Kyoto, Japan -- The Japanese island of Tsushima is home to the Tsushima leopard cat, a critically endangered species that can only be found on this isolated island. The most recent government survey estimated the population to be only around 150 individuals, and since domestic cats also inhabit the same landscape, introgression is a legitimate conservation concern.

That's why a team of researchers from Kyoto University became worried when, during a field survey, they spotted at least three Tsushima leopard cats with shortened tails, a trait relatively common in domestic cats but that had not yet been observed in leopard cats. The team was able to capture one of these cats for examination and discovered that its tail was half the normal length. This motivated them to investigate whether this tail abnormality reflected recent domestic cat ancestry, or a variation arising within the leopard cat population.

"An unusual phenotype can immediately raise concerns about hybridization, but we wanted to determine objectively what the genome actually tells us before drawing conclusions from appearance alone," says first author Yuki Matsumoto*.

As reproductive medicine evolves worldwide, traditional anonymity in sperm donation is giving way to a growing recognition of an individual's right to know their genetic origins. Hosted by Kumamoto University, this international hybrid symposium brings together leading experts from Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Join multidisciplinary discussions on legal frameworks, ethical challenges, and support systems shaping the global shift toward donor identity disclosure. Free and open to the public with simultaneous interpretation.

Malaria remains one of the most devastating infectious diseases globally, with Plasmodium falciparum responsible for the majority of malaria-related deaths, particularly among children under five in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite decades of intensive control efforts and the widespread deployment of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), the emergence and spread of artemisinin resistance in Southeast Asia and its potential dissemination to Africa represent an urgent threat to global malaria control, underscoring the critical need for novel antimalarial drugs with innovative mechanisms of action. This perspective article explores a novel therapeutic strategy targeting the hemozoin detoxification pathway in Plasmodium falciparum, a process that is essential for parasite survival within infected erythrocytes and that has been validated as a drug target by the clinical success of chloroquine and other quinoline antimalarials. The authors propose that chlorophyll derivatives, specifically chlorin e6 and related compounds, could act as tetrapyrrole mimics that disrupt hemozoin formation by interfering with the biomineralization process through which the parasite detoxifies the toxic free heme released from hemoglobin digestion.

Pontocerebellar hypoplasia type 12 (PCH12) is an ultra-rare, perinatally lethal neurodegenerative disorder characterized by profound microcephaly, pontocerebellar hypoplasia, and arthrogryposis, with onset typically occurring during prenatal development. Previous reports have associated PCH12 with biallelic complete loss-of-function variants in the COASY gene, which encodes coenzyme A synthase, a critical enzyme in the coenzyme A biosynthetic pathway. These variants have been identified in 14 fetuses and newborns from eight unrelated families worldwide. In contrast, COASY partial loss-of-function variants have been linked to COASY protein-associated neurodegeneration (CoPAN), a subtype of neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation (NBIA) characterized by later onset and more protracted clinical course. Emerging evidence suggests COASY-related disorders may represent a phenotypic continuum between the severe PCH12 spectrum and the milder CoPAN spectrum, determined by the degree of residual COASY enzymatic activity. In this case report, the authors used exome sequencing to identify a novel variant combination in the COASY gene in a patient presenting with clinical features consistent with PCH12: a previously reported missense variant (c.641C>T, p.Ala214Val) in compound heterozygosity with a previously unreported rare nonsense variant (c.1015C>T, p.Arg339*).

Researchers have discovered that a bacterium from the human urinary tract can turn a common steroid precursor into testosterone. The finding does not show that bacteria cause prostate cancer, but it opens a new line of research into whether microbes can influence the hormone environment around the prostate. Computational biophysicists at Auburn University helped explain how the bacterial enzymes perform this surprising chemistry.

Three researchers at the Göttingen Campus have been awarded ERC Starting Grants by the European Research Council (ERC): Dr Sophie de Vries, evolutionary biologist at Göttingen University, for “Plant Immune Responses in Perpetual symbiosis (PIRPetum)"; Dr Tristan Stöber, computational neuroscientist at Göttingen University for “World Models in Brains and Machines: From Normative Hippocampus Models to Robust Planning in Artificial Intelligence and Back (WoM-BaM)”; Professor Elisa Oberbeckmann at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), for “A chromosome-wide in vitro reconstitution system to dissect human nucleosome positioning mechanisms (vitroCHROM)”. Projects run for five years and are worth around 1.5 million euros each.

Scientists have discovered that one of the most unusual creatures in the animal kingdom is far more diverse and evolutionarily complex than previously known. An international team led by the University of Göttingen has reconstructed the evolutionary history of branching marine worms – rare annelids that live hidden inside sea sponges and whose bodies branch repeatedly into multiple posterior ends. Until now, only three species of branching worms have been identified. By combining DNA sequencing of museum specimens with newly collected specimens and detailed anatomical analyses, the researchers discovered ten new species and solved a long-standing puzzle dating back to the nineteenth century. The results were published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Symbiotic ammonia-oxidizing archaea in marine sponges are not strict specialists, but true "flexitarians": A team led by microbiologists Bettina Glasl and Katharina Kitzinger from the University of Vienna, in collaboration with partners from Australia, has shown that these microbes dine not only on ammonia but also on amino acids such as valine, leucine, and isoleucine - and presumably do that to communicate with their animal host. The findings shed new light on one of the oldest animal-microbe symbiotic relationships on Earth and point to a previously underestimated role played by archaea. The study was published in the prestigious journal Science Advances.