Life sciences, from genetics and evolution to medicine and ecology.
Actinobaculum massiliense, a bacterium found in human urine, carries a newly characterized enzyme pair that can convert the steroid precursor DHEA into the potent androgen testosterone—a finding that has captured the attention of cancer biologists.
Scientists have discovered that more than 500 species of vesper bats possess two distinct sets of genes for antibody production, an arrangement not previously found in any other mammal.
EMBL Heidelberg researchers report in Nature that T7 phage deploys a single kinase to phosphorylate almost every bacterial protein within minutes — a 'loose cannon' strategy that disarms host immune defenses.
Animal-control officers safely captured a four-foot-plus mangrove monitor after it entered a vehicle’s wheel well in Burlington, Massachusetts.
A July 2026 expedition aboard R/V Falkor (too), led by Trinbagonian scientists, completed the first locally run comprehensive deep-sea survey of Trinidad and Tobago, mapping 13% of uncharted seafloor and finding 25 cold seeps with dozens of potentially new species.
A young raccoon nicknamed Mayonesa spent days wandering Dallas with a mayonnaise jar over her head before being rescued by Dallas Animal Services and rehabilitated by Texas Metro Wildlife.
NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer completed a 26-day deep-sea expedition in Cook Islands waters in August 2026, recovering 23 potential new species and confirming extensive polymetallic nodule fields.
Stanford researchers have overturned decades of neuroscience dogma by finding that large numbers of blood-borne immune cells enter the aging brain and transform into microglia, replacing earlier estimates of limited turnover.
An international research team published findings in Science Advances suggesting life on Earth may have emerged from two independent transitions to free-living cells around four billion years ago.
An 11-year conservation initiative in Switzerland has achieved a major milestone with the first successful nesting and hatching of three osprey chicks in the country since 1914.
The French research vessel Tara Polar Station departed Lorient on July 19, 2026, for an 18-month drift expedition across the Central Arctic Ocean locked in sea ice.
A team from AMNH and Dartmouth has uncovered a 567-million-year-old Ediacaran assemblage in the Mackenzie Mountains, pushing back the dawn of complex animal life by 5–10 million years and suggesting it began in deep offshore waters.
Swiss dairy herds finally face a confirmed diagnosis after a midge-borne virus caused fever and sharp milk drops across the region last summer.
Two capybara wandered into Brazil's Mato Grosso state legislature on July 30, just as deputies were preparing for a vote.
A study finds that ancient DNA variants in the growth hormone receptor gene make carriers taller and more muscular, with the Neanderthal-derived version most common in South and East Asian populations.
A University of Maryland team led by Sean B. Carroll reports that a cocktail of proteins drawn from snake blood itself was about 10 times more potent than the current sheep-derived antivenom in lab tests, and neutralized venoms from multiple viper species at once.
A new extinct Ice Age spadefoot toad, *Spea labreae*, has been described from bones stored at the La Brea Tar Pits since 1929 — only the second extinct Pleistocene amphibian ever found in North America.
X-ray tomography of a tiny Cambrian marine animal from China uncovered pincer-like limbs and book gills, tracing the origins of spider fangs and scorpion pincers back half a billion years.
Arginine levels determine whether tumor cells display the surface markers the immune system needs to recognize them.
For decades, neuroscience has operated on the premise that the human brain is seeded with its resident immune cells at birth, which then persist unchanged throughout the rest of a person's life.
University at Buffalo researchers used long-read DNA sequencing to uncover over 19,000 structural variants in brown tree snakes, many in genes for immunity and smell, explaining how the invasive species thrived on Guam despite a severe genetic bottleneck.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Scripps Research have revived vancomycin's activity against vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium by blocking the bacterial enzyme SagA with a small molecule inhibitor called pghi-4, stripping resistant bacteria of their defense and restoring the old antibiotic's effectiveness against strains linked to MRSA and C. difficile.