The stag beetle Prosopocoilus hachijoensis is the only flightless species of the genus Prosopocoilus in Japan. Researchers at University of Tsukuba investigated the mechanisms underlying the loss of flight by comparing this beetle with closely related species that are capable of flight. Their analyses revealed that the atrophy of flight muscles was the primary proximate cause and that increased reliance on terrestrial locomotion may have relaxed the evolutionary pressure to maintain flight.

An international team from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, the National University of Mongolia, and Okayama University of Science has rediscovered a long-lost dinosaur tracksite in northern Mongolia dating to approximately 120 million years ago (Early Cretaceous). The site preserves 31 footprints from both large herbivorous sauropods and large carnivorous theropods on a single surface, providing the first clear evidence that large dinosaurs inhabited this far-northern region.

The overlapping sauropod trackways suggest sequential movement behavior, while theropod tracks indicate multiple large predators. This discovery fills a major gap in Mongolia’s Early Cretaceous fossil record and provides new insights into dinosaur distribution and ecosystem connections between East Asia and North America. The findings were published in Ichnos.

In patients developing end-stage liver disease, the damage has become too severe for the liver’s normally extraordinary regenerative capacity to repair or compensate for it. Once this “point of no return” has been reached, the only option is an organ transplant. To help bridge the time a transplant becomes available, a Wyss-Boston University-MIT team has innovated BOOST, a novel strategy that combines tissue engineering and synthetic biology to allow on-demand healthy liver growth of genetically engineered tissue constructs upon their implantation. This advanced is published in Science Advances.

In a new study published in the journal Ecosphere, researchers from Northern Arizona University found that when water temperatures increase, microbes and aquatic insects process fallen leaves, twigs and bark more rapidly, but a smaller fraction of that leaf litter supports their growth and a bigger fraction is released into the water and air as carbon dioxide. 

Researchers led by a University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine team offer highly compelling evidence that an elegant, nature-inspired solution lies in ultra-tiny, bubble-like structures called small extracellular vesicles (sEVs). These metabolic messengers refined over millions of years of evolution carry RNA – a nucleic acid that is a chemical cousin of DNA – and other molecules between cells. In a nutshell, the research team’s new findings show that not all sEVs are alike: their cell of origin determines where they travel, with certain vesicles naturally targeting specific tissues in the body. 

University of Virginia researchers are applying machine learning and functional genomics to investigate a largely unexplored region of the genome — transcribed ultra conserved regions (TUCRs) — and their potential role in glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer.

Stephen Turner (School of Data Science) and Roger Abounder (microbiology, immunology, and cancer biology) are leading the collaboration, supported by a pilot grant connecting UVA's Cancer Center and data science researchers. Despite decades of genomic research, the protein-coding portion of the genome — only a small fraction of the total — has received the lion's share of scientific attention. TUCRs, by contrast, have fewer than 70 publications to their name, with none previously examining their role in glioblastoma.

Glioblastoma carries a median survival of just over one year even with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation combined, underscoring the urgency of new research avenues. Turner and Abounder hope that shining a light on this uncharted genomic territory will yield insights that could ultimately improve outcomes for patients.

The project was presented at a Cancer-Data Science Research Symposium at UVA on February 19, an event designed to connect cancer researchers with data scientists and foster exactly this kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration.