Endangered Pacific pocket mice, native to Southern California, were once thought to be extinct until a tiny remnant population was rediscovered in the mid-1990s. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance established a conservation breeding and reintroduction program to save the species from extinction. Though there has been significant success with breeding and reintroduction, the species is still at risk of losing genetic diversity, which reduces its survival and reproduction. In a new study published in the prestigious scientific journal Science on August 21, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance researchers demonstrate how genetic rescue can be used as an effective strategy for the conservation of this species. This strategy includes introducing Pacific pocket mice from genetically distinct populations for breeding purposes to boost genetic diversity and, in turn, the health of the population.  

Harvard physicists have developed a computational method that can uncover the rules that cells use to self-organize, translating the complex process of cell growth into an optimization problem a computer can solve.