Search the life sciences

40+ min ago   (420+ words) Tokyo, Japan—How much should an organism rely on memory when the present is good enough? New work from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, and RIKEN reframes memory as an economic resource rather than a free…...

3+ hour, 8+ min ago   (275+ words) Researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences report an unexpected role for smooth septate junction (sSJ) proteins in controlling growth-related signaling during intestinal differentiation. sSJ proteins, previously characterized as adhesion components, are shown to regulate the spatial dynamics of…...

16+ hour, 52+ min ago   (615+ words) [Purdue University] Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid about the size of Mount Everest smacked into Earth near where the Yucatan Peninsula is today. That impact created the Chicxulub crater and may have knocked out about three-quarters of all living…...

13+ hour, 21+ min ago   (278+ words) Salt stress is rapidly eroding crop productivity worldwide, and medicinal plants are not spared. For Salvia miltiorrhiza, salinization threatens both survival and the biochemical machinery that produces tanshinones—high-value molecules used in traditional and modern therapeutics. Now, researchers report the…...

14+ hour, 33+ min ago   (203+ words) Tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) proved capable of carrying cellular components and organelles across separation distances reaching about 100 micrometers. This is a crucial scale because it allows exchange beyond what diffusion alone would readily accomplish within relevant timeframes. The nanotubes were not…...

20+ hour, 41+ min ago   (89+ words) New topics have been added to the GATE 2027 syllabus in the General Biotechnology section. These include: Glycolysis and the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle Bacterial cell wall structure Here is a comparative overview of the GATE syllabus for academic year 2026 and…...

16+ hour ago   (322+ words) A team of researchers has unveiled a sequencing-free, amplification-free strategy for mapping gene regulation directly in space, tackling key bottlenecks that have limited current spatial transcriptomics. Traditional methods rely on next-generation sequencing, demanding complex sample preparation and costly instrument pipelines,…...

17+ hour, 17+ min ago   (296+ words) In fully autonomous apomixis, plants can generate clonal seeds without fertilization, a strategy that could stabilize hybrid vigour in crop breeding. Yet while fertilization-independent embryo formation is relatively well characterized, the molecular logic that governs autonomous endosperm development has remained…...

19+ hour, 51+ min ago   (349+ words) Cancer cells that metastasize must endure a threat most cells cannot tolerate: repeated, high mechanical forces as they circulate through blood vessels and the heart. In this newly reported study, Rice University bioengineers show that prostate cancer cells can be…...

20+ hour, 47+ min ago   (316+ words) A new study in Nature Communications reports an ambitious “OmniAge” compendium that maps aging-associated biomarkers across multiple omic layers and then uses that map to trace biological causality. The work by Du, Ling, Tong and colleagues focuses on a long-debated…...