It’s tick season, and University of Missouri researcher Roman Ganta is fighting back.

As summer heat fuels the rise of lone star ticks across the Midwest and beyond, so too emerges a microscopic menace: Ehrlichia chaffeensis, the dangerous bacterium behind the disease human monocytic ehrlichiosis (HME).

Like all bacteria, this tick-borne killer has potential to evolve and outsmart the antibiotic currently used to treat HME.

The National Biofoundry Project Team at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), led by Dr. Haseong Kim, has spearheaded an international joint research effort (including institutions from Korea, the U.S., the U.K., Singapore, and others—10 in total) to create a new standard framework that simplifies and enhances the accuracy and efficiency of synthetic biology research.

A first-of-its-kind experiment tracing evolution across 25 generations shows that tiny crustaceans at the heart of the ocean food web rely on a largely unknown biological toolkit to survive the stresses of climate change. The study reveals that it’s not only genetic changes that help these animals adapt to warming and acidifying ocean conditions. In addition, little-known epigenetic changes play a crucial role too. Remarkably, the researchers led by Melissa Pespeni at the University of Vermont discovered that the two mechanisms operate independently offering a two-pronged strategy for resilience. Until now, few studies have tracked genetic and epigenetic changes in tandem over many generations. This experiment is one of the first to do so in a long-term, replicated evolution study—offering some of the strongest evidence yet that epigenetic change can help populations survive and perhaps allow future genetic adaptation. Which means that copepods may be tougher under the stresses of a warming ocean than scientists previously would have predicted. And that could be good news for the fish species who eat copepods as primary prey—and many other creatures.

Singapore-led study shows specialised support cells in the gut form direct, neuron-like connections to deliver precise instructions to stem cells; 

Overturns long-held beliefs about how gut cells communicate; 

Opens new paths for treating colon cancer and IBD