CSHL postdoc Iacopo Gentile has devised a new system for identifying redundant genes and predicting how certain genetic mutations may affect plant traits. The model provides plant breeders with a potential roadmap for future crop improvements.

Interactions among viruses can help them succeed inside their hosts or impart vulnerabilities that make them easier to treat. Scientists are learning the ways viruses mingle inside the cells they infect, as well as the consequences of their socializing. Although it is debatable whether viruses are living things, they do compete, cooperate and share genome materials that can sometimes alter their responses to antiviral drugs, result in new variants or play a role in virus evolution. A paper today in Nature Ecology & Evolution by UW Medicine scientists looks at the evolution of poliovirus resistance to a promising experimental antiviral drug, pocapavir. While it seemed counterintuitive, the researchers demonstrated that lowering the potency of pocapavir could improve the situation by enhancing the survival of enough susceptible viruses to continue sensitizing the resistant ones.

Goldenberries taste like a cross between pineapple and mango, pack the nutritional punch of a superfood, and are increasingly popular in U.S. grocery stores. But the plants that produce these bright yellow-orange fruits grow wild and unruly—reaching heights that make large-scale farming impractical. Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) helped solve that problem.

The discovery holds the potential to inspire innovations in biotechnology, from the development of new “smart” materials to nanoscale drug delivery systems.

There is an important and unresolved tension in cosmology regarding the rate at which the universe is expanding, and resolving this could reveal new physics.  Astronomers constantly seek new ways to measure this expansion in case there may be unknown errors in data from conventional markers such as supernovae. Recently, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo measured the expansion of the universe using novel techniques and new data from the latest telescopes. Their method exploits the way light from extremely distant objects takes multiple pathways to get to us. Differences in these pathways help improve models on what happens at the largest cosmological scales, including expansion.

After collecting and analyzing data for a decade, a group of scientists, including a team from Rutgers, have debunked a decades-old theory about a mysterious particle.

MIT researchers developed an aerial microrobot that can fly with speed and agility comparable to real insects. The research opens the door to future bug-sized robots that could aid in search-and-rescue missions.

USC researchers have identified a previously unknown pattern of organization in one of the brain’s most important areas for learning and memory. The study, published in Nature Communications, reveals that the CA1 region of a mouse’s hippocampus, a structure vital for memory formation, spatial navigation, and emotions, has four distinct layers of specialized cell types. This discovery changes our understanding of how information is processed in the brain and could explain why certain cells are more vulnerable in diseases like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy. Using a powerful RNA labeling method called RNAscope with high-resolution microscopy imaging, the team captured clear snapshots of single-molecule gene expression to identify CA1 cell types inside mouse brain tissue. Within 58.065 CA1 pyramidal cells, they visualized more than 330,000 RNA molecules—the genetic messages that show when and where genes are turned on. By tracing these activity patterns, the researchers created a detailed map showing the borders between different types of nerve cells across the CA1 region of the hippocampus. The results showed that the CA1 region consists of four continuous layers of nerve cells, each marked by a distinct set of active genes. In 3D, these layers form sheets that vary slightly in thickness and structure along the length of the hippocampus. This clear, layered pattern helps make sense of earlier studies that saw the region as a more gradual mix or mosaic of cell types.