Every piece of research we've covered — across genetics, neuroscience, ecology, immunology, and more.
Bird flu has killed at least 1.4 million wild birds since 2021. Decades of ringing data on one tern population show the deaths were not distributed evenly by age, which changes what the toll means.
Five studies describe what a long non-coding RNA does in diseased blood vessels. A new objection argues that nobody established it is a separate RNA rather than part of the gene it sits inside.
Almost every attempt to recover ancient DNA from northeastern Africa has failed. A study of 148 inner ears reconstructs the region's population history anyway — and is careful about what shape alone can prove.
Most swallowed vitamin A goes straight to the liver. A new mouse study shows the gut microbiota controls the sliver that reaches developing T cells, using two separate signals.
Every cell holds a membrane potential, not just neurons, but in ordinary cells the interesting fluctuations are fractions of a millivolt and have been unmeasurable. An indicator sensitive enough shows that being wired to your neighbours quiets you.
Generating a hundred plausible protein designs is routine. Working out which ones behave correctly is not, especially when the property you want is self-organization over time rather than a number you can read off a plate.
Rye's genome is more than twice the size of a human's and mostly repetitive, which is why its centromeres have never been assembled. Finishing them showed those regions are still being actively rebuilt, unlike wheat's.
Years of work have gone into making gene editors more precise. The step that actually limits most therapies is getting them inside the cell, and a screen of 19,114 genes found which of the cell's own proteins are in the way.
An unrooted tree says who is related to whom, not what came first. For the archaea, three incompatible root positions have been proposed, and each implies a different founding organism. One modelling assumption turns out to have been driving the disagreement.
Programmable antibiotics promise that resistance becomes a software problem: rewrite the sequence. That only works if bacteria adapt to the sequence. Across 90 evolved lines, they mostly adapted to the peptide carrying it in.
Two problems have dogged the neurobiology of language: nobody agrees what language is, and the relevant areas sit in different places in different people. A method that ignores both keeps finding the same network anyway.
Michigan has kept newborn blood spots since 1987 and runs a cancer registry, so the two can be linked. Sequencing the infant spots of children who later developed cancer shows how much was already legible on day one.
Retinal organoids self-organize correctly and then stall short of maturity. They are also grown in the dark, in defiance of the fact that a real retina develops under light. Supplying it, at one particular flicker rate, helped.
Nobody assigns a vaccine at random, so the people who get one differ from those who don't in ways that also determine who ends up in hospital. A Swedish study of 245,696 elderly residents measured how much that distorts the answer.
A membrane with channels a few angstroms wide can swing its conductance up or down depending on what binds to it, which is a real advance in sensing. The diagnostic accuracy attached to it needs reading more carefully.
The methylguanosine cap is supposed to mark messenger RNA for translation. It turns out to sit on nearly all transfer RNA precursors too, and under heat stress those precursors compete for the very factor that messages need.
Testing 1,224 pairings between gut bacteria produced the expected result that most interactions are inhibitory, and an unexpected one about what the inhibition actually is. Restore the nutrients and almost all of it vanishes.
For two decades one protein has been credited with building the heme crystals that malaria parasites depend on, largely because it does so in a test tube. Tagged at its own genetic locus, it turns out to live somewhere else entirely.
Darwin suspected in 1875 that some Saxifraga species ate insects, and his experiments were inconclusive. An alpine species has now cleared all four criteria for carnivory, and it turns out to trap almost exclusively the insects that never pollinate it.
Extinctions are usually explained by the size of the shock. A dynamical-systems reading of 539 million years suggests the state the climate was already in mattered as much, and that life suffered most at the switches between states.
Tremor and slowness respond to dopamine. The instability and gait failure that cause falls do not, which suggests they run through different circuitry. One candidate sits in the brainstem, wired into the same motor hubs.
HIV strips the gut lining early, and suppressing the virus does not rebuild it. A metabolite made by gut bacteria activates the exact repair pathway the virus shuts down, and the pathway long-term non-progressors keep running.
Existing drugs for pulmonary fibrosis are systemic, and many patients quit them over side effects. A phase 1b trial of an inhaled peptide found no detectable drug in the blood at any dose, and biomarker signals that need reading carefully.
Finning bans are the most widely adopted shark conservation measure in the world, and shark mortality has risen throughout their spread. An analysis of 188 countries finds they changed where trade flows, not how much.
Three women with decades of recurrent urinary infections received phage therapy. The bacteria survived. Two years later the infections had largely stopped, which raises an awkward question about what phage trials have been measuring.
Fat cannot cross the intestinal wall until bile packages it. Gut bacteria turn out to control that packaging step, cutting absorption by more than half in mice, which is a larger effect than the drugs prescribed to do the same thing.
Whether cortical stimulation can evoke touch was settled years ago. Whether the same electrodes still do it a decade later is the question that decides if sensory implants are a product or an experiment.
Gene editing has always been better at switching genes off than putting new ones in, because inserting one means cutting DNA clean through and hoping the cell repairs it properly. A Tsinghua team found a way to skip the cut.
The fear that has shadowed stem-cell therapy is that cells able to become anything might become a tumour. Four people with complete spinal cord injuries have now carried iPSC-derived grafts for years without one.
Catfish in a lake straddling Vermont and Quebec have been turning up with melanomas since 2012. Sequencing the tumours showed they are not each fish's own cancer, but one lineage that has been moving between them.
Gene therapy is usually a one-time shot, because the immune system learns the delivery virus and blocks any repeat. Four children deaf from birth, already carrying those antibodies, received a second dose in their untreated ear, and hearing improved in all four.
Insects rule the land and almost never the open sea, and the standard explanation blamed their air-filled breathing tubes, which should implode under pressure. In Lake Malawi, larvae have rebuilt those tubes into crush-resistant sacs and drop hundreds of metres every day to escape fish.
Propping open a narrowed vein can relieve dangerously high pressure inside the skull, and nobody could fully explain why. Scans of patients and a mouse experiment point to the lymphatic vessels in the brain's own wrapping.
Heavier patients have long seemed to do better on checkpoint inhibitors, and nobody could say why. Across twelve mouse diets, the answer looks less like body fat and more like the gut bacteria that certain diets feed.
A few people with HIV make antibodies that disable strain after strain. Nobody had managed to produce them with a shot. In outbred monkeys, a vaccine designed to wake the right rare cells finally did, and the antibodies gripped the virus exactly as the designers predicted.
Long before a root reaches decaying plant matter, it swerves. It is reading the acid that fungi leave behind, converting an outside pH gradient into a hormone imbalance and finally into a physical bend away from the rot.
Researchers pulled the light-harvesting membranes out of plants, shrank them into a nanoscale package, and slipped them into mammalian corneal cells. Shine light on them and they do what a leaf does, making NADPH and ATP and easing the oxidative stress around them.
As the body ages, the immune scavengers that clear dead cells go quiet, and the corpses of spent white blood cells pile up and inflame the organs around them. In old mice, blocking one receptor switched the cleanup back on and held off decline in brain, muscle, heart and more.
A circular RNA hands instructions to an editing enzyme cells already carry, skipping past a broken stretch of the dystrophin gene. In monkeys the effect held at least a year and a half; in the first three patients, one dose was safe and came with measurable gains in movement and breathing.
A greasy ester found on naked mole-rat queens, and almost nowhere else in the colony, registers in other animals' olfactory neurons and suppresses breeding. Add it daily to a queenless colony and no new queen rises.
Across 123 populations, tree swallows all shift breeding one day earlier per degree of warming, yet northern birds are still falling behind and vanishing fastest.
Five years before they were ever diagnosed, the people who would go on to develop type 2 diabetes already carried the warning in their gut bacteria.
In a double-blind trial, capsules of donor gut bacteria sped up how quickly a common antidepressant lifted people's mood.
A blood measurement of a single tau fragment matched costly brain scans at spotting Alzheimer's pathology in adults with Down syndrome, a group that almost always develops the disease but is rarely offered the newest tests.
Frozen mid-break-in, a malaria parasite has finally revealed the exact molecular hook it drives into a red blood cell to force its way inside.
In old mice, a swell of gut microbes jams the vagus nerve's line to the brain, and quieting them brings memory back.
A single drip permanently switches off a liver gene, and a year later the cholesterol is still down.
A rice protein rearranges the fats in a cell's outer skin within minutes of a heat spike, buying protection long before the plant can switch on new genes.
Scientists rewired a common gut microbe into a living sensor that reports, through fluorescence, when the intestine stops absorbing properly.
Tracking a radioactively tagged pesticide through a honey bee colony, researchers found the hive filters out most of it, until the defenses are overwhelmed and the queen starts loading what remains into her eggs.
Chinese researchers built an injectable molecule that stays dark until it reaches a scarring kidney, then switches on and clears into the urine, flagging fibrosis that standard blood tests miss.
A study of more than 2,000 pregnancies links depressive symptoms to shifts in the maternal gut microbiome, and transplants into germ-free mice suggest those microbes help shape the fetal brain. A butyrate supplement partly reversed the damage.
A Stanford and Emory team built an intranasal vaccine that shielded mice from several viruses, a bacterium, and even an allergen for at least three months, using a model protein none of those threats carry.
A Harvard study in mice finds that the receptor for the body's main stress hormone acts inside support cells to help shut the brain's early window of high plasticity, hinting at how early-life stress leaves a mark.
A Stanford team locked patient DNA inside silica glass and left it at room temperature for a month. When they read it back, it resolved rare-disease variants as well as DNA kept frozen at minus 80 degrees.
A Fudan University team re-dosed AAV gene therapy in the opposite ear of four young children with hereditary deafness, despite the neutralizing antibodies their first treatment had raised — and hearing improved in every one, clearing a major obstacle to treating both ears.
In a 9,691-patient randomized trial across 16 Kenyan primary care clinics, giving clinicians a large language model assistant was safe but did not reduce treatment failures — a rigorous reality check on the promise of AI in everyday medicine.
Profiling 4,336 blood samples from 1,714 cancer patients, an international team found that levels of histidine and a few other metabolites help forecast who benefits from immune-checkpoint therapy — and that a histidine-rich diet boosted antitumor immunity in mice.
A platform that syncs immersive virtual reality with gentle sensory nerve stimulation helped chronic stroke patients regain nearly twice the arm function of conventional rehab in a small feasibility trial — and hints at therapy that could one day run at home.
A fossilized New Mexico rainforest preserved in place reveals nearly 80 kinds of seeds and fruits — some startlingly large — showing that flowering plants had evolved sophisticated dispersal strategies well before the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.
A 60-patient international study of RNU4ATAC-opathy, a rare disorder caused by a noncoding gene, shows how often the culprit gene is captured by routine DNA tests yet skipped during analysis. RNA sequencing helped confirm the diagnosis in several cases.
Recording from single neurons in eight people with paralysis, researchers found the whole body represented at every spot they sampled on the motor cortex, upending the tidy "little man" map in every anatomy textbook.
A South Asian biobank of 173,303 people turned up naturally occurring gene shutdowns in 6,476 genes. Researchers say these living "human knockouts" could point drug makers toward safer targets.
Researchers built LEAPER 3.0, a redesigned RNA-editing tool that borrows the cell's own ADAR enzymes to rewrite single letters of RNA. Using AlphaFold 3 structural models, they reached sites that were previously off-limits and cut down on stray edits nearby.
Researchers recorded from individual neurons in the human cortex as people spoke, and found that some cells track grammar while others follow the shape of a whole sentence. It is one of the closest looks yet at how language is assembled cell by cell.
Mice carrying intestinal worms during pregnancy passed lasting protection against respiratory viruses to their pups. The shield came not from the worms themselves but from a gut-bacterial metabolite the worms coaxed into being.
A field study in Vietnam found that a simple saliva reading can flag when patients on drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment are getting too little levofloxacin. The non-invasive test caught 16 of 19 under-dosed patients, hinting at a cheaper way to keep hard-to-treat TB on track.
A global survey finds at least 152 animal species living on and in glaciers, 73 of them found nowhere else. As glaciers retreat, many face steep declines or the loss of their entire habitat.
Jennifer Doudna's team engineered a CRISPR enzyme that senses a cancer-specific RNA signal and, once triggered, chews through the cell's chromatin to kill it. The approach aims at mutations that ordinary drugs cannot touch.
Scientists found a new immune cell in planarian flatworms that self-destructs in an explosive burst, spraying toxins that wipe out nearby bacteria within minutes. It hints at a very old branch of the immune system.
Wild pollinators are in trouble, yet a global analysis of 86 crops finds that pollination shortfalls have actually shrunk since 1950. Managed bees appear to be doing the heavy lifting.
A Toronto-led team combined two skin-biopsy protein tests with a blood marker to separate Parkinson's disease from the disorders that mimic it. In 166 patients, the panel did better than any single test alone.
A genetic survey of a common Atlantic reef fish, the tomtate, finds that Bermuda receives drifting larvae from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico but sends almost none back. The isolated population is slowly becoming its own thing.
A 12-patient trial delivered a working copy of the RS1 gene into one eye of boys and young men with X-linked retinoschisis. The splits inside the retina closed, and treated eyes read more letters on the vision chart.
A study in mice finds that the brain replays specific memories during sleep, and that bad memories jolt the animal toward waking while good ones keep it asleep. Silencing the replay of stressful memories restored normal sleep.
Researchers built a way to read a child's diffuse midline glioma from ordinary brain scans by mapping which healthy circuits the tumour is wired into. How connected the tumour was predicted survival in two separate patient groups.
Chinese researchers built a cell-free mixture of enzymes that turns a cheap bulk chemical into 1,6-hexanediamine, a key nylon 66 ingredient, reaching 10.35 grams per liter at 97 percent conversion.
A Yale-led study in Cell found that antibodies from people with long COVID attack nervous-system proteins, and transferring those antibodies into mice reproduced fatigue, pain, and nerve damage. It points to an autoimmune driver in one subgroup of patients.
Researchers found a family of mobile DNA elements in wheat that stays quiet until heat and loosened chemical tagging set it loose. The jumping genes then copy themselves into new spots in the genome.
In mice, the anterior lateral motor cortex handles context-dependent decisions by reconfiguring its own local circuits rather than building an abstract rule. A subset of "contingency neurons" carries both the context and the choice.
A Nature study maps the risk of natural disturbances wiping out stored forest carbon across the United States. The safety reserve meant to cover those losses is likely about six times too small under climate change.
A boy treated with AAV9 gene therapy for a severe metabolic disease developed a brain tumor four years later. Genomic analysis traced it to the therapeutic virus inserting itself into a cancer gene.
A shaking hand at rest and a shaking hand reaching for a cup involve different circuits in the motor cortex, according to a new deep brain stimulation study. The finding could help doctors aim electrical therapy at the specific symptom bothering a patient.
Bacteria living in the honeybee gut package DNA and RNA into tiny membrane bubbles and ship them out intact, without dying. The finding hints at how engineered symbionts might one day protect bees.
Researchers designed small proteins entirely on a computer that bind G protein-coupled receptors and switch them on or off as intended. Cryo-EM structures matched the blueprints, and one design mobilized stem cells in mice.
Researchers paired a COVID mRNA vaccine with a fungal-sugar adjuvant and got broader, longer-lasting protection in mice and monkeys. The mix even coaxed antibodies against variants the immune system usually ignores.
When soil dries out, a bacterial genus called Streptomyces floods into plant roots. A Cell study finds the plant isn't calling for rescue. It's just dropping its guard.
A willow leaf beetle eats young leaves but lays its eggs on old ones. New work shows a single gut bacterium drives that choice, using the plant itself as a messenger.
Researchers used multiplex CRISPR editing to load a tomato with seven health-promoting compounds at once, including vitamin D that ordinary tomatoes do not make. Extracts also slowed colorectal cancer cells in mice.
The Hong Kong Genome Project sequenced more than 20,000 people and found that gene panels built for European populations miss dozens of clinically important genes in Chinese patients. It is a concrete look at who current genomic medicine leaves out.
A study published this week in Nature traces how pregnancy and motherhood leave lasting marks on the brain, pinning the change on dopamine and a chemical tag it leaves on the DNA-packaging machinery. Postpartum stress can undo it.
A study of more than 900 pet dogs across the United States mapped the canine gut microbiome and built a model that reads a dog's age from its gut bacteria. Diet and even feces-eating left clear marks.
Harvard researchers built an implantable gel that traps engineered bacteria inside the body for six months while letting them sense infection and release a drug on demand. It cleared a joint infection in mice.
Researchers switched on every gene in the human genome, one at a time, and found one that stops Zika and related mosquito-borne viruses cold. The gene, SPART, tags the virus for early disassembly.
Root-knot nematodes build their feeding chambers by secreting fake copies of a plant growth hormone. A new study identifies the counterfeit peptides and the host receptor they exploit.
An 18-year experiment across 500 hectares of logged Bornean rainforest found that cutting woody climbing vines sped up canopy recovery more than four times faster than planting trees, at roughly a tenth of the cost.
Whole genomes from 249 yellow-eyed penguins revealed three deeply divergent lineages and immune and respiratory genes tied to a deadly chick disease. The findings reshape how conservationists count and protect the species.
Researchers found tiny spines studding the output cable of neurons in the mouse brain, not just the input branches. These axonic spines carry excitatory synapses that help launch a neuron's electrical signal.
A protein called TDP-43 clumps up inside dying motor neurons in ALS. A new study in Science shows that short, specific RNA molecules can coax it into a shape that resists aggregation, easing disease signs in mice.
A study of more than 16,000 tumor genomes finds that most cancers carry no real microbial signature. The clear exception is cancers of the mouth and digestive tract, which host whole communities of bacteria, fungi, viruses and even a parasite.
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