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Musicians, we have some bad news. AI-powered music generators are here — and it looks like they’re gunning for a strong position in the content-creation industry.

“From streamers to filmmakers to app builders,” claims music generating app Mubert AI, which can transform limited text inputs into a believable-sounding composition, “we’ve made it easier than ever for content creators of all kinds to license custom, high-quality, royalty-free music.”

Of course, computer-generated music has been around for quite some time, making use of various forms of artificial intelligence to come up with results that can sound equally manmade and alien.

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If humans are ever going to be able to regrow damaged tissues the way lizards and fish routinely do, it will require the precise control of gene expression in time and place—otherwise you might end up with random cells growing everywhere or a new body part that never quits growing. That is, stopping the process just as important as starting it.

A team of Duke scientists studying how other animals regrow damaged tissues has made an important step toward controlling at least one part of the regenerative machinery with that kind of precision. They used the mechanisms zebrafish rely on to repair damage to their hearts combined with viral vectors used for in humans.

In a new paper appearing online Dec. 13 in Cell Stem Cell, the researchers demonstrate the ability to control gene activity in response to , limiting it to a specific region of and during a defined time window, rather than being continuously active in the entire organ.

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The findings shed a rare light on mitoribosomes, the unique ribosomes found within the cell’s mitochondria. Ribosomes, the tiny protein-producing factories within cells, are ubiquitous and look largely identical across the tree of life. Those that keep bacteria chugging along are, structurally, not much different from the ribosomes churning out proteins in our own human cells.

But even two organisms with similar ribosomes may display significant structural differences in the RNA and protein components of their mitoribosomes. Specialized ribosomes within the mitochondria (the energy producing entities within our cells), mitoribosomes help the mitochondria produce proteins that manufacture ATP, the energy currency of the cell.

Scientists in the laboratory of Sebastian Klinge wondered how mitoribosomes evolved, how they assemble within the cell, and why their structures are so much less uniform across species. To answer these questions, they used cryo-electron microscopy to generate 3D snapshots of the small subunits of yeast and human mitoribosomes as they were being assembled. Their findings, published in Nature, shed light on the fundamentals of mitoribosome assembly, and may have implications for rare diseases linked to malfunctioning mitoribosomes.

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New research has finally pinned down an physiological change that explains why we are so much more prone to certain respiratory infections when the weather is lousy. The discovery is the first biological mechanism to explain why the common cold, flu and COVID-19 see such significant seasonal spikes when the weather is colder in certain regions, and could help us work on better preventative measures.

“Conventionally, it was thought that cold and flu season occurred in cooler months because people are stuck indoors more where airborne viruses could spread more easily,” said Dr Benjamin Bleier, director of Otolaryngology Translational Research at Mass Eye and Ear and senior author of the study, in a statement.

“Our study however points to a biological root cause for the seasonal variation in upper respiratory viral infections we see each year, most recently demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago have built a machine that captures carbon from flue gas and converts it to ethylene.

The device integrates a system with an ethylene conversation system for the first time. Moreover, the system not only runs on electricity, but it also removes more carbon from the environment than it generates—making it what scientists call net-negative on carbon emissions.

Among manufactured chemicals worldwide, ethylene ranks third for after ammonia and cement. Ethylene is used not only to create plastic products for the packaging, agricultural and automotive industries but also to produce chemicals used in antifreeze, medical sterilizers and vinyl siding for houses, for example.

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