For a long time, so-called satellite DNA was considered largely worthless. Now, ETH Zurich researchers have shown in fruit flies that these repetitive sections of genetic material act as a kind of barcode, enabling the correct ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 24, 2026
0
157
Mitochondria are often called the powerhouses of the cell. But their ancient origins may also make them drivers of inflammation. Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have discovered that proteins released from ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 11, 2026
0
151
Humans develop at a slower rate than other mammalian species, like mice, but scientists are still trying to understand the molecular basis of these differences. Now, researchers from the Ebisuya Group at EMBL Barcelona and ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 23, 2026
0
141
Roses are known for their thorns, the sharp structures that can sting and prickle the skin. Thorns, botanically known as prickles, are thought to discourage animals from feeding on plants and may also help climbing roses ...
Modern biology research can now generate valuable data on an unprecedented scale. But there is one major obstacle: making sense of these complex high-dimensional datasets. A team at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has ...
Biotechnology
Aug 21, 2026
0
107
Every year, millions of migratory birds travel between different geographical regions on Earth to find food, escape cold weather or reach safe environments to raise chicks. To determine which direction to fly, these birds ...
The genetic diversity of the largetooth sawfish (Pristis pristis), a critically endangered ray, has plummeted over the past century and a half, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological ...
It's one of the origins-of-life chicken-or-egg problems: How could RNA have helped give rise to the first cells before there were cells to contain it?
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 20, 2026
1
99
In a study recently published in Nature Communications, researchers from Berlin, Potsdam, and Jena present a new method for analyzing the epigenome. The machine-learning method identifies differentially methylated DNA regions ...
Biotechnology
Aug 25, 2026
0
82
Conformational changes in proteins are vital to their function yet remain challenging for state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, such as AlphaFold3, to predict. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), ...
Biotechnology
Sep 5, 2026
0
70
