What is actually hidden beneath Antarctica’s ice?Scientists are creating the clearest maps yet of the landscape beneath Antarctica, revealing enormous mounta…
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Peritumoral adipose tissue: A bidirectional regulator of cancer
This review synthesizes evidence that peritumoral adipose tissue and tumors dynamically reshape one another through metabolic, immune, and stromal interactions across cancer types. It highlights how this bidirectional crosstalk creates tumor-supportive niches and may reveal therapeutic opportunities for disrupting the adipose-tumor axis.
Cancer-Associated Adipocytes in the Tumor Microenvironment
These stimuli suppress adipogenic markers while activating pathways associated with inflammation, fibrosis, and extracellular matrix remodeling. As a result, CAAs acquire fibroblast-like features and contribute actively to tumor progression.
CAAs are most commonly found at the invasive front of tumors, where cancer cells interact directly with surrounding adipose tissue. This strategic localization allows CAAs to:
These moths smell with their wings
Never-before-seen ability may allow the insects to home in on their favorite plants
New Roles for the Cell’s Powerhouse Uncovered in Catalog of Mitochondria
A research consortium has generated a catalog of mitochondrial proteins across eukaryotic organisms, capturing the organelle’s diversity across the tree of life and revealing clues to its origin and role in the evolution of complex-celled organisms.
Radical New Tactic Would Stop Deadly Cancers Before They Start
Cancer interception clinical trials aim to prevent abnormal growths from developing into tumors by combining early detection and immunotherapy.
Gram-Negative Bacterial Resistance
The rapid worldwide spread of antimicrobial resistance among gram-negative bacteria is driven by a complex interplay of human, environmental, and health care–associated factors and accelerated by mobile genetic elements that facilitate the dissemination of resistance genes. Resistance in gram-negative bacteria arises primarily through reduced drug entry, active drug efflux, modification of antibiotic targets, and enzymatic drug inactivation, most notably through β-lactamase production. Clinically important resistant pathogens include extended-spectrum β-lactamase–producing Enterobacterales, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales, Pseudomonas aeruginosa with difficult-to-treat resistance, and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii.
Customizable DNA labels can selectively guide drug carriers to cancer cells
Cells naturally send tiny packages to one another to share information. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a simple, low-cost way to turn those packages into drug carriers that can deliver treatments directly to cancer cells, potentially improving effectiveness while reducing side effects.
“Modern anticancer drugs are strong already. What we really need is precision. So, how do we deliver things to cells precisely? I believe that the best solution is the one that nature has already made for us,” said Christopher Blum, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemistry.
Blum developed a new platform that modifies naturally occurring cellular transport vesicles so they can deliver therapeutic cargo to specific cells while avoiding unintended targets. The research is published in ACS Applied Bio Materials.
Light from Disordered Media
Researchers have proposed that structural disorder can be harnessed to generate coherent, directional light from the passage of a charged particle.
Thought Experiment: Bright Visions of Future Energy
The same pursuit of greater efficiency motivates current research on artificial photosynthesis. Natural photosynthesis can already provide chemical fuel: In the US, for example, maize is grown and converted to ethanol. But it takes a plot of 9.6 hectares, or 24 acres, to produce enough ethanol to fill one gasoline truck. Maize must also be ground up and fermented to produce the ethanol. Artificial photosynthesis aims to bypass such efficiency-sapping steps by converting sunlight more directly into fuels and other useful chemicals.
Photosynthesis requires splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. However, the oxygen generated during this process is highly corrosive, attacking—or “rusting”—the catalysts responsible for lowering the reaction’s energy barrier. Natural photosynthesis mitigates this damage by continually resynthesizing the core protein complex of photosystem II whenever it degrades. Although finding a cheap, robust catalyst for artificial photosynthesis remains elusive, researchers are making steady progress. In fact, artificial systems have already surpassed natural plants in solar-to-fuel efficiency by a factor of 5. To close the remaining gaps, scientists are actively developing innovative hybrid nanomaterials to serve as next-generation catalysts.
Since artificial photosynthesis remains far from established more than a century after Ciamician offered his vision, one might have grounds for despondency. But I’m optimistic, in part because the path from basic research to practical technology can be long. Engineer and inventor George Cayley expounded the physics of flying machines in his treatise “On Aerial Navigation” (1809–1810). The Wright brothers acknowledged their debt to Cayley, but nearly a century passed before they demonstrated a motorized aircraft capable of sustained flight in 1903.