Join us in Florence, Italy for this year's Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) Annual Conference!

A recent publication has revealed the first photographic evidence and confirmed sighting of the Cozumel dwarf fox in over twenty years. This exciting discovery confirms that this elusive and endangered mammal continues to survive on the island of Cozumel, Mexico. The full publication is available in the open-access journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation.

Some barley beers labeled as “gluten-free” contain small amounts of gluten residues that may trigger celiac disease, which are not detected by the standard antibody-based tests currently in use. This is the conclusion of a study by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich. In the study, researchers compared two antibody-based testing methods with a mass spectrometric detection method newly developed at the Institute. The study results show that modern food analytical methods could help further improve the safety of gluten-free products in the future.

The horses at the Children’s Zoo in Gothenburg don’t mind being pet by children and adults. However, they do get stressed by the noise from an excavator. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have discovered this after fitting heart rate monitors to eight Gotland russ horses.

A three-year study has cracked open the hidden biology behind coral reproduction, revealing hormone cycles that echo those of humans and other animals, and a new way to detect reef distress before it's too late.

Sesame dynamically rewires lignan metabolism during germination

Newly identified enzyme networks drive large-scale conversion of sesamin-derived compounds

Researchers at the Suntory Foundation for Life Sciences (SUNBOR) have uncovered a previously unknown metabolic system that enables sesame seeds to extensively remodel lignan metabolism during germination (Figure 1).

This study presents a new evolutionary experiment in which RNA molecules were frequently mixed. The results show that RNA evolved toward reduced diversity, rendering the population increasingly susceptible to extinction. This outcome is attributed to the combined effects of a reduced RNA population caused by frequent mixing, the emergence of competitive parasitic RNAs, and the accumulation of deleterious mutations, likely through genetic drift.

Researchers found that, although antibody evolution is highly chaotic at the level of individual cells, germinal centers reliably produce stronger antibodies through repeated rounds of mutation and selection that are only slightly biased toward success. The findings provide a new quantitative framework for understanding immune evolution, with potential implications for vaccine design. This work also lays the groundwork for how germinal centers could serve as an experimentally tractable system for studying evolution more broadly and in real time.