New research from the University of Sydney challenges the perception of crown-of-thorns starfish as purely destructive. The findings suggest controlled populations can have a positive impact on coral prevalence and diversity. 

By comparing variations in the colour of the coats of the eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) in Montreal city parks, researchers found that hyper-local conditions appear to play a bigger role in determining wildlife traits than had been thought. 

A UK-led research collaboration has taken a significant step in the global effort to protect cereal crops from the devastating blast fungus pathogen.

Most primate species have a relatively large brain with a surface marked by pronounced bulges and furrows. This is not the case with common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). The brains of these small monkeys are smooth and virtually unfolded. Researchers at the German Primate Center (DPZ) —the Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen have investigated, in a recent study, which cellular processes during embryonic development cause the marmoset brain to develop differently from a certain stage onward. In experiments with brain organoids, they were able to show that certain neural progenitor cells—from which neurons arise—develop differently in marmosets, both morphologically and temporally. Several processes occurring at different levels and involving various types of progenitor cells govern this phenomenon, which ultimately leads to a reduction in the size and folding of the marmoset brain. The study sheds new light on the evolutionary development of the primate brain and could help improve our understanding of developmental disorders in the human brain in the future (Science Advances).

Centromeres are crucial for cell division and emerged early in evolution. A research team led by Heinrich Heine University (HHU) Düsseldorf and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ) in Cologne has investigated how mutations have shaped the DNA sequences of centromeres over time. The researchers report in the scientific journal Nature how centromere DNA sequences evolve rapidly and extensively while retaining their function. Researchers from Tübingen, Karlsruhe, Munich and Sheffield were also involved in the study.

Humans stand apart from other great apes: we walk on two legs, carry unusually large brains, and have slender, distinctively shaped skeletons. Yet which changes in our DNA produced these features has remained one of biology’s great open questions. Human and chimpanzee genomes are more than 98% identical, and the genes themselves, the blueprints for proteins, barely differ. The changes that make us human are thought to hide instead in the DNA that controls when and where genes switch on.

A team led by Associate Professor Fumitaka Inoue and researcher Yizhi Yan at Kyoto University’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Biology (WPI-ASHBi), together with Principal Investigator David Gokhman and Nadav Mishol at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has now built the world’s first functional atlas of the human-specific gene-control changes behind our skeleton. Combining two powerful techniques (massively parallel reporter assays, or MPRA, and human-ape hybrid cells), they discovered that a family of molecules called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which cushion and maintain our cartilage, has been dialed down over the course of human evolution. The finding offers a new window onto how the human skeleton took its shape, and onto why we are so uniquely susceptible to skeletal disease.

The work will be published in Nature on 23 September 2026 at 11:00 EST.