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On Valentine’s Day it is common for those of us feeling loved up to gift the object of our affections with some flowers, chocolate or maybe even some wine. This very human behaviour may seem just that, but you may be surprised to find that other members of the animal kingdom also adhere to the romantic practice of gift giving.

Male Bowerbirds, native to New Guinea and Australia, woo their mate by first building an elaborate structure (or bower – their namesake) out of sticks. Then, they will meticulously scour the area to find anything they can to decorate it with, preferably brightly coloured objects to dazzle their intended. In some cases, they have been reported to steal elements from competitor’s bowers risking injury and even death to achieve the perfect display- which just goes to show that love really can drive us all crazy!

Here at F1000, we are feeling loved up and inspired by the Bowerbird – so for our recommendations this month we’re giving you some essential Valentines Day gifts of our own:

Flowers…

“Inference of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) can be enhanced in a direct network framework (non-modular GRNs), where the primary goal is to explore regulatory targets of a few transcription factors of interest in more detail as focused small-scale subnetworks. This integrative analysis of chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq), mRNA-seq, and miRNA-seq data revealed SEP3 as an upstream regulator of MIR319a and TCP4, which together form a feed-forward loop to regulate petal development.”– Andy Pereira,University of Arkansas, USA

Chocolate…

“I love this piece! A little bit of a spoof, but also a well-crafted educational tool for anyone who wants to read research with a critical eye. The article ‘shows’ a per capita relationship across several countries between chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel laureates. In this process, points about correlation vs. causation, experimental design, and so on are palatably conveyed.” – Rona Levy, University of Washington, USA

And wine…

“This article represents a significant advance in our appreciation of the microbial communities that define agricultural crop variance across space and time, and provides a wonderfully detailed series of statistical evaluations that help to support our assumptions that communities show regionalization and can potentially contribute to differentiation of crop product attributes.” – Jack Gilbert, Univeristy of Chicago, USA

Current Top 3 recommendations

Rankings are generated using the article recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“This large, multi-center, international pragmatic randomized controlled trial compared a liberal vs. restrictive fluid resuscitation regimen for major abdominal surgery. Their primary outcome of disability-free survival at one year was not different between groups, neither were a host of other secondary outcomes often investigated in enhanced recovery programs. However, the restrictive fluid group experienced greater acute kidney injury and required more renal replacement therapy.” – Michael Aziz,Oregon Health & Science University, USA

“Using live imaging of Drosophila pupal epithelial wounds, this interesting paper reveals that pupal fat body cells actively migrate to wounds, where they help to clear the debris in collaboration with macrophages, and produce anti-bacterial peptides to fight against infection.” – Rongwen Xi, National Institute of Biology Sciences (NIBS), China

“The authors clearly demonstrate that in field conditions CO2 fixation during photosynthesis can be improved dramatically and that this can lead to large increases in biomass/yield. Their analysis was based on the fact that RuBisCO, the enzyme responsible for fixation of CO2, carries out a side-reaction with oxygen that generates a toxic metabolite.” –Julian Hibberd, University of Cambridge, UK

Hidden Jewels

Hidden Jewels rankings only include articles published in specialist journals, recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“Franz et al. show that in Drosophila pupae, fat body cells respond to wounds by translocating through lymphatic liquid using cell shape changes likened to swimming: surprisingly, no cell-cell adhesions appear to be involved. Compelling live-imaging movies using cytoskeletal labeling and genetic mutants demonstrate that peristaltic waves of actinomyosin activity mediate the shape changes, and show that the movements persist directionally and result in speeds similar to canonical lamellopodial-based movement.” – Michelle Starz-Gaiano,University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA

“This is an excellent article, not only for students but also for scientists at every stage – especially in the early stage. A fixed time allotted to read every day is critical to developing habits. It’s like building muscle, you do a little bit every day rather than doing it once a week or month vigorously. Similarly, reading every day is critical to building upon knowledge. The next thing is to be smart in choosing what and how much to read. Once in a while, reading classical or first breakthrough papers in the field is critical to becoming better in creativity.” – Santosh Kumar,University of Tennessee Health Science Center, USA

“This is a very good estimation of the burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Europe. The authors based their analysis on data deriving from the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) and systematic literature reviews of five different types of infection.” – Rasmus Leistner, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Germany