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Fungal Detoxification Pathway Enables Infestation of Bark Beetle Pests

Spruce bark is rich in phenolic compounds that protect trees from pathogenic fungi. A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena investigated how these plant defenses function within the food web, particularly in spruce bark beetles (Ips typographus), which ingest the compounds through their diet. Could the beetles use substances from the spruce's defenses to protect themselves against pathogenic fungi?

30 Dec 2025

Interferon Response in Female Brains Linked to Alzheimer's Progression

More than seven million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, and two-thirds of them are women, according to the Alzheimer's Association. The O'Banion Lab at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester has long been studying this disease and is looking more closely at the differences between male and female brains.

30 Dec 2025

Computational Brain Model Predicts Errors, Uncovers Previously Unseen Neurons

A new computational model of the brain based closely on its biology and physiology not only learned a simple visual category learning task exactly as well as lab animals, but even enabled the discovery of counterintuitive activity by a group of neurons that researchers working with animals to perform the same task had not noticed in their data before, said a team of scientists at Dartmouth College, MIT, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

30 Dec 2025

New ddHodge Method Reconstructs Cell Fate Dynamics with High Accuracy

Researchers from Kyushu University have developed an innovative computational method, called ddHodge, that can reconstruct the complex dynamics of how cells decide their fate. As reported in Nature Communications, this approach paves the way for a deeper understanding of the biological processes involved in development, regeneration, and disease.

30 Dec 2025

Mitochondrial Protein That “Erases” Huntington’s Aggregates

DGIST has made a groundbreaking announcement: a research team, under the guidance of professors Jiwon Um and Jaewon Ko, has achieved a global first by elucidating the function of ‘ClpB.’

29 Dec 2025

Genomic Test Can Accurately Identify Early Recurrence Risk in Prostate Cancer Patients

A new Moffitt Cancer Center study suggests a widely used genomic test can more accurately identify which men with early prostate cancer are at high risk for their disease to come back quickly after treatment, particularly African American men who face the highest burden from this disease.

26 Dec 2025

Computational Tool Maps the Dance of Circadian Synchrony

What makes someone a "morning lark" or a "night owl?" Why does jet lag hit us so hard, and why do some people struggle each winter with seasonal affective disorder?

26 Dec 2025

Stem Cells Mimic Earliest Stages of Brain Development in a Dish

Researchers have made great strides to understand early signs of autism. Studies have found that certain factors like genetics, sleep deprivation, excess fluid in the brain-and brain size-can increase the risk of neurodevelopmental conditions, like autism.

26 Dec 2025

Engineered EVs Offer a Modular and Clinically Adaptable Immune-Tolerance Platform

A research team at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) and the Faculty of Medicine at Kanazawa University has developed a new class of engineered extracellular vesicles (EVs) capable of inducing antigen-specific regulatory T cells (Tregs), the immune cells that play a central role in suppressing excessive immune responses.

24 Dec 2025

Antibiotic Resistance: A Global Crisis Threatening Modern Medicine's Future

Once a medical miracle, antibiotics are now losing their power. Across the world, common infections are becoming harder-and sometimes impossible-to treat. This new review paints a sobering picture of global antimicrobial resistance (AMR), tracing how bacteria and fungi are evolving faster than medicine can respond.

24 Dec 2025

New 3D Model Reveals Crucial Interactions During Early Embryo Development

By engineering a system replicating the womb lining with high biological accuracy, researchers at the Babraham Institute and Stanford University have been able to study the implantation of human embryos, opening up this enigmatic process to investigation.

24 Dec 2025

Researchers Find Enzyme That Controls Fat Production, Offering New Drug Target

Obesity is a global epidemic and a major cause of morbidity and mortality because it increases the risk for comorbidities, including heart disease and fatty liver disease (MASLD). Rates of these disorders have risen as the world increasingly adopts energy-dense diets and sedentary lifestyles.

24 Dec 2025

Stem Cell Models Offer Insights Into Early Brain Development and Autism

24 Dec 2025

Genetic Factor "Fru" Influences Bees' Cooperative Food-Seeking Behavior

A team of biologists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), along with researchers from Bochum and Paris, has uncovered a genetic component underlying intricate social behaviors in bees.

24 Dec 2025

UT Southwestern Researchers Design Tau Protein to Combat Neurodegenerative Diseases

A designer version of the tau protein, developed by a team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, maintains its biological function while resisting aggregation, a pathological trait linked to neurodegenerative diseases called tauopathies. These findings, reported in Structure, could lead to new treatments for conditions including Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and progressive supranuclear palsy.

24 Dec 2025

Kinetic Traps Explain Differences in GPCR Drug Efficacy

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are proteins triggered by ligands (protein-binding chemicals) from outside cells to transmit signals inside the cell.

23 Dec 2025

Mapping the Four Dimensional Organization of the Human Genome

A new study challenges what's long been assumed about genetic variants thought to always cause inherited blindness.

23 Dec 2025

Study Challenges Long-Held Assumptions About Mendelian Retinal Disorders

A new study challenges what's long been assumed about genetic variants thought to always cause inherited blindness.

23 Dec 2025

New vCATCH Method Maps Drug Binding Across Every Cell in the Body

When you take a drug, where in your body does it actually go? For most medications, scientists can make only educated guesses about the answer to this question.

23 Dec 2025

Simple Vibration Platform Enables Uniform Biomolecular Condensate Formation

A research group led by Professor Hiroaki SUZUKI and Takeshi HAYAKAWA from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Chuo University, graduate student Zhitai HUANG, graduate students Kanji KANEKO (at the time) and Ryotaro YONEYAMA (at the time), together with Specially Appointed Assistant Professor Tomoya MARUYAMA from the Research Center for Autonomous Systems Materialogy (ASMat), Institute of Integrated Research (IIR), Institute of Science Tokyo, and Professor Masahiro TAKINOUE from the Laboratory for Chemistry and Life Science, Institute of Integrated Research, Institute of Science Tokyo, has developed a novel and highly accessible technology for producing uniform Biomolecular Condensates using a simple, low-cost vibration platform.

23 Dec 2025