Lactic acid is a key building block for biodegradable plastics, but producing it efficiently from renewable biomass remains challenging. Researchers have now developed a defect-engineered metal-organic framework catalyst that converts glucose into lactic acid with substantially improved efficiency, while also showing activity toward raw biomass feedstocks.

The Bezos Earth Fund is granting $18 million for ROOTS, a three-year Salk project to test deeper-rooted, more resilient crops that can store more carbon in soil. The project builds on six years of work through Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative, which has identified 347 gene candidates and advanced 37 projects across genes and crops. The grant brings the Bezos Earth Fund’s total support for Salk to $48 million.

Oak silkworm eggs may appear defenceless as they sit exposed on plant surfaces, but new research has uncovered a hidden form of protection, a natural chemical scent that helps keep parasitic wasps away.

Insilico Medicine will present the first clinical findings for ISM6331, its AI-designed pan-TEAD inhibitor, during a Rapid Oral session at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2026, taking place October 23–27 in Madrid. The presentation will report initial safety, pharmacokinetic and antitumor findings from a global, multicenter Phase I study in patients with mesothelioma and other advanced solid tumors.

Designed with support from Insilico’s generative chemistry platform Chemistry42, ISM6331 is an investigational oral small molecule that inhibits all four TEAD family transcription factors, disrupting tumor-promoting signals associated with Hippo pathway dysregulation. The program has received U.S. FDA Orphan Drug Designation and Fast Track Designation for mesothelioma.

ISM6331 reflects Insilico’s strategy of using AI to develop precisely designed medicines against difficult-to-treat, age-associated diseases. The presentation will take place Sunday, October 25, from 8:30–10:00 a.m. CEST in the Cordoba Auditorium – Hall 4.

Electroluminescent quantum efficiency is commonly used to determine the efficiency of solar cells. The value is directly related to the cell’s voltage; the higher the luminescent quantum efficiency, the better the solar cell. In The Journal of Applied Physics, by AIP Publishing, researchers in Germany modified a commercially available camera for something usually done in the lab: measuring the electroluminescence of solar cells. The researchers plan to expand the camera’s capabilities in future work, keeping an emphasis on using commercially available technology.

During the production of fermented products such as kefir, Parmesan, or mountain cheese, as well as in the production of protein powders, bitter-tasting peptides can form, which impair the taste and thus the acceptability of the products. A research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich has now developed and successfully tested an AI-based method that can predict the bitterness of peptides. It also makes it possible to design new, bitter-tasting peptides from scratch. This is another important step forward in taste and food research.

This technology introduces a novel artificial intelligence model that improves the detection of previously unseen electromagnetic waveforms by combining time-domain and frequency-domain signal representations. Using a cosine similarity loss function, the system enhances extraction of class-specific features, enabling more accurate identification of unknown signals than conventional approaches. Testing demonstrated approximately a 10% improvement in detection accuracy compared to models lacking this capability. Potential applications include electronic warfare, spectrum management, intelligence and surveillance operations, radio astronomy, and communication security. By providing more reliable waveform classification and interference detection, the technology supports improved situational awareness and spectrum utilization. The patent-pending technology is at TRL 3 and available for licensing.

A new understanding of antibiotic resistance could transform the diagnosis and treatment of humans and animals and help combat the global threat of antibiotic resistance more effectively.