The Gnat Ogre is a tiny predator that grabs other insects out of the air, catching them with extreme precision. New research reveals how and may have implications for future nature-inspired innovations.

In a new report, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina showed that commensal microbes in the mouth, in contrast to commensal microbes colonizing other body surfaces, e.g., the gut or skin, modulate immune responses in the jaw bone that promote bone-resorbing osteoclasts and bone loss. In a preclinical model, depleting healthy commensal microbes in the mouth, using an antiseptic oral rinse, was shown to protect against this bone loss.

A future vaccine providing protection against a wide range of coronaviruses that jump from their original animal hosts to humans — including SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19 — may be possible, say Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers, based on findings from their recent study.

When Charles Darwin first codified the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, he thought of it as a gradual process. “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages,” he wrote in his seminal work, “On the Origin of Species.”

A specific group of fungi residing in the intestines can protect against intestinal injury and influence social behavior, according to new preclinical research by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. The findings extend a growing body of work identifying a "gut-immunity-brain axis," a signaling system that may have a wide range of effects on physiology in both health and disease, influenced not only by the body's own cells but also the resident microbes.

A team from Louisiana State University (LSU) has developed a number of synthetic biology tools for plant geneticists to use to drive the expression of genes.

Some undiscovered species are hiding right under our noses. Ormyrus labotus, a tiny parasitoid wasp known to science since 1843, has long been considered a generalist with more than 65 host species. But a new study in Insect Systematics and Diversity suggests wasps currently called Ormyrus labotus are actually at least 16 different species, identical in appearance but genetically distinct.