Researchers at Aarhus University used laser speckle contrast imaging to study vasomotion—the rhythmic pulsing of small brain vessels—in awake mice. By combining high-resolution imaging with advanced analysis, they showed that vasomotion arises from arterial walls in short bursts, lasting about 80 seconds, and then propagates as flowmotion downstream to veins with a measurable delay. The findings provide new evidence of how blood vessels coordinate brain perfusion and highlight methods for studying vascular dynamics relevant to neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular disease.

Biological condensates are small, membraneless organelles typically consisting of multiple proteins and nucleic acids within cells. They are involved in a diverse array of cellular processes but, despite their importance, methods to quantify their molecular makeup are lacking. In a groundbreaking publication, researchers from the Brugués group at the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life at Dresden University of Technology, the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics reveal a new experimental method to infer the composition of condensates reconstituted from complex mixtures.

Basophils, a type of white blood cell, promote recovery from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in mice, according to researchers at Science Tokyo. In a mouse model of ARDS, basophils were found to release interleukin-4 (IL-4), which suppresses inflammatory neutrophils in the lungs during the recovery stage. The study suggests that targeting the basophil–IL-4–neutrophil pathway could offer a new therapeutic approach for ARDS, a condition with high mortality rates and no dedicated treatments.

Polyamines are natural molecules that promote healthy aging but are also linked to cancer progression, presenting a long-standing puzzle in biomedical research. In a recent study, researchers from Japan explored how polyamines affect cancer cells, uncovering a key interaction with protein eIF5A2. Their findings reveal that polyamines drive cancer growth by altering ribosomal gene expression, offering a potential target for selective cancer therapies and shedding light on the risks of polyamines.

Regulating the flow of protons across the chloroplast and modulating the activity of its CF_o-CF₁ adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase protein are key to protecting plants from excessive light energy absorbed during photosynthesis, report researchers from Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan. The research team generated a double mutant variety of Arabidopsis thaliana called dldg1hope2, lacking the DAY-LENGTH-DEPENDENT DELAYED-GREENING1 (DLDG1) protein, to assess the influence of DLDG1 on chloroplast CF_o-CF₁ ATP synthase activity.