A new review traces the development of carbohydrate-based medicines originating from marine organisms, from early bioactivity studies to approved products and current clinical trials. It links structural features such as sulfation, molecular weight and branching with therapeutic use, and outlines the production, quality-control, mechanistic and pharmacokinetic challenges that still limit clinical translation.

Four years of monitoring after the 2019 Brumadinho tailings dam collapse show that Brazil's Paraopeba River has not returned to a stable state. Bottom-dwelling invertebrate communities were reshuffled continuously at every site, and the reaches that received tailings show no sign of settling. Tributaries held most of the species, including many found nowhere else, and act as reservoirs that resupply the damaged channel. Protecting them is now the priority for restoring the basin.

Long before dinosaurs appeared on Earth, fierce predatory fish developed crushing jaws and sharp teeth to survive and diversify in ancient oceans.

Flinders University researchers have used a new combination of techniques to find out how these armoured fish called placoderms – the first vertebrates to evolve jaws and teeth more than 400 million years ago – caught their prey on an exotic ancient reef that once covered what is now northern Western Australia.  

Our oceans are in trouble and new research from Flinders University shows how changes in diatoms (microalgae) could further undermine the foundation of aquatic life’s food webs – as well as vital deep-sea carbon capture or sequestration.

A new study published in Marine Ecology used high-tech methods to test common microalgal species to assess how various stressors, including acidification from excessive carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels, affect absorption of trace metals and therefore undermine their overall health and role in Earth’s carbon cycling.  

It was not fully understood how deep-sea microorganisms maintain their structure and function under high-pressure conditions. A research team from Kyushu University, conducted an experimental study focusing on PoXeR, a protein from a deep-sea bacterium. As increasing pressure was applied to the protein, the researchers found that it assembled itself into groups of three, called a trimeric structure to stabilize itself. This adaptive strategy revealed how deep-sea proteins remain stable under extreme pressure.

Kyoto, Japan -- As tiny as they are, marine plankton play pivotal roles in biogeochemical cycles and in sustaining aquatic ecosystems, producing around half of the oxygen on Earth and also acting as carbon sinks. When they die, their decomposing cells produce dissolved organic carbon that can be transformed and stored in the ocean for thousands of years, so understanding plankton mortality is essential for uncovering the mechanisms behind marine ecosystems.

However, assessing the death of a particular plankton population out of a community consisting of hundreds of coexisting species poses a complex challenge. A team of researchers at Kyoto University addressed this by focusing on viral infection and cell lysis, the process through which a cell's membrane breaks down and releases its genetic information into the environment.

First, the team developed a method for measuring plankton lysis by growing cultures of two phytoplankton species, diatoms and raphidophytes, in a seawater-based medium, and then extracting rRNA and quantifying it using digital PCR. Since rRNA released into seawater degrades over time, the researchers added a culture of spike-in ribosomes to the medium and measured the degradation rate constant. The resulting flux model incorporated both changes in host cell-free rRNA and the degradation constant, making it possible to accurately assess the rate of cell lysis.