The brain’s sneakiest houseguest: how a parasite rewrites neuron messages and alters neuroplasticity
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-Jun-2026 02:16 ET (18-Jun-2026 06:16 GMT/UTC)
Infection with the neurotropic pathogen Toxoplasma gondii induced release of extracellular vesicles (EVs) with microRNAs involved in regulating long term potentiation, depression and neuronal growth. The EVs down-regulated calcium-signaling calmodulin.
MSC-derived extracellular vesicles provide a novel cell-free nanotherapeutic strategy for hepatorenal syndrome and reveal a multi-organ protective mechanism through alleviating necroptosis, reprogramming immune responses, and resolving fibrosis.
A team of researchers led by the University of Plymouth have earned £3.7million from UK Research and Innovation to conduct an unprecedented assessment of the response and resilience of deep sea coral ecosystems. The five-year project will be delivered in collaboration with organisations across the Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius and will focus on coral reefs below the surface of the Indian Ocean, employing a number of methods to assess their vulnerability to climate change.
Pūkeko use sound elements to create calls and combine them to create complex call sequences in order to expand the range of options for expressing themselves – these are the findings of an international team including Konstanz researchers. Until now, this behaviour had only been known in vocal learning animals, such as primates, whales or songbirds.
The mini review brings together emerging evidence showing that glial cells actively influence disease progression and treatment response. Once considered simple support cells, glia are now recognized as dynamic regulators of brain health, playing both protective and harmful roles in neural function.
A decade-long study led by Penguin Watch1, at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, has uncovered a record shift in the breeding season of Antarctic penguins, likely in response to climate change. These changes threaten to disrupt penguins’ access to food and increase interspecies competition. The results have been published today (20 January - World Penguin Awareness Day) in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
Shingles vaccination not only protects against the disease but may also contribute to slower biological aging in older adults, according to a new USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology study.
Using data from the nationally representative U.S. Health and Retirement Study, researchers examined how shingles vaccination affected several aspects of biological aging in more than 3,800 study participants who were age 70 and older in 2016. Even when controlling for other sociodemographic and health variables, those who received the shingles vaccine showed slower overall biological aging on average in comparison to unvaccinated individuals.