The molecular world of bitter compounds has so far only been partially explored. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich in Freising and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle (Saale) have now isolated three new bitter compounds from the mushroom Amaropostia stiptica and investigated their effect on human bitter taste receptors. In doing so, they discovered one of the potentially most bitter substances known to date. The study results expand our knowledge of natural bitter compounds and their receptors, thus making an important contribution to food and health research.

A team of researchers at Gladstone Institutes has released a novel computational tool called CHOIR that can improve the detection of "off-key" cells. CHOIR, short for “cluster hierarchy optimization by iterative random forests,” categorizes thousands or even millions of cells into separate, biologically distinct groups, helping home in on specific cell types or conditions that may underlie disease.