A Food-System Carbon Shift

Tropical islands support important terrestrial and coastal carbon stores while facing strong pressures from development, land conversion, tourism, and climate change. In Hainan Island, food production, aquaculture, processing, and associated supply-chain activities have become increasingly important sources of greenhouse gas emissions within a rapidly developing regional economy.

Authors Zichen Li, Zhaohai Bai, and colleagues from Hainan University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Nanjing University reconstructed the carbon budget of Hainan's food system from 1952 to 2020. Their life cycle assessment framework incorporated offshore ecosystems, land-use and land-use change, crop cultivation, livestock, aquaculture, food processing and consumption, wastewater treatment, and on-farm and off-farm energy use.

Seven Decades of Rising Emissions

Gross food-system emissions increased from 3.29 Mt CO₂ eq in 1952 to 15.13 Mt CO₂ eq in 2020. The analysis attributes this rise principally to fertilizer-related emissions, expansion of tropical crop cultivation, aquaculture growth, and increased energy demand along the food value chain. Nitrogen fertilizer application increased from 223 kg ha⁻¹ to 627 kg ha⁻¹ over the historical period.

Tracking a Missing Kinetic Dimension

Dissolved black carbon (DBC) is a mobile, redox-active fraction of carbon formed during biomass combustion and pyrolysis. Although electron-donating and electron-accepting capacities describe how much charge a material can exchange, they do not indicate how quickly that exchange occurs. Work led by Yufei Wu, Peng Zhang, Zhaofeng Chang, and Bo Pan at Kunming University of Science & Technology quantified the apparent heterogeneous electron-transfer rate constant, k₀, as a kinetic measure of DBC reactivity.

Comparing Carbon Sources and Temperatures

The team examined 10 DBC samples produced from rice straw and sawdust at pyrolysis temperatures of 200–600 °C. Cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry were conducted with a three-electrode system, while particle-size analysis and mediated electrochemical measurements characterized diffusion and electron-exchange properties. Fourier transform-ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS) was used to resolve molecular formulas and assign compound classes. Microbial electrochemical systems containing Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 were used to assess how DBC affected extracellular electron transfer.

A team led by Professors Weidong Zhang (Naval Medical University) and Yu Zhang (Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine) has discovered PamUGT, the first triterpenoid glycosyltransferase ever identified from the medicinal plant Phytolacca americana(American pokeweed). Remarkably, this single enzyme can attach sugar molecules to an unusually broad range of natural products — triterpenes, flavonoids, diterpenes, and even phenols and alkaloids — acting as a “molecular sewing machine” for natural product glycosylation. Published in Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines (2026, 24(8): 999-1005), the finding fills a key gap in pokeweed saponin biosynthesis and offers a versatile, ready-to-use biocatalytic tool for drug modification and synthetic biology.

Salk researchers identify what flips a molecular “switch” that causes anti-cancer interferon activity to transition into pro-cancer activity, a longstanding mystery in cancer biology. Chronic interferon activates a mitochondrial signaling pathway that, when turned off, effectively reverses tumor growth and immunotherapy resistance in a mouse model of melanoma. The study could reveal new therapeutic targets to sustain anti-tumor immune responses.

A first-of-its-kind developmental brain atlas from the Stowers Institute maps both gene activity and the DNA switches controlling it across 232,251 cells, revealing that neuronal identity is rapidly established after birth rather than simply inherited from a parent stem cell.

A University of Washington-led research team has discovered the best-preserved fossil feathers from the Mesozoic era — in fossilized dinosaur poop. Some of these feathers have features that look like modern birds’ feathers. This finding can help researchers better understand why and how some birds survived the catastrophic event 66 million years ago that killed 75% of life on the planet.