EurekAlert! News by Subject: Biology - News by Subject: Biology

Biology

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Oct-2025 11:11 ET (20-Oct-2025 15:11 GMT/UTC)

The biology of uncontrolled aggression: How does early-life trauma shape brain circuit function?

Virginia Tech
Grant and Award Announcement

Sora Shin, a neuroscientist at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, received a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how early-life trauma alters brain circuits that control aggression and attention. Her research could lead to novel treatment strategies to ease the burden of trauma-related aggression on individuals, families, and communities.

Funder: NIH/National Institute of Mental Health

Media registration now open for Neuroscience 2025 — the world’s premier neuroscience event

Society for Neuroscience
Meeting Announcement

Free media registration is now open for Neuroscience 2025, the largest and most influential gathering of brain scientists and clinicians in the world. This year’s annual meeting will take place November 15–19 at the San Diego Convention Center and online.

Meeting: Neuroscience 2025

Grand Canyon was a ‘Goldilocks zone’ for the evolution of early animals

University of Cambridge
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A treasure trove of exceptionally preserved early animals from more than half a billion years ago has been discovered in the Grand Canyon, one of the natural world’s most iconic sites. The rich fossil discovery – the first such find in the Grand Canyon – includes tiny rock-scraping molluscs, filter-feeding crustaceans, spiky-toothed worms, and even fragments of the food they likely ate.

Journal: Science Advances

A fossil’s 150-year journey from misidentification to evolutionary insight

University of Michigan
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A fossil specimen misidentified since its discovery during the Civil War and correctly identified by a University of Michigan researcher reveals an evolutionary leap: It marks the first time this line of sea creatures is known to have left the ocean.

Journal: Communications Biology
Funder: U.S. National Science Foundation

Scientists propose AI-driven biotech model for future crop breeding

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her collaborators proposed an integrated framework that combines biotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize crop breeding.

Journal: Nature

Scientists discover brain switch that controls freeze-or-flight survival instincts

Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers have identified a key neural switch that controls whether animals instinctively flee from a threat or freeze in place. By comparing two closely related deer-mouse species, they found that this switch is calibrated by evolution to match the animal's habitat. This neural circuit is hypersensitive in mice living in densely vegetated environments, causing instant escape, but less responsive in their open-field cousins, who are more likely to freeze. In doing so, the research team uncovered an important way in which evolution fine-tunes the brain for survival.

Journal: Nature

Complex genetic variation revealed in diverse human genomes

University of Washington School of Medicine/UW Medicine
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Genome assemblies from 65 individuals, representing a variety of the world’s populations, are advancing the scientific exploration of complex genetic structural variation. Structural variations are genetic code alterations that span more than 50 base pairs, the rungs on the DNA ladder. These changes were hard to detect until the recent advent of newer sequencing technologies and analytical algorithms, as well as larger collections of more complete, diverse human genomes. After identifying such variation between and within populations, it may be easier to determine if the differences result in disease or other traits, like helping our ancestors adapt to their environments.

Journal: Nature
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health, NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/National Cancer Institute, U.S. National Science Foundation, Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, German Research Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, NIH/National Human Genome Research Institute, Jurgen Manchot Foundation, Dusseldorf School of Oncology