The Timor green pigeon, which is under pressure from hunting and habitat loss, is at serious risk of extinction and should be uplisted to Critically Endangered, according to a new study from researchers at Charles Darwin University and BirdLife International.

J. Craig Venter, the genomicist whose work redrew the architecture of modern biology, died on 29 April 2026 in San Diego at the age of 79, following complications from treatment of a recently diagnosed cancer. Brain Health, a new peer-reviewed journal launched today by Genomic Press, publishes in its inaugural issue a scientific tribute by Dr. Julio Licinio that foregrounds a part of Venter’s legacy that other obituaries have understandably treated as background: his earliest major methodological breakthrough emerged at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, where he pioneered the expressed sequence tag as a route to rapidly identifying brain-expressed genes. The tribute traces an arc from that neuroscience starting point through the first complete bacterial genome, the parallel pursuit of the human sequence, large-scale ocean metagenomics, and the construction of the first cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome.

Even the giant wings of the albatross are not ‘optimally’ shaped for their extraordinary long-distance migrations, according to new University of Bristol research. 

The study, published in Nature Communications, reveals that many bird species possess wing shapes surprisingly ill-suited to their flight performance. In contrast, penguins and hummingbirds stand out as exceptions, having evolved wing shapes closely matched to their specialised style of movement.

Brain Health, a new peer-reviewed journal from Genomic Press, launches today with an inaugural issue anchored by an interview with neuroscientist Luísa Pinto of the University of Minho, whose two-decade pursuit of newborn astrocytes has reshaped how the field understands recovery from depression. The journal, edited by Ma-Li Wong, is designed to convene the fields of cognitive reserve, longevity, sleep science, aging biology, nutritional psychiatry, behavioral intervention, neuroimaging, normative data, and the social sciences and humanities around a shared question: how do human brains remain resilient, recover when injured, and stay functional across the longest possible arc of a life?

This study has revealed the pro-apoptotic effect of GADD45B in intestinal ischemia/reperfusion (I/R), explored its downstream pathways and targets, and further confirmed the crucial role and molecular mechanism of epigenetics in intestinal I/R, which is helpful for deepening the understanding of intestinal I/R injury and providing important theoretical basis and key targets for the treatment of I/R injury.