EurekAlert! News by Subject: Biology

Biology

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 30-Oct-2026 22:16 ET (31-Oct-2026 02:16 GMT/UTC)

14-Aug-2026

Nearly €1 million for innovative blood cancer research: DKMS opens call for the John Hansen Research Grant 2027

The foundation DKMS Stiftung Leben Spenden has opened the new application round for the DKMS John Hansen Research Grant. Up to four outstanding projects by early-career researchers worldwide will be funded, with each receiving up to €240,000 over a three-year period. The focus is on research projects related to hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and cell therapy for hematological diseases. Applications for the DKMS John Hansen Research Grant 2027 can be submitted through November 16, 2026.

Funder: DKMS Stiftung Leben Spenden

14-Aug-2026

Seeing tumor boundaries in 3D within 30 minutes: Cell study develops a new intraoperative imaging platform for glioma infiltration

Fudan University Institute of Science and Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

One of the major challenges in glioma surgery is that tumor boundaries are often difficult to define. Diffuse gliomas can infiltrate surrounding brain tissue beyond what surgeons can see directly or what conventional imaging can fully resolve. During surgery, neurosurgeons must remove as much tumor as possible while preserving critical brain functions. This makes accurate intraoperative assessment of tumor infiltration essential for more precise surgical decision-making. A study published in Cell now reports a new platform called ULTRA, short for ultrarapid cleared stimulated Raman with AI, designed to address this gap. Developed by researchers from Fudan University, Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University, Beijing Neurosurgical Institute, Capital Medical University, and collaborators, ULTRA combines rapid tissue clearing, stimulated Raman scattering microscopy, and AI-based virtual staining to perform deep 3D histological imaging of surgical tissue without conventional staining or sectioning.

Journal: Cell

14-Aug-2026

Muscle, not just bone, plays key role in fracture repair

Editorial Office of West China School of Stomatology, Sichuan University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Bone healing, an intricate process involving multiple cell populations, relies not only on existing bone-forming cells but also on dormant progenitor cells outside the skeleton. A study published in Bone Research reveals that fibroadipogenic progenitors (FAPs) in skeletal muscle become bone-forming cells after injury, contributing to fracture repair and abnormal bone growth. The findings identify these cells as promising therapeutic targets for enhancing fracture healing while preventing unwanted bone formation.

Journal: Bone Research

14-Aug-2026

Organs age at different speeds: a blood test might soon tell which ones

CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Peer-Reviewed Publication

AI-based “tissue clocks” can estimate the biological age of human organs from histological images, researchers at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine (LBI-NetMed) at the University of Vienna showed. By analyzing more than 25,000 tissue samples across 40 tissue types, their study reveals that organs age at different rates throughout life and that these changes can even be detected from blood samples. The findings, published in Nature Medicine (DOI: 10.1038/s41591-026-04566-5), provide a new framework for understanding aging and may open new avenues for disease monitoring and early diagnosis.

Journal: Nature Medicine

14-Aug-2026

A mystery kept in London led to the discovery of a new Ecuadorian frog

Pensoft Publishers
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Scientists from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador officially described Pristimantis milpe, an abundant and widely distributed species that had been confused with another species for over a century. To solve the mystery, researchers reviewed specimens collected in Ecuador during the 19th century and preserved at the Natural History Museum in London.

Journal: ZooKeys

13-Aug-2026

How old are you really? Study explains what makes ‘epigenetic clocks’ tick, debuts new prediction tools

University of Southern California
Peer-Reviewed Publication

What do “epigenetic clocks” actually measure? These lab tests have become popular tools for studying biological aging, or how the body’s cellular function changes at a faster or slower rate than expected. However, the underlying biology behind each of these measurements has remained largely unknown until now.

A recent USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology-led study published in npj Aging shows the variability in what five of the most widely used epigenetic clocks are actually measuring. The research team also developed new gene-expression based clocks to complement existing epigenetic clocks, which show even stronger predictive power for age-related disease and mortality.

Journal: npj Aging

13-Aug-2026

DNA origami illuminates invisible molecular movements

Salk Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Salk scientists use DNA origami technique to build dye-cycling ORBIT, a method for tracking protein-DNA interactions for hours at single base-pair resolution. Using dye-cycling ORBIT, the team measured the rotation of RNA polymerase during DNA transcription. The method will allow scientists to study molecular movements that were previously impossible to see or study, adding a new dimension to life science research.

Journal: Cell Reports Methods

13-Aug-2026

Two oceans, One Country and Twenty Times the Sharks

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Fossil shark scales from Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts show that the two seas never held the same number of sharks, and that borrowing a conservation target from one ocean could be wrong by an order of magnitude.

13-Aug-2026

Two oceans, one country, twenty times the number of sharks

University of California - Santa Barbara
Peer-Reviewed Publication

How many sharks should a coral reef have? It sounds like a simple question, but almost nowhere on Earth is there a pristine, untouched reef. So there is no yardstick against which to measure shark decline or recovery.

Journal: Science