For millions living with nerve pain, even a light touch can feel unbearable. Scientists have long suspected that damaged nerve cells falter because their energy factories known as mitochondria don’t function properly. Now research published in Nature suggests a way forward: supplying healthy mitochondria to struggling nerve cells.    Using human tissue and mouse models, researchers at Duke University School of Medicine found that replenishing mitochondria significantly reduced pain tied to diabetic ...


Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan have identified the genes that allow an organism to switch between living as single cells and forming multicellular structures. This ability to alternate between life forms provides new insights into how multicellular life may have evolved from single-celled ancestors and eventually led to complex organisms like animals and plants.  Published in Nature, the study represents an exceptionally detailed molecular explanation of how clonal multicellularity, where all cells descend from a single ancestor, can be achieved and controlled at the genetic level.  Flexible life forms dependent on food availability  The ...

LOGAN, UTAH, USA – Across all domains of life, immune defenses foil invading viruses by making it impossible for the viruses to replicate. Most known CRISPR systems target invading pathogens’ DNA and chop it up to disable and modify genes, heading off infections at the (cellular) pass. Utah State University chemist Ryan Jackson and his students study two lesser known CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) systems known as Cas12a2 and Cas12a3. In contrast to the better known CRISPR-Cas9, which uses a guide RNA to locate a specific ...

To the point Precisely dated fossils: A high-resolution magnetostratigraphic record at Thomas Quarry I captures the Matuyama–Brunhes reversal at around 773,000 years ago, providing one of the most accurate ages for an African Pleistocene hominin assemblage. Near the root of our lineage: Mandibles and other remains show a mosaic of archaic and derived traits consistent with an African sister population to Homo antecessor, near the divergence of Middle Pleistocene Eurasian and African hominin lineages. Northwestern Africa’s key role: Decades ...

ANN ARBOR—If you've ever spent time with a toddler, you might be surprised that the riskiest behavior in humans actually peaks in adolescence.  Researchers from the University of Michigan and James Madison University expected to find risky behavior to peak in adolescence in a study of chimpanzees as well. But instead, they found that chimpanzee infants take the greatest risks.  The study examined the development of risky behavior in chimpanzees as a model for human behavior. It found that risky behavior peaks when chimps are infants, then decreases ...

Thanks to the discovery of thousands of exoplanets to date, we know that planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune orbit most stars. Oddly, our sun lacks such a planet. That’s been a source of frustration for planetary scientists, who can’t study them in as much detail as they’d like, leaving one big question: How did these planets form?  Now we know the answer.  An international team of astrophysicists from UCLA and elsewhere has witnessed four baby planets in the V1298 Tau ...

About The Study: Per the results of this cohort study, very high lipoprotein(a) levels correlated with increased 30-year risk of cardiovascular disease among healthy women. Screening for elevated lipoprotein(a) in the general population may be warranted. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Ask Tybjærg Nordestgaard, MD, PhD, email anordestgaard@mgh.harvard.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2025.5043) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

About The Study: In this randomized clinical trial, yoga significantly accelerated opioid withdrawal recovery and improved autonomic regulation, anxiety, sleep, and pain. These findings support integrating yoga into withdrawal protocols as a neurobiologically informed intervention addressing core regulatory processes beyond symptom management.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Hemant Bhargav, MD, PhD, email drbhargav.nimhans@gmail.com. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2025.3863) Editor’s ...

Philadelphia—A preclinical study uncovered a new gene therapy that targets pain centers in the brain while eliminating the risk of addiction from narcotics treatments, a breakthrough which could provide hope for the more than 50 million Americans living with chronic pain.    Dealing with chronic pain can feel like listening to a radio where the volume is stuck at maximum volume, and no matter what you do, the noise never seems to dull or lessen. Opioid medications, like morphine, work by turning down the volume, but ...

An analysis of genetic data from over 900,000 people shows that certain stretches of DNA, made up of short sequences repeated over and over, become longer and more unstable as we age. The study found that common genetic variants can speed up or slow down this process by up to fourfold, and that certain expanded sequences are linked to serious diseases including kidney failure and liver disease. Why it matters More than 60 inherited disorders are caused by expanded DNA repeats: repetitive genetic sequences ...

The parasite that may already live in your brain can infect the very immune cells trying to destroy it, but new UVA Health research reveals how our bodies keep it under control.   The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, is potentially deadly. It infects warm-blooded animals, but it’s typically passed to people by cats or by consuming contaminated produce or undercooked meat. Once it’s made its way inside you, the parasite spreads throughout your body and takes up permanent residence in your brain. It’s estimated about a third of all people around the world have the parasite, yet, amazingly, few ever have symptoms. ...

“Here we propose the concept of infection-driven senescence (IDS) to describe the phenomenon in which microbial agents, beyond viruses, can trigger cellular senescence in host cells.” BUFFALO, NY — January 7, 2026 — A new meeting report was published in Volume 17, Issue 12 of Aging-US on December 23, 2025, titled “Cellular senescence meets infection: highlights from the 10th annual International Cell Senescence Association (ICSA) conference, Rome 2025.” Led by Stefanie Deinhardt-Emmer ...

Researchers from China University of Petroleum (East China), in collaboration with international partners, have reported a comprehensive review of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques integrated with density functional theory (DFT) to accelerate materials discovery, property prediction, and rational design. The work outlines how AI–DFT coupling improves computational efficiency and enables a shift from traditional trial-and-error approaches toward intelligent, data-driven materials innovation. Materials ...

Driven by the global wave of informatization, the real-time transmission, efficient processing, and intelligent analysis of massive data have become both the core engine propelling frontier technologies like artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, and augmented reality, and a critical bottleneck currently faced. As the most intuitive and information-rich carrier in communication, the processing efficiency of images directly determines the "comprehensibility" and ultimate "decision-making value" of visual information. However, traditional electronic computing architectures are gradually approaching their physical limits, encountering severe ...

NEW YORK, January 7, 2026 — The City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY Graduate Center) has received a grant totaling more than $1 million from Google.org to support the work of Empire AI, a statewide consortium of 11 public and private academic institutions focused on advancing the effective integration of artificial intelligence into higher education. The award—which is the second such source of funding that the CUNY Graduate Center has received from Google.org to support AI literacy in higher education—will further the reach of a comprehensive, multi-institution assessment of how best to prepare ...

NEW YORK, NY (January 7, 2026) – The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai an $8.5 million renewal grant to continue groundbreaking work aimed at understanding and improving long-term outcomes for children with congenital heart disease—the most common type of birth defect in the United States. The project, led by Brett Anderson, MD, MBA, MS, Director of the Center for Child Health Services Research in The Mindich Child Health and Development Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine, expands upon the earlier work of Dr. Anderson and her team, who created the first statewide data network ...

CLEVELAND—Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a treatment for advanced prostate cancer that could eliminate a side effect so debilitating that patients often refuse the life-saving therapy. In a study recently published in Molecular Imaging and Biology, the researchers describe how the breakthrough treatment targets prostate cancer cells as effectively as current therapies, but with dramatically reduced damage to salivary glands. The result: This treatment eliminates the severe ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Medicine of USC has named Christian Pass chief financial officer, effective Jan. 12, 2026.   “Pass has more than 30 years of health care finance leadership experience with a proven history of cultivating high-performing teams and guiding organizations through critical financial and operational transformations,” said Rod Hanners, CEO of Keck Medicine. “He brings tremendous knowledge and skill to this position that will support the continued growth of the health system.”   As ...

PULLMAN, Wash — A low-cost, simple robotic apple picker arm developed by Washington State University researchers may someday help with fruit picking and other farm chores. The inflatable arm can see an apple, then extend and retract to pick a piece of fruit in about 25 seconds. Weighing less than 50 pounds with its metal base, the two-foot-long arm is made of a soft fabric filled with air that is similar to, but stronger than, the wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube men that are used in outdoor advertising. The researchers in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering recently published their work on the robotic arm in the journal, Smart Agricultural ...

HOUSTON and BOSTON, JANUARY 7, 2026 ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and SOPHiA GENETICS today announced a strategic collaboration that unites SOPHiA GENETICS’ AI-powered analytics with MD Anderson’s clinical and scientific expertise to accelerate data-driven cancer care through new tools that can accurately analyze, interpret and translate diagnostic results into clinical practice. As part of the collaboration, MD Anderson and SOPHiA GENETICS are launching a series of research and development programs and co-developing an advanced next-generation sequencing oncology test. Built ...

When oily plastic and glass, as well as rubber, washed onto Florida beaches in 2020, a community group shared the mystery online, attracting scientists’ attention. Working together, they linked the black residue-coated debris to a 2019 oil slick along Brazil’s coastline. Using ocean current models and chemical analysis, the team explains in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology how some of the oily material managed to travel over 5,200 miles (8,500 kilometers) by clinging to debris. “The research findings of our study would not have been possible without the dedication of the Friends of Palm Beach,” says Bryan James, lead author ...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is among the most aggressive types of breast cancer, lacking estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors and thus relying primarily on cytotoxic chemotherapy. Despite initial responsiveness, many patients experience rapid relapse driven by cancer stem-like cells that survive chemotherapy and seed metastasis. Addressing this unmet need, researchers led by Professor Jae Hong Seo from Korea University have discovered that pitavastatin, a widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drug, can directly inhibit the anti-apoptotic protein Mcl-1, a key driver ...

The origin of life on Earth becomes even more fascinating and complex as we peer into the mysterious world of viruses. Said to have existed since living cells first appeared, these microscopic entities differ greatly from other forms of life. Composed of only genetic material, they lack the ability to synthesize proteins, which are essential for carrying out cellular activity and, ultimately, for life by itself. As a result, scientists have long sought to unravel virus origins, how they evolve, and how they fit into the conventional tree of life. Professor Masaharu Takemura from ...

Cells have a remarkable housekeeping system: proteins that are no longer needed, defective, or potentially harmful are labeled with a molecular “tag” and dismantled in the cellular recycling machinery. This process, known as the ubiquitin-proteasome system, is crucial for health and survival. Now, an international team of scientists led by CeMM, AITHYRA and the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund has identified a new class of small molecules that harness this natural system to accelerate the removal of an immune-modulating enzyme called IDO1. The findings, published in Nature Chemistry (DOI: 10.1038/s41557-025-02021-5), introduce a new concept in ...

Research Highlights: Light physical activity was associated with lower risk of death for adults in stages 2, 3 and 4 of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome, a health condition that includes heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes and obesity. A one hour increase in light physical activity each day was associated with a 14% to 20% lower risk of death. The association between light physical activity and lower risk of death was most pronounced for people with advanced CKM syndrome. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT/5 a.m. ET Wednesday, January 7, 2026 DALLAS, ...