Researchers in China have uncovered the first direct evidence: Approximately 436-million-year-old brachiopods from the early Silurian period used tiny, bristle-like structures called setae to maintain orderly, "checkerboard" spacing—ensuring they had enough room to thrive on the ancient seafloor.

Invasive plants are meeting their match.

Colon cancer is often driven by cancer stem cells, which resist treatment and lead to relapse. In a recent study, researchers from Japan revealed how transcription factors CDX1 and CDX2 suppress cancer cell stemness by blocking β-catenin’s ability to activate key genes like LGR5. Their findings showed that CDX1/2 prevent the formation of key transcriptional complexes involving DSIF and PAF1, identifying these as critical regulators and potential therapeutic targets in colon cancer.

Cell division in bacteria, the process that allows a single bacterial cell to divide into two, is regulated by the FtsZ protein and FtsZ-associated proteins. ZapA, a FtsZ-associated protein, has gained attention for its dynamic interaction with FtsZ. However, the structural basis of this interaction and their functional coordination remains unclear. In this study, researchers focused on understanding the structure and dynamics of the FtsZ-ZapA complex.

Lymphoid-derived conventional dendritic cells (L-cDCs) may play a unique function associated with immune suppression and allergy induction, as reported by researchers from Japan. Long thought to arise only from myeloid lineages, cDCs were found to also originate from lymphoid progenitors. Using fluorescent reporter mice, the team tracked L-cDCs throughout the body, revealing their abundance in barrier tissues like skin and lungs and their distinct genetic signatures and functions.

An international team of researchers conducted two studies on the foraging behavior of birds in human-modified environments. Led by Dr. Corina Logan at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the studies found that, while flexibility in foraging behavior is crucial for adapting to human-altered habitats, it is not the primary driver of rapid geographic range expansion. Rather, persistence and variability in flexibility, as well as the ability to exploit a wide range of food sources, seem to play a more significant role in facilitating range expansion. These findings have important implications for conservation managers seeking to predict species' success in new environments.

Summary

CORNETO is a new computational tool that helps researchers combine different types of biological data with prior biological knowledge to map how molecules like genes and proteins interact inside cells.

By analysing different samples together at once, CORNETO shows which biological processes are common and which are unique across cell types and conditions. 

Researchers have used CORNETO to reveal shared and cell-specific pathways in disease research, e.g. to identify signalling pathways associated with chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer patients.