Using noninvasive monitoring in eastern Honduras, researchers found that small mammals, not large wildlife like tapirs, drive cassava crop loss, highlighting the need for evidence-based, wildlife-friendly solutions. The full detailed results have been published in the open-access peer-reviewed journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation.

The M-channel, a heteromeric K_v7 potassium channel primarily assembled from KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 subunits, serves as a critical ‘molecular brake’ that restrains neuronal hyperexcitability. Dysfunction of M-channels is associated with developmental and epileptic encephalopathies, underscoring their importance as therapeutic targets.

Despite their physiological and clinical significance, structural insights into heteromeric M-channels have remained elusive. Previous studies were limited to homomeric KCNQ channels, leaving fundamental questions regarding subunit assembly and pharmacological modulation unresolved. On May 27, 2026, Huang and Fan’s team at the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (SMART) reported high-resolution cryo-EM structures of human heteromeric M-channels in Vita, revealing their assembly architectures and a previously unrecognized PIP₂-assisted cooperative gating mechanism.

 

A landmark research protocol establishes China’s first standardized operational protocol (SOP) for fetal brain tissue banking, addressing critical gaps in ethical oversight, sample quality control, and technical consistency to provide a unified framework that enhances research reproducibility and accelerates neuroscience discovery in neurodevelopmental disorders.

An international team, including the University of Tokyo, has created a sensor inspired by the lateral line in fish – their “sixth sense” organ – which measures the pulse of lab-grown 3D heart tissue (cardiac organoids). The device, called a biomechanical well plate, looks like a small white box containing four liquid-filled wells. When an organoid is placed in a well, each beat causes the liquid to bulge into an air cavity below, changing the air pressure. This change bends a cantilever sensor, which sends live data wirelessly to an app. The device is precise, reusable and less labor-intensive than some other methods. Due to its scalability, hundreds of tests could potentially be monitored simultaneously, with advantages for drug screening and future personalized medicine. 

Gram, Denmark — An associated set of gigantic vertebrae belonging to the iconic extinct Megalodon or megatooth shark that had been missing in action since the 1980s was discovered, providing new information about the shark’s lifestyle. Two Museum of Southern Jutland staff, Mette Elstrup and Trine Sørensen, and a researcher at Aarhus University, Henrik Lauridsen, teamed up with a scientist in the United States and another in Australia and took a renewed look at a once-lost vertebral specimen of Otodus megalodon, the fossil shark that lived nearly worldwide about 15 to 3.6 million years ago.  The new study appears in the international journal Palaeontologia Electronica.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects millions worldwide, with renal fibrosis representing a final common pathway of chronic renal injury. Defective fatty acid oxidation (FAO) in renal tubular epithelial cells has been shown to promote kidney fibrosis, but whether FAO impairment in kidney vascular endothelial cells contributes to renal pathology has remained unclear.

Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT), the fat layer surrounding blood vessels, is increasingly recognized as an active regulator of vascular function rather than a passive structural cushion. Yet whether PVAT contains functionally important sympathetic nerves has remained debated, largely because conventional two-dimensional imaging can miss sparse, spatially complex neural structures.

A new study led by the University of Plymouth has used more than six decades of data to show that plankton abundance is declining across vast swathes of the North East Atlantic – a region covering the Atlantic Ocean from Portugal to Norway, and the entirety of the North Sea.