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Study Identifies Key Yield Traits in Complex Banana Genome

Banana breeding is notoriously difficult. Most cultivated bananas are sterile triploids with limited recombination and long growth cycles.

11 Jun 2025

Seasonal Light Changes Continue to Shape Human Circadian Rhythms

It’s tempting to think that, with our fancy electric lights and indoor bedrooms, humanity has evolved beyond the natural influence of sunlight when it comes to our sleep routines.

29 May 2025

Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents Enhance Yield and Antibacterial Activity of Zanthoxylum bungeanum

NADES treatments significantly boost essential oil yield and antibacterial activity in Zanthoxylum bungeanum, offering a natural solution to food contamination.

23 May 2025

Study Unlocks Molecular Mechanisms Behind Tea Plant Defenses

Plants face constant threats from herbivores, prompting complex defense mechanisms. While grasses like rice and Arabidopsis have well-studied defense systems, woody plants like tea remain poorly understood.

7 May 2025

Key Regulators of Mutant Huntingtin Protein in Neuronal Transport

Ten years ago, researchers from the University at Buffalo provided some insight into a long-standing neuroscience conundrum: How precisely does Huntington's disease result from a mutation in the huntingtin protein (HTT)?

6 May 2025

New Neural Circuit Discovery Explains Precision Steering in Fruit Flies

When a fruit fly is navigating straight forward at high speed, why does it know that it's not straying off course? Because as long as the fly moves directly forward, the visual scene shifts from front to back in a near-perfect mirror image across both retinas – generating, in other words, a symmetrical visual motion pattern.

2 May 2025

Flies Get Drunk on Purpose—But Not for the Reasons You Think

Drosophila flies show a strong attraction to ethanol and methanol, driven by evolutionary benefits in mating success rather than psychological responses.

11 Apr 2025

New Discovery Reveals How Cells Repair Damaged Mitochondrial DNA

Damage to the genetic material of mitochondria – the mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA for short – can lead to diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.

7 Apr 2025

New Resource for Improving Pistachio Quality

California generates around $3 billion in economic value from the production of 99% of the country's pistachios. The absence of a high-quality DNA map, however, has contributed to the minor understudies of pistachios.

21 Mar 2025

Pregnancy Triggers Small Intestine Growth in Mice

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have found that the small intestine grows in response to pregnancy in mice. This partially irreversible change may help mice support a pregnancy and prepare for a second.

20 Mar 2025

Fruit Fly Study Reveals Temperature's Role in Brain Development and Behavior

The rate of development of poikilothermic animals, such as insects, fish, and reptiles, is determined by environmental temperature.

14 Mar 2025

Modeling Genetic Disruptions in Heart Development

In the process of heart development, cells move around and interact with one another to establish their positions, with significant implications: pairing with an incorrect cell can determine whether the heart functions properly or not.

13 Mar 2025

Rare ITSN1 Gene Variants Found to Significantly Elevate Parkinson's Risk

A new study published in Cell Reports reveals a breakthrough discovery linking genetic variants in the gene ITSN1 to a significantly elevated risk of Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative condition that affects nearly 2% of adults older than 65 years.

10 Mar 2025

New Genetic Discovery Could Lead to Larger Tomatoes and Eggplants

Bigger, tastier tomatoes and eggplants could soon grace our dinner plates thanks to Johns Hopkins scientists who have discovered genes that control how large the fruits will grow.

6 Mar 2025

Cryo-ET Reveals Retrotransposon Replication Inside Cells

An arms race is occurring within human cells: Transposons, also known as jumping genes or mobile genetic elements, can replicate and reintegrate themselves into the genome, posing a threat to genomic integrity by inducing DNA rearrangements and mutations.

6 Mar 2025

Unveiling the Role of NUDIX Hydrolase in Fungal Infection

Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), in partnership with scientists from Germany and the United States, have identified a potent “weapon” employed by numerous pathogenic fungi to infect staple food crops like rice and corn. This discovery may lead to novel approaches for enhancing global food security.

28 Feb 2025