Proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) are molecules that can eliminate disease-causing proteins, but developing them is often slow and complex, limiting how quickly new candidates can be tested. Now, researchers from Tokyo University of Science have developed a three-step "click chemistry" assembly line that rapidly builds functional PROTACs from simple building blocks. The resulting molecules successfully degraded a target protein in cells, paving the way for faster, more flexible development of protein-targeting therapeutics.

Kyoto, Japan -- Colorectal cancer, or CRC, is the world's second most lethal cancer based on the number of deaths, and is the third most prevalent malignant tumor. Doctors and patients have long been hoping for better diagnostics for prognosis, such as molecular subtyping, which uses data collected from cancer stem cells, or tumor-initiating cells, to further divide one type of cancer into subgroups. It may correlate with patient outcomes and enable better prognoses.

Though many CRC tissue samples have been analyzed and classified based on mRNA gene expression, currently the practical application of these studies in patient prognosis is limited for colorectal cancer. This motivated a team of researchers from Kyoto University to examine cancer stem cells for the molecular subtyping of CRC.

"We need more comprehensive and clinically useful markers and their signatures to help predict the outcome of each patient," says first author Fumihiko Kakizaki.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba have developed a novel analytical framework to reconstruct species distributional shifts from the past to the present while explicitly incorporating within-population genetic diversity. Using this approach, they resolved the high-resolution distributional history of wild black pepper (Piper nigrum)—the world's most valuable spice—which originated in the Western Ghats of India and traced its range dynamics from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present.

A research team led by Prof. Tao Jiang and Prof. Jing Li from State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Academy of Military Medical Science, in collaboration with Prof. Shi-Shun Zhao from College of Mathematics, Jilin University and Prof. Jianwei Wang from NHC Key Laboratory of Systems Biology of Pathogens and Christophe Merieux Laboratory, National Institute of Pathogen Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, developed a viral risk prediction framework named GIVAL based on the pre-trained viral protein language model vBERT. This study proposes a general intelligent prediction method for assessing adaptation risks of unknown viruses.

Research published in Nature Communications found that the SAR11 bacteria, one of the ocean's most abundant life forms, are not a single, uniform population as often thought. Instead, they are organized into stable, ecologically distinct groups, essentially specialized "teams" adapted to specific environments, such as the coast versus the open ocean. This means that one of the ocean's most important engines is far more complex than previously known.

From fruit flies that bite to a tiny mouse opossum and a feathered dinosaur preserved with the remains of its last meal, more than 70 new species were described this year by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History.

University of Vermont scientists developed a first-of-its-kind study that tracks thousands of generations of digital organisms replaying evolution hundreds of times. Their results were surprising. In some cases, changing the environment helped populations find higher fitness peaks; in others, it hindered them. This gives a bird’s-eye view of how evolution played out across many different environments—something that would be impossible to test in the lab. The biggest takeaway is that starting point really matters. A population’s history shapes how high it can climb and how hard the path is to get there, which means one population may not represents an entire species.

A new study finds menopause symptoms to be very frequently reported by female endurance athletes, with many perceiving a negative effect on their training and performance. The findings are published December 17, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Heather Hamilton of Old Dominion University, U.S., and colleagues.