EurekAlert! News by Subject: Biology - News by Subject: Biology

Biology

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 1-Jul-2025 00:10 ET (1-Jul-2025 04:10 GMT/UTC)

With generative AI, MIT chemists quickly calculate 3D genomic structures

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT chemists found a new way to determine 3D genome structures, using generative AI, that can predict thousands of genome structures in minutes, making it much speedier than existing methods for analyzing the structures.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health

Life cycles of some insects adapt well to a changing climate. Others, not so much.

University of California - Berkeley
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Some biologists speculate that animals will get smaller with global warming to reduce heat stress. While this may be true of warm-blooded animals, what about exotherms like insects? Thanks to a 65-year-old grasshopper collection, scientists have documented that some species — those overwintering as juveniles — got larger over the years, helped by an earlier green spring. Grasshoppers with other lifestyles got smaller. Much of this can be predicted given what biologists know of insect life cycles.

Journal: PLOS Biology
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation

UTA helps deliver major science library to Ecuador

University of Texas at Arlington
Grant and Award Announcement

As a result of hard work and collaboration between The University of Texas at Arlington’s Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center (ARDRC) and the Joseph Rex Dinardo Jr. Herpetology and Natural History Science Research Trust in Philadelphia, thousands of literature items have been donated to the National Institute of Biodiversity (INABIO) in Quito, Ecuador, to help it jump start its renovated education and research program for biodiversity.

Funder: Joseph Rex Dinardo Jr. Trust, United States Agency for International Development

Life as a multiscale cascade of machines making machines

Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology(UNIST)
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The work by Professors Tlusty and Libchaber, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has appeared in PNAS on January 20, 2025. This study proposes a framework for understanding living matter as a cascade of machines making machines, extending from the atomic scale to the scale of the entire biosphere.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Ear muscle we thought humans didn’t use — except for wiggling our ears — actually activates when people listen hard

Frontiers
Peer-Reviewed Publication

To test whether humans still use auricular muscles — which once helped move our primate ancestors’ ears to funnel sound — scientists attached electrodes to the sides of people’s heads, and asked them to listen closely to an audiobook. Different challenge modes were imposed, with the sound coming from different angles, and other competing sounds. The scientists found that, the more difficult it was for participants to hear the audiobook, the more the superior auricular muscles activated, as if participants were trying to prick up their ears like a dog or cat. When sounds came from behind a participant, the posterior auricular muscles contracted as if attempting to point the ears in that direction.

Journal: Frontiers in Neuroscience
Funder: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, European Regional Development Fund, Center for Digital Neurotechnologies Saar

Burn grasslands to maintain them: What is good for biodiversity?

Kobe University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

As grasslands get abandoned, controlled burning is discussed as a labor-saving method of keeping forests at bay. A Kobe University research team found that this method results in higher biodiversity and a higher prevalence of endangered plant species in some grasslands compared to others, depending on what soils they grow on.

Journal: Plants People Planet
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency

Are dogs really bred for function? New Chapman study challenges the assumptions about certain breeds

Chapman University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

the results of a new study challenge the prevailing belief that some breeds are inherently superior at specific tasks, based on their skull morphology. The study, led by Nicholas Hebdon and Lindsay Waldrop and published in Science Advances on January 29, used advanced 3D reconstruction techniques to analyze 117 skulls from 40 domestic dog breeds and 18 wild canid species. The researchers found substantial overlap in skull shapes across breeds and functional categories, but no clear evidence that breeds selected for bite work or scent work have developed distinct morphological traits that enhance these abilities. This suggests that humans have been breeding dogs primarily for preferred visible traits, and that other factors like individual personality affect dogs’ performance of tasks.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: Office of Naval Research