A new study published in Forest Ecosystems highlights the growing wildfire risk posed by standing dead trees in Yellowstone National Park. Using advanced machine learning and spatial analysis, the researchers mapped tree mortality and assessed the vulnerability of nearby infrastructure, offering valuable insights for fire management and wildfire mitigation efforts in high-risk areas.

In this issue of hLife, the team led by Prof. Min Wang from Ocean University of China systematically mined and characterized the diversity of viral reverse transcriptases from global metagenomic datasets. Viral reverse transcriptases are not only encoded by pathogenic retroviruses; their vast diversity is hidden in the genomes of ubiquitous bacteriophages, which are widely distributed in the human gut microbiomes and various ecosystems on Earth. This study is expected to shed light on their critical roles in microbial ecology and evolution, offering valuable insights for future antiviral strategies and biotechnological applications.