Light News and Research

RSS

Genetic Discovery Reveals How Plants Respond to Blue Light and Cold

Plants may be stuck in one place, but the world around them is constantly changing. In order to grow and flower at the right time, plants must constantly collect information about their surroundings, measuring things like temperature, brightness, and length of day.

3 Sep 2025

Genetic Evidence Links Human Migration to Linguistic Exchange

Throughout human history, there have been many instances where two populations came into contact – especially in the past few thousand years because of large-scale migrations as a consequence of conquests, colonialization, and, more recently, globalization.

2 Sep 2025

Plants Activate Immunity Instead of Growth During Drought Recovery

A plant's number one priority is to grow-a feat that demands sunlight, nutrients, and water. If just one of these three inputs is missing, like water in a drought, growth halts.

2 Sep 2025

Discovery of CHP1 Protein Reveals New Insights Into Fat Metabolism

UNSW research has shed light on how cells in the body manage and store fat, potentially offering new insights into health.

29 Aug 2025

Genetic Study Reveals Independent Origins of Eye Loss in Cavefish

Small, colorless, and blind, amblyopsid cavefishes inhabit subterranean waters throughout the eastern United States.

28 Aug 2025

Breakthrough Research Reveals Pathway to Early Protein Synthesis

Chemists at UCL have shown how two of biology's most fundamental ingredients, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, could have spontaneously joined together at the origin of life four billion years ago.

28 Aug 2025

How Newly Discovered Teeth In Ethiopia Are Changing The Human Origin Story

Discoveries in Ethiopia's Ledi-Geraru region highlight the coexistence of early Homo and Australopithecus, refining the narrative of human evolutionary history.

28 Aug 2025

RNA Binding Proteins and EVs Offer Clues to Cancer's Evasion of Immune Response

Certain types of biochemical processes can impair the immune system's ability to recognize and kill cancer cells. Purdue University's W. Andy Tao and his associates have developed a new way to study these processes.

27 Aug 2025

Cryo-Optical Microscopy Captures Instantaneous Snapshots of Cellular Waves

Optical microscopy is a key technique for understanding dynamic biological processes in cells, but observing these high-speed cellular dynamics accurately, at high spatial resolution, has long been a formidable task.

25 Aug 2025

Genetic Signatures of Neural Progenitor Cells Uncovered in the Adult Brain

For much of the 20th century it was thought that the adult brain was incapable of regeneration. This view has since shifted dramatically and neurogenesis – the birth of new neurons – is now a widely accepted phenomenon in the adult brain, offering promising avenues for treating many neurological conditions.

22 Aug 2025

Atomic Force Microscopy and AI Transform Understanding of Tangled DNA

At school, it's often presented as a tidy double helix but scientists are revealing the varied and intricate shapes of DNA molecules.

22 Aug 2025

Single-Cell Map Reveals Epigenomic Regulation of Human Fat Tissue

A new study has created the first single-cell map of how DNA is regulated and organized inside different cell-types of human fat tissue.

21 Aug 2025

Salk Researchers Create First Genetic Atlas to Span the Entire Arabidopsis Life Cycle

Nearly everything you know about plants was first discovered in a plant you've likely never heard of. Arabidopsis thaliana, also known as thale cress, is a small, flowering weed that has shaped much of plant biology as we know it.

20 Aug 2025

MIT Researchers Unlock the Hidden Features of Protein Language Models

Within the past few years, models that can predict the structure or function of proteins have been widely used for a variety of biological applications, such as identifying drug targets and designing new therapeutic antibodies.

20 Aug 2025

New Research on Amylin Could Pave the Way for Next-Generation Obesity Drugs

Amylin, a hormone that regulates both appetite and blood sugar by activating three distinct brain receptors, might serve as the foundation for the next generation of obesity drugs.

20 Aug 2025

Feline Dementia May Explain Synapse Loss in Alzheimers

The study uncovers amyloid-beta's role in glial-mediated synapse loss in feline cognitive dysfunction, enhancing understanding of Alzheimer's disease.

20 Aug 2025

New Insights Reveal Bacterial Roots of Key Plant Hormone Enzymes

Terpenoids play vital roles in plant ecology-from repelling pests to attracting pollinators-and are produced by terpene synthases (TPSs) enzymes.

19 Aug 2025

Untapped Antimicrobial Weapons Hidden in Archaea Genomes

A first look into the molecular defenses of archaea highlights the importance of surveying diverse microbes to discover new types of antimicrobials.

18 Aug 2025

New Clues Emerge on What Makes the Human Brain Unique

Research from scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have shed new light on an age-old question: what makes the human brain unique?

14 Aug 2025

New Imaging System Reveals Cellular Activity at Unprecedented Depths

Both for research and medical purposes, researchers have spent decades pushing the limits of microscopy to produce ever deeper and sharper images of brain activity, not only in the cortex but also in regions underneath such as the hippocampus.

8 Aug 2025