal domain of conventional progesterone receptor (PR) that mediates direct progestin-dependent interaction of PR with SH3 domains of various cytoplasmic signaling molecules, including c-Src tyrosine kinases. Through this interaction, PR is a potent activator of Src kinases working by an SH3 domain displacement mechanism. By mutagenesis, we also show that rapid progestin-induced activation of Src and downstream MAP kinase in mammalian cells is dependent on PR-SH3 domain interaction, but not on the transcriptional activity of PR. Preliminary evidence for the biological significance of this PR signaling pathway through regulatory SH3 domains was shown with respect to an influence on progestin-induced growth arrest of breast epithelial cells and induction of Xenopus oocyte maturation.