Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects 6%−20% of reproductive-aged women, and is commonly accompanied by irregular menstrual cycles and anovulatory infertility. The mechanisms underlying menstrual cycle irregularities associated with PCOS, and how they may change after pregnancy remain incompletely understood.

The intestinal epithelium undergoes rapid renewal every 3–5 days, a process driven by intestinal stem cells (ISCs) located at the base of crypts. While ISCs play an essential role in epithelial regeneration following injury, such as that induced by chemotherapy or radiation, the underlying regulatory mechanisms remain incompletely understood.

A peer-reviewed narrative review published in Brain Medicine draws anthropology, archival history, and comparative genomics into a single frame in order to reassess what industrialization actually did to human sleep. Field data from three hunter-gatherer societies place nightly sleep at roughly 6.4 to 7.1 hours, similar to or shorter than industrialized averages, which shifts the argument away from duration and toward timing, regularity, and circadian alignment. The synthesis reconsiders the segmented sleep hypothesis, follows conserved regulators such as DEC2 and hypocretin across lineages, and reviews evidence that urban noise, light, heat, and housing distribute sleep health unequally. Split sleep remains untested.

For decades, scientists have understood proteins primarily through two defining features: their amino acid sequence and their three-dimensional structure. This framework has driven major advances in biology, biotechnology, and medicine, culminating in recent artificial intelligence tools capable of predicting protein structures with remarkable accuracy. Yet a fundamental challenge remains: even when a protein's sequence and structure are known, predicting its function, interactions, and behavior often remains difficult. An international team of researchers from Japan, Finland, Italy, and the United States now reports evidence that part of this missing information may lie in an often-overlooked component of proteins: the highly organized water surrounding them. In a study accepted for publication in Nature Communications, the team provides the first direct three-dimensional visualization of sequence-dependent hydration architectures surrounding peptide assemblies at sub-nanometer resolution using advanced three-dimensional atomic force microscopy (3D-AFM). The findings reveal that water near peptide and protein surfaces is not simply a passive solvent. Instead, it forms highly organized, multilayered structures whose organization is dictated by the underlying amino acid sequence and surface chemistry. These hydration architectures extend multiple layers from the peptide surface and contain distinct structural signatures associated with hydrophobic, polar, aromatic, and charged amino acid residues. 

A recent review highlights amino acid sensors as central regulators linking nutrient availability to tumor adaptation. By coordinating metabolic homeostasis, epigenetic remodeling, antitumor immunity, and redox balance, amino acid-sensing networks support tumor growth, plasticity, and immune evasion. Targeting these sensing pathways may expose metabolic vulnerabilities and provide new opportunities for combination cancer therapy.

Developmental disorders, including autism, entail challenges in social life; as the number of affected individuals has risen, this has become a significant societal concern. Using a mouse model, we demonstrate that a mutation in CHD8, a gene associated with autism spectrum disorder, causes abnormal differentiation of ventral progenitor cells, leading to autistic-like behavior in adulthood. This should lead to the elucidation of mechanisms underlying autism onset during brain development and to the advancement of therapeutics.

Northern spotted owl populations are approaching or have already crossed functional extinction across large areas of the Pacific Northwest, a new study found. Researchers used artificial intelligence and advanced monitoring methods to assess long-term trends at an unprecedented scale.

Scientists have recently reconstructed the ancestral karyotype of the banana family, revealing how chromosome numbers decreased stepwise from 17 to 9–11 over evolutionary time. The study was led by scientists from the South China Botanical Garden (SCBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with researchers from Sichuan University and other institutions. The findings were published in Current Biology.

Embracing the transformational potential of new molecular profiling and artificial-intelligence-based data processing technologies on clinical and scientific innovation, Weill Cornell Medicine has created a new research department, the Department of Systems and Computational Biomedicine. Dr. Dan Landau, an internationally recognized cancer researcher and geneticist whose pioneering advances include single-cell-profiling technology innovation and an artificial intelligence-powered liquid biopsy for detecting tumor DNA in blood, will serve as the department’s inaugural chair, effective Sept. 1.