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Despite their rarity today, rhynchocephalians formed a diverse Early Mesozoic clade with a comparatively good fossil record. They had a Pangaean distribution in the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, although the Gondwanan record remains more limited than the Laurasian one. We report here on new sphenodontian material from the Jurassic Kota Formation of peninsular India. Two taxa are represented, and both are attributed t o new genera. One is a relatively derived sphenodontian with a premaxillary morphology similar to that of the Late Triassic/ Early Jurassic genus Cleuosaums. The other is somewhat more primitive in its morphology, although clearly a crown-group sphenodontian. In addition, three dentary fragments and a partial maxilla signal the presence of a primitive pleurodont lepidosauromorph similar t o the basal rhynchocephalians Gephyrosaurus and Diphydontosaurus from Britain.

India's Late Cretaceous fossil mammals include the only undisputed pre-Tertiary Gondwanan eutherians, such as Deccanolestes . Recent studies have suggested a relationship between Deccanolestes and African and European Paleocene adapisoriculids, which have been variably identified as stem euarchontans, stem primates, lipotyphlan insectivores, or afrosoricids. Support for a close relationship between Deccanolestes and any of these placental mammal clades would be unique in representing a confirmed Mesozoic record of a placental mammal. However, some paleogeographic reconstructions place India at its peak isolation from all other continents during the latest Cretaceous, complicating reconstructions of the biogeographic history of the placental radiation. Recent fieldwork in India has recovered dozens of better-preserved specimens of Cretaceous eutherians, including several new species. Here, we incorporate these new specimens into an extensive phylogenetic analysis that includes every clade with a previously hypothesized relationship to Deccanolestes . Our results support a robust relationship between Deccanolestes and Paleocene adapisoriculids, but do not support a close affinity between these taxa and any placental clade, demonstrating that Deccanolestes is not a Cretaceous placental mammal and reinforcing the sizeable gap between molecular and fossil divergence time estimates for the placental mammal radiation. Instead, our expanded data push Adapisoriculidae, including Deccanolestes , into a much more basal position than in earlier analyses, strengthening hypotheses that scansoriality and arboreality were prevalent early in eutherian evolution. This comprehensive phylogeny indicates that faunal exchange occurred between India, Africa, and Europe in the Late Cretaceous-Early Paleocene, and suggests a previously unrecognized ∼30 to 45 Myr “ghost lineage” for these Gondwanan eutherians.

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Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the most common cancer worldwide. The treatment of locally advanced disease generally requires various combinations of radiotherapy, surgery, and systemic therapy. Despite aggressive multimodal treatment, most of the patients relapse. Identification of molecules that sustain cancer cell growth and survival has made molecular targeting a feasible therapeutic strategy. Survivin is a member of the Inhibitor of Apoptosis Protein (IAP) family, which is overexpressed in most of the malignancies including SCC and totally absent in most of the normal tissues. This feature makes survivin an ideal target for cancer therapy. It orchestrates several important mechanisms to support cancer cell survival including inhibition of apoptosis and regulation of cell division. Overexpression of survivin in tumors is also associated with poor prognosis, aggressive tumor behavior, resistance to therapy, and high tumor recurrence. Various strategies have been developed to target survivin expression in cancer cells, and their effects on apoptosis induction and tumor growth attenuation have been demonstrated. In this review, we discuss recent advances in therapeutic potential of survivin in cancer treatment.

Exploring intermolecular interactions in the presence of biomolecules that dictate director configurations of liquid crystals (LCs) enables new techniques for optically probing complex biological phenomena and realizing new classes of sensors and actuators. However, the design of a new approach by probing direct protein-LC interactions (in aqueous media) that can mimic chemico-biological interactions at the cellular level remains elusive. Here, we present a simple method to produce biocompatible LC droplets through poly(l-lysine) (PLL)-LC interactions in situ for reporting the presence of cells and monitoring the real-time interaction of cells with their environments that are mediated by topological defects in those droplets. In addition, responsive PLL droplets have been found to be useful as a template for reporting Annexin V-phosphatidylserine interactions, providing a simple measure of the harmful effect on cell health.

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