By unraveling the complex choreography of cellular machinery, Michigan State University researchers are helping identify the next generation of drug targets and cancer therapies.

Led by Jian Hu and Kennie Merz, the MSU team has unveiled new insights into a family of proteins that, while vital for cellular functions, are also linked to an array of diseases such as breast, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.

Understanding these dynamic proteins found in cell membranes — called Zrt-/Irt-like proteins, or ZIPs for short — will contribute to the search for cutting-edge drug therapies and the improved health of patients.

In the study of why and how animals look the way they do, color is king—at least, the range of color humans can see.

A multidisciplinary research team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University has developed a new coating technology that holds promise to substantially increase the lifespan of implanted and wearable biosensors while retaining their electrical signaling activities, enabling continuous measurements of analytes in different biofluids inside our bodies potentially for many weeks.

A research team, including Professor Naoto Tomioka of Okayama University of Science, has uncovered new genetic evidence challenging the long-standing "dual-structure model" of Japanese ancestry. By analyzing ancient genomes from individuals spanning the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods (9000 B.P. to 1300 B.P.), the study identified three distinct genomic groups contributing to the ancestry of modern Japanese people. Their findings, published in Science Advances, suggest two waves of migration from Northeast and East Asia during the Yayoi and Kofun periods, integrating with the indigenous Jomon population. This research introduces a "triple-structure model" of Japanese ancestry and aligns with modern genomic studies. However, further analysis is needed to reinforce these conclusions.