Rice University biosciences professor Matthew Bennett has received a $1.99 million grant from the National Science Foundation to lead research on engineered bacterial consortia that could form the basis of biological computing systems. The four-year project will also involve co-principal investigators Kirstin Matthews, Caroline Ajo-Franklin and Anastasios Kyrillidis from Rice along with Krešimir Josić from the University of Houston. The research team aims to develop platforms that integrate microbial sensing and communication with electronic networks, paving the way for computing systems constructed from living cells instead of traditional silicon-based hardware.

Clinicians’ ability to diagnose and treat chronic diseases is limited by scientific uncertainty around factors contributing to disease risk. A study published September 2^nd in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Drs. Emily Van Syoc, Emily Davenport, and Seth Bordenstein at The Pennsylvania State University, United States, uncovers evidence of the first ternary relationships between human genetic variation, variation in gut mycobiome, and risk of developing chronic disease.

University of Michigan study has shown that a now rare group of fish called lobe-finned fishes enjoyed an explosion of diversity between about 359-423 million years ago.

A synthetic cell that can be activated by a magnetic field to release a medicine whilst deep in the body has been created by chemists at UCL (University College London) and the University of Oxford.

An international team led by researchers at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, has uncovered microbial DNA preserved in woolly and steppe mammoth remains dating back more than one million years. The analyses reveal some of the world's oldest microbial DNA ever recovered, as well as the identification of bacteria that possibly caused disease in mammoths. The findings are published in Cell.

BUFFALO, NY — September 2, 2025 — A new research paper featured on the cover of Volume 17, Issue 8 of Aging (Aging-US) was published on July 30, 2025, titled “Exosomes released from senescent cells and circulatory exosomes isolated from human plasma reveal aging-associated proteomic and lipid signatures.”