An international team of scientists, co-led by researchers at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Florida, has cracked a decades-old mystery in human biology: how our bodies absorb a micronutrient that we rely on for everything from healthy brain function to guarding against cancer. Queuosine, a microscopic molecule first discovered in the 1970s, is a vitamin-like micronutrient that we can't make ourselves but can only get from food and our gut bacteria. It’s vital to our health, yet its importance went unnoticed for decades. Now, in a study published this week in leading international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have discovered the gene that allows queuosine to enter the cells, a discovery that opens the door for potential therapies to be created to leverage the micronutrient’s role in cancer suppression, memory and how the brain learns new information.