Koalas are a nationally endangered and iconic species in Australia, yet their populations are rapidly declining due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and disease, and very little is known about the fine-scale movements of koalas – especially when they’re on the ground. New research reveals that koalas only spend around 10 minutes per day on the ground, but this ground-time is associated with two-thirds of recorded koala deaths.

Enzymes catalyze chemical reactions in organisms - without which life would not be possible. Leveraging AlphaFold2 artificial intelligence, researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now succeeded in analyzing the laws of their evolution on a large scale. In the journal Nature*, they describe the parts of enzymes that change comparatively quickly and the parts that remain practically unchanged over time. These findings are relevant to the development of new antibiotics, for example.