Lineage tracing is a powerful tool to study development, tissue homeostasis, aging, and disease progression. Over the past decades, lineage tracing techniques have progressed substantially by employing new genetic engineering tools. However, due to their invasive nature, these approaches are difficult to apply to humans. Although endogenous DNA mutations can be used for in vivo lineage tracing in humans, their extremely low mutation rate presents substantial technical challenges. Mitochondrial DNA mutations are an alternative, but their inheritance may suffer from neutral drift or undergo both positive and negative selection, and their analysis is plagued by excessive data noise. Thus, developing non-invasive, high-resolution lineage tracing methods for human tissues is crucial.

Over the past decades, lineage tracing has been fundamental to unraveling how diverse cell types arise during development and how tumors evolve through clonal expansion. Traditional approaches largely depend on exogenous DNA barcodes, fluorescent proteins, or CRISPR-based recorders engineered into model organisms. However, these synthetic strategies require genetic manipulation, making them difficult to apply to native human clinical samples. Thus, developing versatile, non-invasive methods that can reconstruct the genealogical history of individual cells directly from patient tissues is crucial. The ideal approach should leverage endogenous, heritable markers that accumulate naturally within cells.

 

Anthracnose is one of the most destructive diseases affecting tea, threatening yield, leaf quality, and the sustainability of tea production.

Nitrogen is essential for crop growth, but the heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers increases production costs and contributes to environmental pollution.

Flowering time can determine whether a crop adapts, yields, or fails. In common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), one of the world’s most important food legumes, sensitivity to day length has shaped where the crop can be grown. 

As global warming intensifies, window technologies that can automatically regulate indoor light and humidity in response to environmental changes could help reduce building energy consumption and support the development of a low-carbon city. A research team at the International Centre of Urban Energy Nexus (UEX) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed an innovative smart window film that leverages the unique properties of various materials to lower indoor temperatures during the day while absorbing moisture and reducing its transparency at night, thereby enhancing energy efficiency as well as improving indoor comfort and privacy. Antibacterial, durable and cost-effective, this innovative window film is particularly suitable for use in humid regions such as Hong Kong, offering a promising solution for green building development.

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President Dr. Lee Ho Seong) has successfully developed a chlorinated graphene (Cl-Gr) gas sensor that uses readily available saltwater to rapidly detect and recover from harmful gases at room temperature. Because the sensor can operate without a separate heating element, it significantly improves the prospects for practical gas sensors in compact devices, where their use has long been limited by power consumption and heat generation.