Two specific genes that evolve exclusively in humans jointly influence the development of the cerebrum. Researchers from the German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics have discovered this in a recently published study. They have thus provided evidence that these genes contribute together to the evolutionary enlargement of the brain.

Evolving roughly 27 different times in the long history of fish, bioluminescence—the biological production of light—is one of the flashier survival tools used for luring prey, communication, and recognizing potential mates among various species. In a new study published in Ichthyological Research, an international team of researchers studied the organs that produce light in Vinciguerria mabahiss, a rare species of fish from the Red Sea. This paper marks the first-ever close examination of these organs, providing key information on their structure and how V. mabahiss uses bioluminescence to make its way through the water—and laying the foundational groundwork for future scientists studying fish bioluminescence.

The Leyte Chorus Frog was collected in 1944 and noted for its odd toe discs when it was described in an academic paper in 1954, then not seen again for decades despite a concerted hunt by researchers. Now, a report from the University of Kansas appearing in the Genetics Society journal Heredity confirms that Kaloula conjuncta stickeli (the scientific name of the strange chorus frog) is a hybrid of two species with overlapping ranges whose intermingling likely was driven by deforestation. 

BUFFALO, NY — March 26, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Aging (Aging-US) on January 29, 2025, in Volume 17, Issue 2, titled “Diet, lifestyle and telomere length: using Copula Graphical Models on NHANES data.”

Knowing how wildlife populations change is decisive for improving the management and conservation of biodiversity. The complexity of fieldwork — logistics, capture and marking of individuals, recaptures, etc. — and the lack of long-term monitoring make it difficult to predict the future of the species under study, especially if they are threatened. Now, the methodology for determining how the demographic parameters of species vary in the natural environment has taken a step forward with an efficient and flexible protocol promoted by the Conservation Biology Group of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

To determine the underlying causes of neuronal vulnerability at the earliest stages of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), a research team from the UC San Francisco’s Memory & Aging Center made use of brain tissue samples from two brain regions with differing susceptibility to AD. By examining differences in gene expression in the two specific brain areas, they were able to determine that that the brain's cholesterol regulation mechanisms may be a factor underlying selective vulnerability to AD.