A new study from the University of Vienna reveals that sea anemones use a molecular mechanism known from bilaterian animals to form their back-to-belly body axis. This mechanism ("BMP shuttling") enables cells to organize themselves during development by interpreting signaling gradients. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that this system evolved much earlier than previously assumed and was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians.

Co-senior authors Jeremy Levy of Pitt and Andrew Daley of Oxford, collaborators from the early days of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, wrote an explanatory analysis of their group’s chiral-electron findings publishing in Science Advances Friday. In this study that combines  quantum physics, physics, biology, chemistry and organic systems, they developed in essence a programmable platform that could ultimately provide new ways to explore electrons in chiral systems — such as DNA, amino acids, proteins and more.

At a symposium in Paris, a University of São Paulo professor of zoology explains how new technologies allow for the use of degraded DNA from specimens preserved for decades, contributing to the advancement of scientific knowledge and the conservation of b

A new study from the University of Rochester reveals that key optical measurements of tumor collagen structure differ between Black and White patients with breast and colon cancer. Using second-harmonic generation imaging, researchers analyzed collagen organization in over 300 tumor samples and found significant racial differences in a prognostic marker known as the forward-to-backward scattering ratio (F/B), which is linked to metastatic risk. These findings highlight the need for racially diverse clinical trials to ensure that emerging diagnostic tools accurately predict cancer outcomes for all patient populations.

Lithium-metal batteries could hold double the energy compared to today’s lithium-ion batteries, but they currently have a much shorter lifespan. 

A UCLA team developed a technique that, for the first time, allows for high-resolution imaging of lithium-metal batteries while they charge.

Measuring a corrosion layer that forms on lithium offered clues for better battery design, and the imaging technique may have uses in other fields, such as biology.

A collaborative team led by Ravi Radhakrishnan of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Jake Brenner and Jacob Myerson of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has unraveled the mathematics of a 500-million-year-old protein network that acts like the body’s bouncer, “deciding” which foreign materials get degraded by immune cells and which are allowed entry. “This discovery enables us to design therapeutics the way you’d design a car or a spaceship—using the principles of physics to guide how the immune system will respond—rather than relying on trial and error,” says Brenner.