Carriers of Robertsonian chromosomes are often unaware they’re different. Although generally healthy, they can be infertile or suffer miscarriages. When they do have children, they’re at increased risk of having Down syndrome. Now, in a landmark study, scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified the precise location where human chromosomes break and recombine to form Robertsonian chromosomes. The findings, published in Nature on September 24, 2025, not only explain how these rearrangements form and remain stable—but also point to how repetitive DNA once dismissed as “junk” may play a central role in genome organization and evolution.

An international team of researchers led by Dr Manel Esteller, head of the Cancer Epigenetics Group at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, has just published the most comprehensive analysis to date of the longest-lived person ever recorded, the Catalan woman Maria Branyas, who passed away at the end of 2024 at the age of 117. The peer-reviewed study, published in the prestigious international journal Cell Reports Medicine, concludes that the biology of supercentenarians is more complex than previously thought, and that the key may lie in a delicate balance between opposing forces.

Australian shark experts have tested four bite-resistant materials to assess their ability to reduce injuries and blood loss. 

While internal and crushing injuries may still occur, bite-resistant wetsuits can now be added to the ‘toolkit’ of measures available to reduce shark-bite risk and resulting injuries, say researchers from Flinders University’s Southern Shark Ecology Group.

UC San Diego and colleagues across the nation have announced the first data release from the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, offering a detailed look at early human brain development.

Microscopy is a vital tool for exploring the mysteries of life, enabling scientists to observe the dynamic changes of cells and organelles across spatial and temporal scales. However, because cells are primarily composed of water and exhibit low refractive-index contrast, it remains challenging to clearly visualize their internal structures. In recent years, Intensity Diffraction Tomography (IDT), an emerging label-free 3D imaging technique, has attracted increasing attention. Instead of relying on fluorescent dyes, IDT directly exploits the intrinsic refractive-index distribution of cells for imaging, thereby avoiding phototoxicity and photobleaching and making it particularly suitable for long-term live-cell observation. When combined with 3D fluorescence microscopy, this dual-modal approach can simultaneously provide molecular specificity and global structural information, offering a powerful tool for deciphering cellular components and their interactions. Nevertheless, long-term imaging (from several hours to days) is often hindered by the optical complexity of cells, environmental thermal drift, and mechanical instabilities of the microscope, which lead to time-varying aberrations and focal drift. Achieving stable, high-quality tracking of subcellular structures over extended periods therefore remains a key challenge.