Research shows that living with friends may quietly be altering your gut bacteria. Research on a colony of tiny island birds in the Seychelles revealed they share more of their gut bacteria with the birds they spend the most time with. And the team say the same principle almost certainly applies to humans too. Dr Chuen Zhang Lee, from UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “Translated into human terms, this means that cosy nights in, shared washing‑up duties, and even sitting close on the sofa may bring your microbiomes quietly closer together." The new research provides unusually clear evidence of how social closeness itself - not just shared environment - drives the exchange of gut bacteria.

Thanks to supercomputing, the research was able to analyze the activity of 20,000 genes in more than one million cells with unprecedented resolution, revealing different aging dynamics between men and women, which will be key to achieving precision medicine.

This study highlights that many characteristics of immune system aging that were previously considered universal actually present specific dynamics according to biological sex.

During warm summer nights when the full moon rises, some species of polychaetes swim up from the seafloor to spawn. It’s a perilous journey, because hungry jellyfish are waiting in the water column. This has now been documented for the first time.

Crystals, bacterial colonies, flame fronts: the growth of surfaces was first described in the 1980s by the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation. Since then, it has been regarded as a fundamental model in physics, with implications for mathematics, biology, and computer science. Now—forty years later—a Würzburg-based research team from the Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat has achieved the first experimental demonstration of KPZ behavior on 2D surfaces in space and time. This was made possible by sophisticated materials engineering and a bold experimental approach: researchers injected polaritons—hybrid particles composed of light and matter—into the material. The results have been published in Science.

When the option is to adapt or starve, animals are no stranger to getting scrappy in the face of climate change. Researchers conducted fieldwork in East Antarctica, where they revealed an underdocumented link in the food web of the Southern Ocean: Adélie penguins and their shelled pteropod consumption. Shelled pteropods, specifically Thecosomata, are a suborder of free-swimming sea snails. The study aimed to better understand Adélie penguin foraging behaviour and, in doing so, provided the first clear video evidence of Adélie penguins actively feeding upon shelled pteropods during their foraging sessions.

All processes such as wound healing, hair growth, and the replacement of old cells with new ones depend on cell division. During this process, chromosomes inside the cell must be evenly divided between two daughter cells. Even slight errors can lead to cellular abnormalities.

 

A research team at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has recently uncovered new clues suggesting that a protein called tau plays an important role in this highly regulated process. The findings were published in the international journal Nature Communications.

While commercial honeybee hives nationwide are collapsing under attack from deadly parasites, a unique hybrid bee found only in Southern California has demonstrated the ability to survive.

The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) is pleased to announce the appointment of Hongmei Wang, Ph.D., as an Associate Editor of its journal, Stem Cell Reports. Dr. Wang is a professor of State Key Laboratory of Organ Regeneration and Reconstruction, Institute of Zoology (IOZ), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

‍An internationally recognized leader in developmental and reproductive biology, Dr. Wang brings deep expertise in early embryo and placental development, and advanced in vitro modeling systems. Her laboratory investigates the mechanisms that govern embryonic and placental development in non-human primates and humans, with the long-term goal of improving understanding of pregnancy health and exploring culture systems that support extra-uterine embryogenesis. Her work advances understanding of developmental diseases and holds potential for improving reproductive health outcomes.