An Andean condor and a trumpeter swan both weigh about 11 kilograms. Yet the condor covers each kilometer of flight for about a fifth of the swan’s energy bill. The difference is the air: the condor rides rising currents and flaps for 0.1% of its flight time, while the swan flaps for 99%. A new study of 50 bird and bat species in the wild showed that once the atmosphere is taken into account, flying can be the cheapest form of travel.

Plants are in constant contact with fungi in the soil. Some fungi cause disease, while others form beneficial partnerships that help plants acquire nutrients and grow. To survive, plants need to tell them apart, but how they read the chemical signals fungi release has remained poorly understood. Now, researchers at Aarhus University, together with colleagues at the University of Copenhagen and CNRS-CERMAV in Grenoble, have uncovered how a plant receptor recognizes long chains of chitin, a signal linked to fungal attack. Their findings, published in Science on October 15^th, 2026, reveal a highly specialized receptor system that selectively recognizes molecular fungal signals based on their size.

The immune system is built to protect the body, but new research from The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) suggests that it can also get in the way when it tries to rebuild and heal damaged tissue.

How does a crowded tissue make room every time one cell becomes two? Researchers at the Stowers Institute used live imaging of intestinal organoids to watch the process in real time and discovered that cell division does more than create new cells. The dramatic shape changes of mitosis actively rearrange neighboring cells, helping growing tissues preserve their architecture as they expand. The findings offer a new way to think about how tissues build, repair and maintain themselves, and what may change when that organization breaks down in disease.

Cells do not determine their fate in isolation. The spatial organization that emerges spontaneously within cell populations can also shape how cell death spreads. Building on their 2024 discovery that ferroptotic “trigger waves” can drive large-scale cell death, a research team led by Associate Research Fellow Sheng-hong (Sheng) Chen at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, has now uncovered how cell density, alignment, and intracellular lipid distribution govern where ferroptosis begins, the direction in which it spreads, and where it stops. By combining live-cell imaging, single-cell RNA sequencing, pharmacological and genetic perturbations, and mathematical modeling, the researchers connected molecular processes within individual cells to the collective behavior of cell populations. Their findings reveal that cellular self-organization plays a critical role in shaping susceptibility to ferroptosis and controlling its propagation, extending our understanding of cell death beyond the molecular responses of individual cells. This discovery provides a new framework for investigating how spatial organization may influence cell death during embryonic development, tissue injury, and disease.

Researchers from Capital Medical University, Beijing, China, have identified a CaN/NFATC3/Id3/E2A/Bmp4 signaling pathway that helps explain how low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) promotes bone regeneration. Id3 was identified as a molecular “brake” that limits LIPUS-induced osteogenesis and was significantly downregulated following ultrasound stimulation. The researchers developed an Id3 inhibitory peptide, rID3, which, when combined with LIPUS, enhanced osteogenesis and bone-defect healing in mice, suggesting a potential strategy for improving ultrasound-based bone regeneration.