The saola, an antelope-like bovine, is one of the world’s rarest and most endangered mammals. In fact, it hasn’t been observed in over 10 years. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with Vietnamese scientists and an international team of researchers, have for the first time mapped the saola’s complete genome, and they have used that knowledge to estimate the chances of saving it – if it still exists.

Endemic to China’s Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a perpetual smile on its face. To track how this critically endangered porpoise’s habitat range has changed over time, a team of biodiversity and conservation experts compiled 724 ancient Chinese poems referencing the porpoise from historic collections across China. Publishing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 5, their results show that the porpoise’s range has decreased by at least 65% over the past 1,400 years, with the majority of this decline occurring in the past century.  

Thought to be extinct, The Monte Gordo Grasshopper was recently rediscovered after more than 40 years of no records. Unique to the island of São Nicolau, the insect is a “living fossil” that has shown remarkable resilience, surviving the volcanic island's challenging conditions for millions of years. The discovery, published in the Journal of Orthoptera Research, highlights the importance of conservation efforts for this threatened and endemic species.

The mitochondrion, often referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, plays critical roles in cellular function, making it a prime organelle to target for fundamental studies, metabolic engineering, and disease therapies. With only a limited number of existing mitochondrial targeting sequences, a new study from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology demonstrates the utility of generative artificial intelligence for designing new ones.

At a conference in Washington D.C. in 2000, the secretoglobin super family of proteins was named to classify proteins with structural similarities to its founding member uteroglobin. Now, 25 years later, there is still little known about the basic functions of these proteins, prompting researchers at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology to dive into their evolutionary origins.

This bioinformatic survey reported that secretoglobins, or SCGBs—originally thought to be exclusive to mammals—are also found in turtles, crocodilians, lizards, and birds. These new findings, published in Genome Biology and Evolution, suggest that these proteins evolved earlier than dinosaurs and share a basic function that is not yet discovered.