Curated News: Nature (journal)

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Study in Nature Astronomy theorizes that dense stellar clusters may eject pairs of giant planets, which remain gravitationally bound to one another as they float through space.

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In a discovery that could hasten treatment for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), UC San Francisco scientists have discovered a harbinger in the blood of some people who later went on to develop the disease. 

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In a new study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have designed a new method for developing immunotherapy drugs using engineered peptides to elicit a natural immune response inside the body.

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Liver inflammation, a common side-effect of cancers elsewhere in the body, has long been associated with worse cancer outcomes and more recently associated with poor response to immunotherapy. Now, a team led by researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found a big reason why.

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With more than 200 types of cancer and every cancer individually unique, ongoing efforts to develop precision oncology treatments remain daunting. In a new study published in the journal Nature Cancer, first author Sanju Sinha, Ph.D., at Sanford Burnham Prebys, with senior authors Eytan Ruppin, M.D., Ph.D., and Alejandro Schaffer, Ph.D., at the National Cancer Institute—and colleagues—describe a first-of-its-kind computational pipeline to systematically predict patient response to cancer drugs at single-cell resolution.

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Scientists have found experimental evidence of the long-theorized Bragg glass phase present in a material. Bragg glasses display both the ordered properties of crystals and the disordered nature of glasses at the same time.

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Marine communities migrated to Antarctica during the Earth’s warmest period in 66 million years long before a mass-extinction event.

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By utilizing the power of electronic medical records, researchers from UC San Diego are uncovering the genetics of tobacco use, which would help scientists discover new ways to stop occasional tobacco use from evolving into tobacco use disorder.

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Cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and myocardial infarction, are the world's leading causes of mortality, accounting for over 18 million deaths a year. A team of KIT researchers has now identified a new cell type in blood vessels responsible for vascular growth.

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Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall – how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by an ERC project led by microbiologist Dagmar Woebken from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna.

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The protein Asc-1 serves as the gateway (either for entry or exit) for fundamental amino acids involved in cognitive processes. A new study now unveils its structure and mechanism of action.

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A group of researchers based at UC San Diego and Rady Children's Institute have advanced the understanding of how the cerebral cortex develops by tracing the lineage of certain brain cells.

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A new study offers a first look into the complex molecular changes that occur in brain cells with Lewy bodies, which are key pathological hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease and some dementias.

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In a new study, a Johns Hopkins Medicine-led research team reports that social stress during adolescence in female mice later results in prolonged elevation of the hormone cortisol after they give birth.

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Biologist B. Duygu Özpolat at Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues published a single-cell atlas for a highly regenerative annelid worm. This research may help inform stem cell technologies and regenerative medicine down the line.

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An international research team led by a researcher from the University of Vienna has for the first time directly detected stellar winds from three Sun-like stars by recording the X-ray emission from their astrospheres, and placed constraints on the mass loss rate of the stars via their stellar winds. The study is currently published in Nature Astronomy.

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A new study led by researchers at the UNC School of Medicine unravels the structure of TAS2R14, a taste receptor that allows us to taste bitter substances. In addition to solving the protein structure, the findings could help scientists develop drugs that targeting taste receptors.

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Researchers from UC San Diego have discovered the biochemical workings of an old-fashioned diabetes drug, and it's helping them develop new, safer alternatives.

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A chemical modification in the HIV-1 RNA genome whose function has been a matter of scientific debate is now confirmed to be key to the virus’s ability to survive and thrive after infecting host cells, a new study has found.

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Meandering ocean currents play an important role in the melting of Antarctic ice shelves, threatening a significant rise in sea levels.

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A team of scientists led by UF engineering researchers has unveiled a method for 3D printing that allows manufacturers to create custom-made objects more economically and sustainably.

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Soil microbes use volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as a food source but can also release VOCs as gases that enter the atmosphere.

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Humans aren’t the only living beings who find a singing voice attractive in the opposite sex – songbirds do too. For about a third of the approximately 4,000 songbird species that sing only one song, the features that make these tunes alluring to a potential mate have been a long-standing mystery.

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A new study reveals compelling evidence that forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®(FSC®) in Gabon and the Republic of Congo harbour a higher abundance of larger mammals and critically endangered species, such as gorillas and elephants, compared to non-FSC certified forests.

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Findings show a newly created drug can prevent runaway inflammation while still allowing the immune system to handle the virus, even when given late into infection.

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CAR T cell therapy has revolutionized the way certain types of cancer are treated, and the longer those CAR T cells live in a patient’s body, the more effectively they respond to cancer. Now, researchers have found that a protein called FOXO1 improves the survival and function of CAR T cells, which may lead to more effective CAR T cell therapies and could potentially expand its use in difficult-to-treat cancers.

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In a study in mice published in Nature, a research team showed that a newly developed compound was able to block necroptosis, a type of cell death that leads to lung inflammation and damage following infection with the flu virus.

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Wistar's Dr. Abdel-Mohsen has identified sugar abnormalities in the blood that may promote biological aging and inflammation in people living with HIV.

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The path to quantum supremacy is made challenging by the issues associated with scaling up the number of qubits. One key problem is the way that qubits are measured.

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Research has uncovered important new insights into the evolution of oxygen, carbon, and other vital elements over the entire history of Earth – and it could help assess which other planets can develop life, ranging from plants to animals and humans.

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Researchers have taken the first atomic-resolution images and demonstrated electrical control of a chiral interface state – an exotic quantum phenomenon that could help researchers advance quantum computing and energy-efficient electronics.

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New chemistries for batteries, semiconductors and more could be easier to manufacture, thanks to a new approach to making chemically complex materials that researchers at the University of Michigan and Samsung's Advanced Materials Lab have demonstrated.

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Remote work could cut hundreds of millions of tons of carbon emissions from car travel – but at the cost of billions lost in public transit revenues, according to a new study.

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A mutation in a protein regulating natural killer (NK) cells’ function is at the root of immune deficiency in some people with a rare genetic condition characterized by cognitive and developmental delay, seizures, and other manifestations. The findings also have broader implications for immunity and cell therapies.

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A new look at a carbon capture solvent shows clusters and new types of carbon dioxide chemistry that could double carbon conversion.

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A first-ever dataset bridging molecular information about the poplar tree microbiome to ecosystem-level processes has been released by a team of Department of Energy scientists led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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For millions of years, underground fungi have lived in symbiosis with plant roots. Researchers have been able to study both sides of this interaction up close, using RNA sequencing to understand gene expression: one of the first cross-kingdom spatially-resolved transcriptomics studies to date.

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Adding a personalized anti-tumor vaccine to standard immunotherapy is safe and about twice as likely to shrink cancer as standard immunotherapy alone for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

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Nature Reviews Nephrology published a landmark international consensus statement titled "Chronic Kidney Disease and the Global Public Health Agenda: An International Consensus." Authored by a coalition of leading experts, stakeholders, and nephrology societies, the publication highlights critical policy, advocacy, and implementation needs to alleviate the growing burden of kidney disease worldwide.

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The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that a Korean research team has developed a human-implantable tactile smart bionic artificial skin.

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Yuting Luo, of Johns Hopkins University, was named the 2024 recipient of the Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award given by the Advanced Photon Source (APS) user organization, which recognizes important scientific or technical accomplishments at the APS by a young investigator.

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By focusing on a poxvirus protein, a team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists has discovered an antiviral immune pathway that broadly fights a wide variety of viruses. Their findings, reported in Nature Microbiology, could eventually lead to new ways to prevent or treat viral infections or thwart autoimmune diseases.

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Investigators with Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s and other research institutions have identified a process responsible for the development of teeth called incisors—a discovery that could one day improve understanding of how birth defects happen.

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Groundwater has been largely unstudied in its importance and role in sustaining ecosystems.

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A novel treatment for leukemias and lymphomas that arise from immune system T cells, developed by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Ludwig Center and Lustgarten Laboratory, was found to be effective at killing these cancers in mice bearing human T-cell tumors.

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Tom Maccarone in Physics and Astronomy is among authors whose groundbreaking work will soon be published in Nature magazine.

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Using cutting-edge computational methods and supercomputing infrastructure at UC San Diego, researchers have built the largest and most detailed bird family tree to date—an intricate chart delineating 93 million years of evolutionary relationships between 363 bird species, representing 92% of all bird families.

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Mayo Clinic scientists have developed an immunotherapy strategy that potentially lays the groundwork for treating a spectrum of autoimmune diseases. 

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a new vaccine that offers broad protection against not only SARS-CoV-2 variants, but also other bat sarbecoviruses.