Sugars are central not only to plant growth but also to fruit taste and resilience.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the primary cause of virus-associated cancers, especially cervical and head and neck cancers. A key mechanism involves the integration of HPV DNA into the host genome. To support the WHO's strategy to eliminate cervical cancer, understanding HPV integration is crucial. This summary highlights current insights into the mechanisms of HPV integration, their clinical implications, and emerging therapeutic strategies aimed at enhancing precision oncology for HPV-related cancers.

For the first time, scientists fabricate multi-layer, reconfigurable batteries that can bend, adapt, and tune their own voltage — offering a potential power source for future wearable devices, sensors, and soft robotics.

In International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing (IJEM), a research team in China reports the first fabrication of multi-layer flexible batteries using a combination of liquid metal microfluidic perfusion and plasma-based reversible bonding techniques.

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a complex and dynamic ecosystem that plays a pivotal role in cancer progression and therapy resistance. Its heterogeneity and constant remodeling present significant challenges for effective treatment. The emergence of nanomedicine integrates nanotechnology and medicine, aiming to overcome and ameliorate the limitations of conventional therapeutic agents in cancer treatment. Despite the broad biomedical applications of nanomaterials, the clinical translation of nanodrugs remains hindered by the complexity and heterogeneity of the TME as well as challenges related to the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials. This paper published in iMetaMed underscores key challenges and difficulties currently faced by nanomaterials in cancer treatment, including: issues related to nanomaterial biosafety and long-term toxicity assessment; uncertainties in vivo biotransformation and metabolic pathways; therapeutic efficacy variations caused by spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the TME; barriers from laboratory research to clinical translation; and insufficient selectivity in the precise modulation of TME components.

Biomedical research data visualization faces several challenges, including insufficient expertise and fragmented methodologies, which severely limit research efficiency and result quality. FigureYa is a standardized visualization framework composed of 317 modular R scripts, rather than a standalone software or desktop application. It covers key domains such as expression profiling, immune analysis, survival analysis, and single-cell data visualization. Based on the concept of “replace data and use,” FigureYa significantly lowers the technical threshold, allowing researchers to generate high-quality charts without requiring an extensive programming background. Compared to generic online R code snippets, FigureYa offers rigorously developed, thoroughly validated, and biologically contextualized visualization modules originally written by the author team. Each script includes version-matched environments, example datasets, and detailed annotations, providing clear advantages in automation, reproducibility, and scientific professionalism, thereby providing a standardized visualization solution for complex biomedical data. This innovative tool optimizes research time allocation, promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, accelerates scientific discovery and clinical translation, and provides robust data visualization support for biomedical research.

Published in Mycology, research by an international team details the isolation (guided by molecular networking and SMART), structural elucidation, and biological evaluations for metabolites from the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus sydowii LF51, including new enantiomers (±)-aspersydonol A (1a/1b), aspersydonol B (2), and 12 known analogs (3–14).

A new study in eGastroenterology shows that blood microbial cell-free DNA (cfDNA) can differentiate hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) in the liver. Using shotgun metagenomics on plasma and tissue samples, researchers identified distinct bacterial taxa associated with each cancer type. Plasma microbial signatures proved stronger than tissue-based signals, highlighting their diagnostic potential.

Plants must defend themselves against relentless insect herbivores.