Some of our biggest threats can come in the tiniest forms—viruses and bacteria. Thankfully, we are born with a built-in defense system, our innate immune system that protects us in our youth but can turn against us as we age. New research from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research is revealing why this tradeoff exists, identifying a common power source driving many immune system responses to pathogens. The findings may potentially lead to new ways to combat inflammation and diseases associated with aging like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer.

A new wasp species, Heinrichiellus natgeo, was discovered in a remote village in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh during a expedition supported by the National Geographic Society. The name "natgeo" was chosen in honor of the Society's legacy of exploration, conservation, and storytelling. The wasp, found using a yellow pan trap, is tiny but plays a big role in keeping ecosystems balanced by serving as a natural enemy of several pest species. 

A team from Sun Yat-sen University Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital has identified a novel mechanism underlying platinum resistance in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC): the circular RNA circSCAP encodes a 129-amino-acid protein (SCAP-129aa) that activates the PI3K/AKT pathway by stabilizing PIK3R2. Silencing circSCAP or combining platinum therapy with the PIK3R2 inhibitor  significantly improved treatment efficacy in preclinical models, highlighting circSCAP and SCAP-129aa as potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

The study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, shows that the balance between two types of inhibition regulates how brain rhythms communicate, enabling flexible and efficient information routing. The research was carried out by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC UIB-CSIC), the Institute for Neurosciences (IN CSIC-UMH), and Aix-Marseille University (France).

In various animal species, having older siblings impacts the chances of survival in the early years of life. Researchers of the University of Groningen (Netherlands), University of Exeter (UK) and University of Turku (Finland) discovered that in humans, the impact of older siblings is largely determined by their sex: having older brothers close in age negatively impacted girls, whereas having older sisters close in age had a positive effect on both girls and boys. 

Wheat is one of the world's most important staple foods, especially in the form of bread. A joint study by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (LSB) and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) now shows that extremely dwarf wheat has a less favorable gluten composition than semi-dwarf, dwarf, or tall wild type wheat, and therefore produces flour with poorer baking properties.