A new review proposes Functional Food Microecology, an interdisciplinary framework connecting functional foods, gut microbes and host health. It describes how probiotics, prebiotics, postbiotics, synbiotics and fermented foods influence gut-organ signaling, and how multi-omics, AI and synthetic biology could enable precision nutrition. The authors argue that microbiome-targeted diets could reduce antibiotic dependence and support sustainable food systems within One Health.

An eight-year multicenter study of 163,714 hospitalized children in China reveals the broad clinical and economic burden of enterovirus infections beyond hand, foot and mouth disease. Infants and toddlers accounted for most admissions, while rare complications such as encephalitis, meningitis and myocarditis were associated with longer hospital stays and higher costs. The findings highlight the need for age-targeted prevention, broader surveillance and early recognition of severe enterovirus-associated disease.

The intestine engages in communication with various distant organs through neural, immune, and endocrine pathways. This systemic interconnection mechanism is referred to as the gut-organ axis, in which gut microbiota play a central role. The therapeutic landscape is rapidly evolving, with next-generation probiotics, postbiotics, and engineered strains now enabling precise, targeted remodeling of the gut ecosystem to restore host homeostasis and treat multi-organ diseases. This review articulates how the gut microbiota integrates environmental cues into a multi-organ regulatory network, underscoring its potential as a therapeutic target for systemic diseases.

Major advances in neuroscience are not simply isolated discoveries, suggests a review led by Professor Limin Rong's team at The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, China. Published in the Journal of Brain and Spine, the review examines 16 years of The Brain Prize (2011–2026), drawing on the work of 51 laureates. The authors propose five interacting modes of scientific progress, spanning experimental technologies, multiscale mechanistic insights, computational approaches, disease-oriented translation, and collective discovery. The review offers a historical perspective on how scientific ideas, methods, and research communities come together to shape lasting breakthroughs.

Researchers at Shandong University have developed a pathway-independent gene regulation system that acts like an automatic timer in bacteria. It does not need extra inducers; instead, it switches on different genes at different times based on the bacteria's own growth state. Using this method to produce 3-hydroxypropionic acid increased yield by 27% over traditional methods and improved bacterial growth. This study provides a universal platform for multidimensional dynamic regulation of complex metabolic networks.

Caffeine and synthetic dyes are among the most widespread pollutants in municipal and industrial wastewater. From households and textile mills to the traditional batik industry, these contaminants are discharged in large volumes, and many conventional treatment plants remove them only incompletely. Once they reach rivers and drinking-water sources, they persist in the environment and raise long-term ecological and health concerns.

A metagenomic and quantitative PCR survey of Manila Bay shows its coastal waters carry a diverse bacterial community dominated by gut-associated taxa and a broad antibiotic resistome. Tetracycline, macrolide–lincosamide–streptogramin and aminoglycoside resistance genes predominate, while clinically important extended-spectrum beta-lactamase genes were detected at almost every site, marking the bay as a potential hotspot for the dissemination of resistance.

Traditional health-insurance reserving relies on stable historical averages, which break down when a disease spreads rapidly through a population. Researchers from China and the United States have developed a framework that tracks how long each policyholder has been infected, or their "infection age", and links this to the escalating medical costs of disease progression. The approach lets insurers feed real-time outbreak indicators, such as the reproduction number, directly into reserve estimates and stress tests.