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Vikings Reached North America 500 Years Before Columbus, Archaeology Confirms

Medieval Icelandic sagas describe journeys west from Greenland, including voyages associated with Leif Erikson and a region called Vinland. The settlement supports the broader accounts of Norse travel, but archaeologists cannot confirm that Leif himself stayed there. Nor can they establish how many expeditions reached the coast.

Ancient settlement reveals clues about Norse exploration and indigenous contact

Butternuts found at the settlement offer another clue. Because the trees do not grow naturally in Newfoundland, Parks Canada says the finds suggest travel farther south or contact with Indigenous trading networks.

Blocking a protein may reduce buildup of harmful aging cells

A team led by Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University investigators has identified a protein that may hide aging cells from the body’s immune system, allowing them to build up and contribute to age-related health problems.

The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, suggest that the protein, called PD-L2, could serve as a target for treatments designed to remove harmful aging cells or as a blood marker that helps researchers track them.

“Our findings suggest that PD-L2 may help aging cells stay in the body when they would normally be removed by the immune system,” said Selim Chaib, Ph.D., research assistant professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai and first and co-corresponding author of the study.

Age-Based Testing Misses Most With Inherited Cancer Risk

Restricting germline genetic testing to patients diagnosed with cancer before age 50 may miss the large majority of all those with inherited pathogenic variants, a new study suggested.

The research, based on germline sequencing of 39,184 unselected patients with solid tumors, found that the age-50 cutoff would miss 72% of all patients harboring a pathogenic variant. That included 68% of those with moderate-or high-penetrance variants, which confer substantially elevated lifetime cancer risks.

“Hereditary cancer can occur at any age, and we should move toward a new standard in which genetic testing is considered for every patient diagnosed with cancer, regardless of age,” said lead study author Zsofia K. Stadler, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center in New York City.

Fyn kinase: a key mechanistic regulator and therapeutic target in tauopathy and neurodegenerative diseases

Synaptic dysfunction and intracellular accumulation of pathological tau are convergent hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related tauopathies, yet the molecular mechanisms coupling these events to widespread neurodegeneration remain incompletely understood. The Src family kinase Fyn has emerged as a critical signaling hub that integrates upstream pathogenic triggers, such as amyloid-β (Aβ), with downstream neurotoxic cascades. Here, we review the multifaceted roles of Fyn in orchestrating synaptic failure, highlighting how Fyn recruitment by mislocalized tau promotes N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor hyperactivation and calcium dysregulation. We examine the biophysical basis of Fyn–tau interactions, particularly the role of liquid–liquid phase separation in stabilizing toxic signaling complexes. We also discuss how aberrant Fyn signaling in microglia and astrocytes amplifies neuroinflammation. Finally, we evaluate the potential of Fyn as a therapeutic target, emphasizing the necessity of strategies that selectively uncouple pathological signaling from physiological functions to effectively halt disease progression.

Prevalence and characteristics of patients with coronary heart disease and blood pressure below target: the INTERASPIRE study

Background Despite treatment, many hypertensive patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) have blood pressure (BP) that remains above guideline targets. However, less is known about patients in whom on-treatment BP is below target and major European guidelines differ substantially in their recommendations for such patients. Specifically, 2023 European Society of Hypertension (ESH) guidelines provide a Class 3 recommendation to proactively avoid BP below target whereas 2024 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines do not.

Methods Between 2020 and 2023, adults hospitalised in the previous 6–24 months with incident or recurrent CHD were sampled in 14 countries from all six WHO regions and invited for a standardised interview and examination as part of the International Action on Secondary and Primary Prevention by Intervention to Reduce Events (INTERASPIRE) study. We measured seated BP twice using an automated oscillometric device after 5 min of rest. We defined participants as having BP above target (BP ≥130/80 mm Hg), at target (BP 120–129/70–79 mm Hg) or below target (120÷70 mm Hg); according to both 2023 ESH and 2024 ESC guidelines.

Results Among 4,548 participants (21.1% female), the mean age (±SD) was 60.0 (±10.3) years. At a median (IQR) of 1.05 (0.76–1.45) years after index CHD hospitalisation, 10.3% of patients had BP readings within the target range of 120–129/70–79 mm Hg, with 53.9% above target and 35.7% below target. Patients with below-target BP were more likely to have heart failure (13.6% vs 10.0%, p=0.041) and estimated glomerular filtration rate 60 mL/min/1.73 m² (18.9% vs 10.7%, p0.001), when compared with those at target. They were also statistically more likely to be severely frail (p=0.030). The median number of BP-lowering medications did not differ significantly between the 3 BP target groups. Cumulative dosing of BP-lowering medications in the below-target group was also not more intensive than that in the at-target group.

Nanoparticle injection reprograms NK immune cells to fight cancer and autoimmune disorders

MIT engineers have developed a new way to program natural killer (NK) immune cells to target cancerous T cells or T cells that have become autoreactive, leading to diseases such as lymphoma and autoimmune hepatitis.

Using their new technique, the researchers can reprogram NK cells to target diseased T cells without ever removing the NK cells from the patient’s body. Instead, they use lipid nanoparticles to deliver messenger RNA directly to NK cells. These mRNA molecules encode proteins that allow the NK cells to seek and destroy the dysfunctional T cells.

Known as CAR NK cells, these cells could be deployed against a variety of diseases. The MIT team’s new approach could bypass one of the major obstacles to using these cells, which is the time and expense of manufacturing them outside the body.

A high-resolution protein-RNA binding atlas for structure-aware interaction prediction and post-transcriptional regulatory modeling

The Goodarzi lab is on fire!

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) recognize RNA by sequence and shape, but which matters varies by site. Introducing Pythia, an interpretable AI model trained on a new high-resolution atlas of 67 RBPs—a collaboration between Genophoria, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, UCSF, Calico, & Vector Institute.

What if an AI could look at a strand of RNA, predict how it folds in 3D, and instantly tell you which proteins will attach to it? A groundbreaking new dataset and neural network are doing just that—bringing high-resolution clarity to the invisible mechanics of gene regulation.

Decoding how proteins shape our RNA: a new atlas and AI tool for cellular control.

Inside our cells, DNA serves as the master blueprint, but RNA acts as the working copy that delivers instructions to build proteins. Once RNA is made, it is heavily managed by a special class of molecules called RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). These proteins dictate how long an RNA molecule lasts, where it travels inside the cell, and how efficiently it is translated into functional proteins.

Despite their importance, scientists have lacked high-resolution, uniform maps showing exactly where these proteins bind across the entire human genome.

To bridge this gap, a team of researchers has developed a powerful suite of new experimental and computational tools to decode how proteins and RNA interact.

Key Breakthroughs of the Study.

Continue reading “A high-resolution protein-RNA binding atlas for structure-aware interaction prediction and post-transcriptional regulatory modeling” | >
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