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Single pollen parents in flowering plants may be more common than previously thought
While all seeds produced within a fruit have the same maternal genome, the paternal genomes of seeds can come from the pollen of one or more paternal parents. A common assumption about flowering plants is that the ovules are most often pollinated by multiple paternal parents at the flower level.
Various genomic conflicts can arise during the process of fertilization and fruit production in multiseed plants, including conflicts over nutritional resources between the maternal plant and its offspring, conflicts over nutritional resources among developing seeds, between paternal and maternal genomes over seed development and competition among paternal parents. The relationship between these genomic conflicts and single or multiple paternal parentage is unclear.
To shed some light on the prevalence of monogamy and polyandry in flowering plants, a group of researchers in India conducted a systematic literature review of studies from 1984 to 2024 and a meta-analysis of 63 flowering plant species from diverse families. The study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number of paternal parents was determined in the context of self-compatible vs. incompatible breeding, seed number, and phylogenetic relationships.
Researchers overcome long-standing bottleneck in single photon detection with twisted 2D materials
The ability to detect single photons (the smallest energy packets constituting electromagnetic radiation) in the infrared range has become a pressing need across numerous fields, from medical imaging and astrophysics to emerging quantum technologies. In observational astronomy, for example, the light from distant celestial objects can be extremely faint and require exceptional sensitivity in the mid-infrared.
Similarly, in free-space quantum communication—where single photons need to travel across vast distances—operating in the mid-infrared can provide key advantages in signal clarity.
The widespread use of single-photon detectors in this range is limited by the need for large, costly, and energy-intensive cryogenic systems to keep the temperature below 1 Kelvin. This also hinders the integration of the resulting detectors into modern photonic circuits, the backbone of today’s information technologies.
Johns Hopkins scientists grow a mini human brain that lights up and connects like the real thing
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have grown a first-of-its-kind organoid mimicking an entire human brain, complete with rudimentary blood vessels and neural activity. This new “multi-region brain organoid” connects different brain parts, producing electrical signals and simulating early brain development. By watching these mini-brains evolve, researchers hope to uncover how conditions like autism or schizophrenia arise, and even test treatments in ways never before possible with animal models.
DNA nanostructures can mimic molecular organization of living systems without chemical cross-linking
Newly developed DNA nanostructures can form flexible, fluid, and stimuli-responsive condensates without relying on chemical cross-linking, report researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo and Chuo University, in the journal JACS Au.
Owing to a rigid tetrahedral motif that binds the linkers in a specific direction, the resulting string-like structures form condensates with exceptional fluidity and stability. These findings pave the way for adaptive soft materials with potential applications in drug delivery, artificial organelles, and bioengineering platforms.
Within living cells, certain biomolecules can organize themselves into specialized compartments called biomolecular condensates. These droplet-like structures play crucial roles in cellular functions, such as regulating gene expression and biochemical reactions; they essentially represent nature’s clever way of organizing cellular activity without the need for rigid membranes.
Imaging tech promises deepest looks yet into living brain tissue at single-cell resolution
Both for research and medical purposes, researchers have spent decades pushing the limits of microscopy to produce ever deeper and sharper images of brain activity, not only in the cortex but also in regions underneath such as the hippocampus. In a new study, a team of MIT scientists and engineers demonstrates a new microscope system capable of peering exceptionally deep into brain tissues to detect the molecular activity of individual cells by using sound.
“The major advance here is to enable us to image deeper at single-cell resolution,” said neuroscientist Mriganka Sur, a corresponding author along with mechanical engineering Professor Peter So and principal research scientist Brian Anthony. Sur is the Paul and Lilah Newton Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.
In the journal Light: Science and Applications, the team demonstrates that they could detect NAD℗H, a molecule tightly associated with cell metabolism in general, and electrical activity in neurons in particular, all the way through samples such as a 1.1 mm “cerebral organoid,” a 3D-mini brain-like tissue generated from human stem cells, and a 0.7 mm thick slice of mouse brain tissue.
Researchers uncover dozens of traits driven by maternal versus paternal genes
Researchers developed a high-accuracy method to infer whether genetic variants come from the mother or father without needing parental genomes, analysing 286,666 UK Biobank participants. They uncovered over 30 parent-of-origin effects on traits from growth and metabolism to diabetes, many showing opposite effects depending on parental source.