A research team from the School of Biomedical Sciences at the LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), has uncovered the mechanism underlying how cancer patients respond to a widely used cancer drug, known as paclitaxel, offering insights that may help overcome cancer drug resistance. The study found that small differences in microtubules, the structures inside cells that help the cells divide and move, can determine the efficacy of paclitaxel. This finding was published in Nature Chemical Biology.

Kyoto, Japan -- A hallmark of Type 2 diabetes is the progressive loss of beta cell mass: cells in the pancreas that produce and release insulin.  The endoplasmic reticulum stress response, a cellular pathway that maintains protein homeostasis, plays a critical role in beta cell function and survival, and the protein ATF6α is one of the key regulators of this stress response. However, the significance of ATF6α signaling in the stress-adaptive regulation of beta cell mass has remained unclear, prompting a team of researchers at Kyoto University to investigate.

"Our previous single-cell RNA-sequencing data suggested transient ATF6α upregulation during adaptive beta-cell proliferation, which sparked our interest in its potential role," says first author Daisuke Otani.

The team generated mice lacking ATF6α, specifically in beta cells. They assessed beta cell mass, proliferation and apoptosis, or cell death, of the mice under chronic stress conditions, including high-fat diet and pregnancy. The team also performed complementary in vitro experiments using chronically stressed beta cell lines, and single-cell RNA sequencing using the high-fat diet model.

Kyoto, Japan -- The intrinsic information-seeking impulse we call curiosity is independent of extrinsic rewards, such as food or mating opportunities. Curiosity is purely the pursuit of understanding the unknown, driving both humans and animals to explore their environments. Still, certain stimuli tend to spark curiosity more than others.

Recent research supports a Goldilocks principle, in which curiosity is biased toward moderately complex or uncertain stimuli while avoiding overly simple or convoluted situations. This tendency characterizes human curiosity, but few studies have explored this impulse in nonhuman animals. A team of researchers at Kyoto University's Institute for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior, EHUB, wondered if a new sort of method might be useful in addressing curiosity in monkeys.

Video games are gaining more acceptance as tools that may help train cognitive abilities, and thus improve quality of life for humans. The researchers thought that if they could develop a video game that sparked the curiosity and engagement of animals in laboratories and zoos -- or even pets such as cats and dogs -- this could potentially help improve living environments and contribute to animal welfare.

Video and audio monitoring of the Arctic seafloor captures rarely seen phenomena: fish swimming backwards, narwhal calls nearby, and a beautiful array of deep-sea dwellers and tide-driven "marine snow”

“Citizen scientist” high school teacher recorded 5 years of migration data for Black Skimmer birds in the Eastern US, documenting the farthest dispersal for breeding for the species

The field unites principles in biology, engineering and earth sciences to develop scalable solutions to urgent environmental, social and economic challenges.

A single water sample can reveal DNA from animals, plants, fungi and even human waste, offering a rapid snapshot of ecosystem health.