biology

The partnership with Google.org will generate genomic datasets designed for machine learning models used in biological research. The Wellcome Sanger Institute, Google DeepMind, and Google.org have formed a five-year consortium focused on genomic datasets for AI research The Wellcome Sanger Institute , Google DeepMind , and Google.org have formed a five-year artificial intelligence consortium to c…

Scientists feared the Santa Monica Mountains’ last endangered steelhead trout were wiped out by the Palisades fire. Then, they found them alive in Topanga Creek.

The theory is that breathing near your plants releases carbon dioxide, boosting photosynthesis and growth The problem We’ve all done it. Walked past a drooping fern, crouched down and given it a few encouraging words (whether you admit it to other people is a different matter). We are told it’s actually good for our plants, so should we all be chatting away to them to help them thrive? The hack S…

Hydrothermal vents are among the strangest ecosystems on Earth: eerie places where the planet’s deep heat and chemicals mingle with ocean water to support thriving networks of bizarre lifeforms that don’t need sunlight to survive. Stranger still, sometimes short-lived versions of these ecosystems form when asteroids slam into Earth—including the space rock that killed off non-avian dinosaurs 66 m…

Scientists at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) have taken a major step forward in pancreatic cancer research. By mapping a healthy pancreas in detail down to the cellular level, they discovered that specific, rare cells in the healthy organ already bear strong similarities to the most aggressive tumor cells.

Nature Communications, Published online: 09 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-73843-1 This study maps China’s mariculture nitrogen footprint from 1983 to 2024. It reveals spatial source-sink patterns and demonstrates how strategic interventions can secure its net sink status against future socio-economic risks.

New research highlights fathers' influence on childhood obesity risk through sperm changes, lifestyle, and parenting, urging inclusive prevention strategies.

This is Part I: Good Cell Culture Practices workshop. Completion of Part I is a prerequisite for applying to Part II: Advanced Training in Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Culture.

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is an emerging therapeutic strategy with potential applications in the treatment of various diseases, particularly those associated with gut microbiome dysbiosis. However, clinical trials have demonstrated considerable variability in FMT efficacy—even among patients with the same disease. The heterogeneity of gut microbiota from donors is considered a key fa…

Río Tinto (Huelva, Spain) is an extreme environment whose origin is a natural underground bioreactor in which the high concentration of metallic sulfides of the Iberian Pyrite Belt are dissolved by microbial activity. As part of a drilling project conducted in the source area of the river, several microorganisms were isolated under strict anaerobic conditions from the deep subsurface of this ecos…

IntroductionKlebsiella pneumoniae (Kpn) is the second most frequent cause of urinary tract infections (UTIs) and represents a major concern in the context of antimicrobial resistance (AMR); nevertheless, the phenotypic and genomic traits that define uropathogenic Kpn strains are not clear.MethodsIn this study, 24 carbapenemase-producing Kpn strains, most of them (23/24) carrying blaOXA-48, isolat…

BackgroundMultidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR-TB) poses a severe global health threat, yet the contribution of cell envelope barriers to intrinsic drug tolerance remains poorly understood. The ABC protein Rv0820 is conserved across mycobacteria but functionally uncharacterized, presenting a structural paradox: it lacks canonical transmembrane helices, making conventional efflux pu…

The oral-gut microbiome axis has largely been seen as a unidirectional framework, in which dysbiotic oral flora is considered to contribute to gastrointestinal and systemic disease. However, recent evidence now challenges this view, indicating that gut microbial imbalance can act upstream to modulate oral immune homeostasis and disease susceptibility. Therefore, in the current perspective paper, …

Gastric dysbiosis, characterized by shifts in the microbial composition, has been increasingly associated with the development of gastric cancer, the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide and the second in Chile, yet its characterization through disease stages remains limited and its study in Latin American populations almost non-existent. While Helicobacter pylori is a well-esta…

Nature Communications, Published online: 09 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-74118-5 Aging is associated with DNA methylation changes, but how this occurs in individual cells is unclear. Here, the authors show that methylation at polycomb CpG islands accumulates unevenly across single cells, revealing that some cells age faster than others.

New research from the Snow Centre for Immune Health is challenging long-held assumptions about autoimmune disease, revealing that coeliac disease may be driven not just by an overactive immune system, but by subtle defects in how immune cells function.

While many dinosaurs were wiped out when a colossal asteroid struck Earth 66m years ago, one group survived: birds. Prof Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh, has written a new book, The Story of Birds, tracing the evolution of our feathered friends from their dinosaur origins. He joins science correspondent Nicola Davis to discuss how scales first became feathers, how…

The bottom of the ocean has barely been explored, but every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses On 8 March 2018, at 1.20am, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 veered off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. An hour later, military radar spotted the plane heading west over the…