Early neuron development influenced by unexpected gene-like behavior, researchers report
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 23-Jun-2026 20:16 ET (24-Jun-2026 00:16 GMT/UTC)
Cells have surface receptors that couple to proteins and other molecules to initiate or inhibit certain behaviors. Typically, the number of these receptors increases as the cell matures, but researchers have now identified that one receptor influences cell behavior much earlier than previously thought and appears to help trigger the cell differentiation process to form neurons.
MD4SB will establish an infrastructure for the dynamic description of biological macromolecules, connecting three major European Research Infrastructures (Instruct-ERIC, ELIXIR, and EU-OPENSCREEN ERIC) with three of Europe's largest supercomputing centres (BSC-CNS, CINECA, and JSC).
The project will facilitate the use of molecular simulations to understand how biomacromolecules function, advance the molecular description of diseases, and accelerate drug discovery.
Coordinated by IRB Barcelona, the project brings together 25 partners across 8 countries and incorporates Almirall, Sanofi, and other pharmaceutical companies to provide feedback and evaluate the practical usefulness of the platform in industrial settings. The IRB Barcelona spin-off company Nostrum Biodiscovery will bridge the gap between academic groups and pharmaceutical companies.
Researchers studied the microbes associated with historical middens conserved in Greenland’s permafrost, left behind by Paleo-Inuit, ancient Norse, and early modern Inuit. These middens harbored biodiverse bacterial communities – including many unknown taxa – that were especially rich in human- and animal-associated groups. The authors concluded that microbial traces of human activities such as defecation, livestock farming, and seal hunting can linger for centuries in Arctic middens. They also found a wide range of antimicrobial resistance genes in the bacterial genomes. However, the limited outward spread of potential pathogens away from the frozen core of the middens means that they currently pose little risk to public health.
Researchers from The University of Osaka found that using a sequence analysis approach that incorporates awareness of insertions and deletions in extramembrane domains enabled accurate reconstruction of ancestral rhodopsins that folded correctly and functioned as predicted when expressed in E. coli. The researchers’ ConsistASR analytical pipeline could be used to engineer other ancestral proteins in the future.
Genome sequencing has revealed insights into how current-day residents of the Faroe Islands can trace their ancestry to a North Atlantic founder population and how evolutionary forces have shaped their genomes since.