/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. CRISPR-Cas systems are adaptive immune systems found in prokaryotes that defend against invading nucleic acids through CRISPR RNA-guided cleavage. Type V CRISPR-Cas (Cas12) systems, in particular, serve as one of today's most powerful tools for genome editing, especially in basic research, medicine, and agriculture. /news/2025-09-scientists-reveal-functional-rna-mechanism.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 29 Sep 2025 11:00:07 EDT news678110042 Nearly every cell in your body depends on mitochondria to survive and function properly. Mitochondria provide 90% of our bodies' energy, but less well-known are their roles in cellular signaling and in eliminating defective cells, which is important for stopping cancer before it starts. /news/2025-09-molecular-mechanisms-reveal-physics-mitochondria.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 26 Sep 2025 09:42:33 EDT news678098542 Researchers have revealed a previously unknown way plants shape their growth in response to light—a breakthrough that could better equip crops to handle environmental stress. /news/2025-09-unexpected-metabolic-compound-decode-language.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 17 Sep 2025 15:51:05 EDT news677343061 Scientists at Feinberg are reshaping scientific understanding of the cell's tiniest components—structures once thought to be static, now revealed to be dynamic engines of cellular life. As they probe the inner workings of cells, they are not only expanding understanding of cellular processes but also paving the way for novel therapies and diagnostics. /news/2025-09-scientists-reveal-hidden-dynamics-cell.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 16 Sep 2025 15:00:03 EDT news677253204 At Cornell, Dawn Chen was counting sperm stored in a pair of organs called spermathecae in female fruit flies, fully expecting the counts to be roughly the same. The two spermathecae, which store and release sperm after a female mates, look identical, so Chen was surprised to find significantly different sperm counts between the two. /news/2025-09-reveals-asymmetry-identical-fruit-fly.html Plants & Animals Evolution Tue, 16 Sep 2025 12:16:04 EDT news677243761 How do cells know what they should become as the body develops? Biological development depends crucially on spatial patterns: the lines that eventually give rise to segments, organs, or markings like stripes and spots. Yet despite the variation in form, shape and structure in the animal kingdom, the mechanisms that generate these body plans are surprisingly similar across species. /news/2025-09-evolution-rewires-gene-circuits-patterns.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:49:04 EDT news677242141 Cell division is one of the most thoroughly studied processes in biology, yet many of its details remain mysterious. A century-old puzzle surrounding the "crown" of cell division—the kinetochore corona—has now been solved by Verena Cmentowski and Andrea Musacchio at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Â鶹ÒùÔºiology in Dortmund (MPI). /news/2025-09-routes-goal-crown-cell-division.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:19:03 EDT news677153941 If you've ever accidentally sliced yourself on broken glass or a piece of paper, you may have noticed that the bleeding can be hard to stop. Scientists have long wondered how the cascade of events that leads to blood clotting is triggered, especially since the process has life and death consequences. Too little clotting and you bleed out, while too much can cause a heart attack or stroke. /news/2025-09-nanoscale-images-protein-complex-reveal.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 12 Sep 2025 12:30:01 EDT news676898882 The process referred to as "nonsense-mediated mRNA decay" (NMD) is responsible for quality control in all cells of the body. This process monitors messenger RNAs (mRNA), which carry the blueprints for proteins. If errors are detected, the cell eliminates these faulty blueprints before incomplete or harmful proteins can be produced that might trigger diseases such as developmental disorders or cancer. /news/2025-09-cellular-quality-humans-decoded.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 11 Sep 2025 13:21:03 EDT news676815661 In a study published in Science Advances, a team of UC Davis researchers tracked the movement of fluorescent particles inside the cells of microscopic worms, providing unprecedented insights into cellular crowding in a multicellular animal. /news/2025-09-microscopic-worms-reveals-cramped-cells.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 11 Sep 2025 09:40:02 EDT news676802123 By tracking the fate of individual embryonic stem cells, researchers have found that endoderm cells—early embryonic cells that give rise to tissues such as the gut and lungs—originate from multiple converging developmental paths challenging long-held assumptions about cells following linear trajectories. /news/2025-09-converging-cell-paths-embryo.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 10 Sep 2025 09:21:03 EDT news676714861 Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center have developed a new method to discover how DNA controls genes. Their technique, published in Cell Genomics, can reveal the genetic "switches" that regulate important genes more quickly than existing methods. /news/2025-09-scientists-faster-technique-uncover-hidden.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:35:03 EDT news676654501 A paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution finds that the relatively high rate of autism-spectrum disorders in humans is likely due to how humans evolved in the past. The paper is titled "A general principle of neuronal evolution reveals a human accelerated neuron type potentially underlying the high prevalence of autism in humans." /news/2025-09-evolution-autism-humans.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:01 EDT news676542779 Sharks, skates and rays adapt their growth and reproduction to changing food availability, a new study reveals. /news/2025-09-reproductive-flexibility-sharks-rays-complicates.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:50:04 EDT news676564889 Caltech researchers have developed a powerful new method for creating embryo-like structures from stem cells that could transform how we study fertility. /news/2025-09-stem-cellbased-embryo-reveal-pathway.html Cell & Microbiology Biotechnology Mon, 08 Sep 2025 14:39:03 EDT news676561141 Epigenetic silencing governs key biological processes, from flowering time in plants to preventing uncontrolled cell growth that drives cancer in humans. /news/2025-09-reveals-protein-clustering-impacts-gene.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 04 Sep 2025 17:09:03 EDT news676224541 Male "ghost sharks"—eerie deep-sea fish known as chimaeras that are related to sharks and rays—have a strange rod jutting from their foreheads, studded with sharp, retractable teeth. New research appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals these are not merely lookalikes, but real rows of teeth that grow outside the mouth. /news/2025-09-ghost-sharks-forehead-teeth-sex.html Plants & Animals Evolution Thu, 04 Sep 2025 16:20:03 EDT news676221262 In the next 75 years, surface sea temperatures may rise by up to 4°C, with increasingly frequent short-term marine heat waves also predicted. This could cause significant damage to our essential marine ecosystems, for example, with corals widely known to be vulnerable to bleaching. But how will fish fare in these changing climates? /news/2025-09-clownfish-sea-temperatures-successful-acclimation.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 04 Sep 2025 11:05:03 EDT news676202702 A collaborative research team led by Lu Fei from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Guo Zifeng from the Institute of Botany of CAS, together with their colleagues, has pinpointed key genetic factors shaping wheat spike morphology—a critical trait for yield—using a high-throughput phenotyping platform. /news/2025-09-high-throughput-phenotyping-platform-uncovers.html Molecular & Computational biology Agriculture Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:38:03 EDT news676129081 A tissue fold known as the cephalic furrow, an evolutionary novelty that forms between the head and the trunk of fly embryos, plays a mechanical role in stabilizing embryonic tissues during the development of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. /news/2025-09-fruit-fly-mechanical-evolutionary.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 03 Sep 2025 11:00:15 EDT news676046102 Researchers at EPFL have created the first 4D lipid atlas of vertebrate development, revealing how fats shape our bodies from embryo to organism. /news/2025-09-lipid-blueprint-vertebrate-life-4d.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 03 Sep 2025 10:17:04 EDT news676113422 In 2000, researchers discovered that mutations that inactivate a gene known as TRIM37 cause a developmental disease called Mulibrey nanism. The extremely rare inherited disorder leads to growth delays and abnormalities in several organs, causing afflictions of the heart, muscles, liver, brain and eyes. In addition, Mulibrey nanism patients exhibit high rates of cancer and are infertile. /news/2025-09-mob-breaker-trim37-abnormal-cell.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 03 Sep 2025 10:02:26 EDT news676112539 Cellular differentiation of stem cells into specialized cells requires many steps, including division, to create more cells; fate determination, which is a commitment to a specific lineage or developmental path; and migration, to integrate the cell into its final location. /news/2025-08-sniffing-stem-cells-olfactory-neurons.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 28 Aug 2025 17:10:05 EDT news675619801 A new approach to an established reaction boosts the ability to synthesize vinylic ethers—key building blocks for many molecules important to human health. The journal Organic Letters published the breakthrough, made by chemists at Emory University. /news/2025-08-puzzle-chemist-boost-synthesis-key.html Biochemistry Materials Science Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:30:07 EDT news675606044 Researchers have decoded a long-standing mystery of how flowering plants ensure their sperm cells successfully reach the egg for fertilization, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Plants. /news/2025-08-pollen-motor-proteins-sperm-cells.html Plants & Animals Cell & Microbiology Thu, 28 Aug 2025 11:04:03 EDT news675597842 New research from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery is tackling a complex packing problem. Thanks to the development of a powerful new computational tool introduced in a study published in the journal Genome Research, scientists can better investigate how genomes fit into the tiny confines of a cell nucleus, how they are repackaged across different biological dimensions and how that influences gene expression and disease risk. /news/2025-08-tool-genome-dna-3d.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 28 Aug 2025 10:30:03 EDT news675595801 A tiny fish with transparent embryos is helping University of California, Davis, researchers shed light on how exposure to crude oil and flame retardants can affect behavior, skeletal growth, cardiac health and other internal functions in offspring and subsequent generations. /news/2025-08-maternal-exposure-crude-oil-flame.html Environment Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:10:40 EDT news675529834 Albino cane toads created using gene-editing technology reveal that albino animals face competitive disadvantages going far beyond their vulnerability to predators, according to new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. /news/2025-08-gene-tweaked-albino-toads-reveal.html Evolution Biotechnology Wed, 27 Aug 2025 12:14:03 EDT news675515641 The pelvis is often called the keystone of upright locomotion. More than any other part of our lower body, it has been radically altered over millions of years to allow us to accomplish our bizarre habit of walking on two legs. /news/2025-08-evolutionary-makeover-big-evolution-human.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 27 Aug 2025 11:00:02 EDT news675353821 Periodical cicadas have one of the strangest life cycles in the animal kingdom. The 17-year cicadas spend 99.5% of their lives underground in an undeveloped nymph state, which is the longest strictly regulated juvenile period among insects. /news/2025-08-weight-years-cicadas-life-prime.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 27 Aug 2025 08:47:04 EDT news675503221