Evolution seems to follow a script more often than expected. Researchers found that distantly related butterflies and moths have reused the same pair of genes for over 120 million years to produce strikingly similar warning colors. Rather than altering the genes themselves, evolution modifies how they’re switched on and off. This discovery hints that life may evolve in more predictable ways than previously believed.
In a striking glimpse into extreme physics, scientists have captured the split-second chaos that unfolds when powerful laser flashes blast matter into a superheated plasma. By combining two cutting-edge lasers, researchers were able to track how copper atoms lose and regain electrons in trillionths of a second, creating and dissolving highly charged ions in a rapid, almost cinematic sequence.
The metabolite citraconate can preserve T cell stemness and suppress exhaustion, promoting antitumor immunity and responses to immunotherapies in mice.
Learn more in Science Immunology.
Sci. Immunol. 11, eadz0348 (2026). DOI:10.1126/sciimmunol.adz0348
Select the format you want to export the citation of this publication.
An international team led by researchers from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) has identified a key mechanism that has shaped Earth’s continents over billions of years. This mechanism is the deep re-lamination of subducted continental crust, a process that explains the origin of certain magmas and offers a new perspective on continental evolution from the Archean (between 3.8 and 2.5 billion years ago) to recent times.
The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, combines numerical geodynamic modeling and high-pressure experiments to unravel how fragments of continental crust can give rise to hybrid magmas that fuel major magmatic events following continental collisions, generating new crust.
During continental collisions, one plate sinks beneath another—a process known as subduction. This study demonstrates that the less dense crust breaks away from the subducted plate and rises again, becoming integrated into the lithospheric mantle of the overlying plate in a process called relamination.
Course Home: https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/humanities-and-social-scienc…/index.htm.
There is a Lecture 8 not found on YT, so check out the Course Home for it.
In two recently published studies, the nucleoporins NUP98 and NUP153 have been identified as key host factors in orthoflavivirus infection.
NUP98 and NUP153 are normally part of the nuclear pore complex, which regulates the transport of proteins and RNA between the cell nucleus and the cytosol, the fluid in which the cell’s internal components are suspended. Since orthoflaviviruses copy their RNA in the cytosol, these proteins had not previously been linked to the viral life cycle.
The researchers now show that during infection, both nucleoporins are recruited to viral replication sites in the cytosol, where they bind directly to viral RNA. In addition, NUP153 also interacts with viral proteins.
“It was surprising to see how proteins that normally act as ‘gatekeepers’ to the nucleus instead become active participants in the virus’s replication machinery,” says the first author.
The studies show that NUP98 and NUP153 have distinct roles during infection. NUP98 is required for efficient replication of viral RNA, while NUP153 influences how much of the different viral proteins are produced.
NUP153 binds to a specific region of the viral RNA located between the sequences encoding structural and non-structural proteins. Through this interaction, the balance between different viral proteins is regulated, which is critical at an early stage of infection. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission.
A new autonomous laboratory recently navigated through billions of potential material synthesis recipes to identify brighter, lead-free light-emitting nanomaterials in just 12 hours. The work could accelerate development of safer light-emitting nanoplatelets for use in applications ranging from photodetectors to the production of fuel from solar energy. A paper describing this work appears in Nature Communications.
Nanoplatelets are sheet-like crystals only billionths of a meter thick; in this case, they belong to a family of lead-free “double perovskites,” materials whose atomic recipe can be tuned to control how they absorb and emit light.
“One of the big challenges in developing safer optical nanomaterials is the sheer size of the material universe,” says Milad Abolhasani, Alcoa Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University. Abolhasani is the corresponding author of the research.