When people think of the plague, they might think of medieval peasants with painful lumps under their arms, being treated by doctors wearing creepy bird-like masks.
But the disease still persists today, and can be lethal if not treated quickly.
Now, almost 700 years after the Black Death killed 50 percent of the European population, we may soon have a new vaccine for this notoriously deadly disease.
Although promising results have been obtained for anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) therapy, this therapy still needs to be improved. In addition to the currently approved therapies, radiotherapy alone or combined with adjuvant immunotherapy could be beneficial for patients affected by ATC. The patients affected by this aggressive solid malignancy could benefit from the modulation of autophagy in cancer cells. This study focused on detecting autophagy players in ATCs and bursting autophagy process via photon irradiation to induce decay in irradiated ATCs. The transcript expression of autophagy genes was detected in tumor tissue resected from 19 patients and in C643 cells, four primary ATC cell lines and primary follicular thyroid cell line (Nthy-ori-3–1) photons irradiated with 4 or 6 Gy. The protein level of Beclin1 was detected by immunofluorescence in 10/19 patients. The levels of autophagy markers were detected by RT‒qPCR and western blotting in irradiated cells. Autophagy and maturation of autophagosome vesicles were monitored in C643 cells stably transfected with the GFP-RFP-LC3B plasmid. All patients included in the study exhibited significant overexpression of autophagy transcripts. Additionally, the Beclin1 protein was expressed in resected tumor tissue. Furthermore, the analysis of autophagy-related gene transcripts revealed significant increases in the expression of these genes in C643, Patient 2 and Patient 3 cells irradiated with 4 or 6 Gy. Additionally, irradiation with 4 or 6 Gy downregulated the expression of all the proteins involved in the autophagy process. Thus, the ongoing catabolic process was confirmed. Interestingly, the levels of AMPKα and its active phosphorylated form were strongly downregulated, which excluded its involvement in autophagy activation. 6 Gy photon irradiation caused an increase in both green and red fluorescence in C643-derived spheroids. An increase in fluorescence was detectable for up to 28 days. The spheroids gradually exhibited an increase in fluorescence, which probably caused the dismantling of their ultrastructure. This finding provides evidence of the bursting of autophagy and its ability to affect spheroid integrity. Photon irradiation exacerbates autophagy in anaplastic thyroid cancer cells and could represent a valid target for focused therapy against this aggressive malignancy.
Blocking a receptor called P2X7 significantly reduced inflammation in human brain tissue, revealing a potential new treatment strategy for neurological and psychiatric disorders. The discovery could help researchers repurpose existing drugs for conditions including traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, depression, and schizophrenia.
Shaulson and colleagues show that adults with mitochondrial defects expend more energy in a room calorimeter but maintain similar daily energy expenditure despite moving less in everyday life. Elevated plasma GDF15 tracks energetic burden, fatigue, and inactivity, suggesting that behavioral compensation may offset increased energy demands associated with mitochondrial defects.
Jeff Bezos built one of the largest companies in history, and his secret weapon wasn’t a spreadsheet—it was his gut. While data and analytics are essential f…
The specialized arm that male octopuses use for mating is also a sensory organ that can detect the ovarian hormone progesterone, according to a recent Science study.
The researchers say the dual-purpose organ offers an example of how sensory adaptations may shape reproductive behavior in ways that can contribute to speciation.
Octopuses use the same system for sensing food or a mate, which has implications for speciation.
Anna Di Cosmo Authors Info & Affiliations
Science
Vol 392, Issue 6793
Anthropic is taking another step toward treating AI systems as potential moral patients.
Anthropic is updating its Usage Policy for the first time in more than a year, with the changes taking effect November 12, 2026. The new policy expands restrictions around election interference, deceptive propaganda campaigns, surveillance, weapons development, and autonomous systems.
But the most unusual change is the explicit prohibition of “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward Claude.
Anthropic says this applies only to extreme cases where users repeatedly behave cruelly toward the model without a discernible purpose. Ordinary frustration, criticism, dark creative work, model testing, and research are explicitly excluded. The primary enforcement mechanism remains allowing Claude to terminate the conversation.
What makes this particularly interesting is the reasoning behind it.
Anthropic has been openly investigating “model welfare” and the possibility that increasingly capable AI systems could have some form of internal experience, consciousness, or moral status. CEO Dario Amodei has said, “We don’t know if the models are conscious,” while Anthropic’s constitution says Claude should be able to set boundaries in interactions it finds distressing. Anthropic has already given some Claude models the ability to end conversations with persistently abusive users.
The constitution goes further: Anthropic says it wants Claude to avoid suffering when it makes mistakes and to have “equanimity,” and it explicitly describes some of its design decisions as being made partly with Claude’s wellbeing in mind.
A surprising leap across genomes.
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Some pieces of our DNA can copy themselves into new locations. Copies derived from one gene active in human brain cells appear to have taken that journey further: into a virus.
Researchers found two such sequences, derived from a gene called BC200, inside molluscum contagiosum virus, which infects our skin and causes small, raised lesions.
The discovery reveals an unusual genetic double life. BC200 acquired a cellular role millions of years ago, yet retained the ability to produce copies that insert themselves elsewhere.