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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Why your daily walk might not work as well if you're on metformin

A widely prescribed diabetes drug may be sabotaging one of the most trusted strategies for preventing the disease: exercise.

That is the conclusion of a Rutgers-led study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, which found that metformin blunts critical improvements in blood vessel function, fitness and blood sugar control that normally come from working out.

Since 2006, doctors have been advised to tell patients with high blood sugar to take metformin while engaging in exercise. Two proven therapies should deliver better results together, they reasoned. But Rutgers researchers said the math doesn't add up.

Most health care providers assume one plus one equals two. The problem is that most evidence shows metformin blunts exercise benefits. 

In the experiments conducted the results were clear: Exercise alone improved vascular insulin sensitivity, meaning blood vessels responded better to insulin and allowed more blood flow to muscles. This matters because insulin's ability to open blood vessels helps shuttle glucose out of the bloodstream and into tissues, lowering blood sugar after meals.

But when metformin was added, the improvements shrank. The drug also diminished gains in aerobic fitness and reduced the positive effects on inflammation and fasting glucose.

Blood vessel function improved with exercise training, regardless of intensity. Metformin blunted that observation, suggesting one type of exercise intensity is not better either with the drug for blood vessel health. 

This matters because exercise is supposed to lower blood sugar and improve physical function, crucial goals of diabetes treatment. If metformin interferes with those benefits, patients may not get the protection they expect to help lower disease risk.

If you exercise and take metformin and your blood glucose does not go down, that's a problem. People taking metformin also didn't gain fitness. That means their physical function isn't getting better and that could have long-term health risk.

The implications go beyond lab measurements. Fitness gains translate into energy for daily life. This includes activities such as climbing stairs, playing with children and staying active with friends. If those improvements stall, quality of life suffers.

The findings don't mean people should stop taking metformin or exercising, researchers say. Instead, it raises urgent questions for doctors about how the two treatments can be combined and the need for close monitoring. They hope future research will uncover strategies that preserve the benefits of both.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Three newly discovered toads give birth to live young

An international team of researchers has discovered three new, bizarre, and wart-covered species of tree toads from Tanzania that give birth to fully developed toadlets.

Most textbooks tell only one story about frog reproduction: eggs hatch into tadpoles, which then metamorphose into froglets and grow into adults. That's the standard paradigm.

 Live-bearing is exceptionally rare among frogs and toads, practiced by less than 1% of frog species, making these new species exceptionally interesting.

Christian Thrane et al, Museomics and integrative taxonomy reveal three new species of glandular viviparous tree toads (Nectophrynoides) in Tanzania's Eastern Arc Mountains (Anura: Bufonidae), Vertebrate Zoology (2025). DOI: 10.3897/vz.75.e167008

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Growing transgenic plants in weeks instead of months by hijacking a plant's natural regeneration abilities

Plant biologists have developed a method for growing transgenic and gene-edited plants that cuts the slow and expensive process down from months to weeks.

Publishing in Molecular Plant, the method takes advantage of plants' natural ability to regenerate after being wounded or pruned. By injecting bacteria carrying genetic instructions for wound healing and regeneration into a pruned plant's wound site, the researchers triggered the plant to grow new shoots, some of which were transgenic and gene edited.

The method shows potential even in species that are usually difficult or impossible to regenerate, such as soybeans.

Typically, when creating transgenic or gene-edited plants, biologists edit the DNA of an individual plant cell, which they then stimulate to grow into a new plant. For species like tomatoes that are relatively easy to regenerate, this process takes at least four months; for more difficult species like cotton, it can take almost a year; and for some plants, such as beans and peppers, tissue culture is extremely difficult.

To speed up this process, the researchers took advantage of plants' natural ability to regenerate after being damaged or pruned.

When a plant gets wounded, it triggers a molecular cascade that first seals the wound by creating a hard callus and then stimulates cell division and differentiation to replace the lost tissue. This process is regulated by a protein called WIND1, which activates a string of other proteins that are involved in cell differentiation and shoot growth.

It's like a relay: once WIND1 is activated, it will activate the next step, ESR1, which then activates the next step.

To simultaneously induce regeneration and introduce new DNA into plants, the researchers used a plant-infecting bacteria, Agrobacterium, that naturally introduces its own DNA into plant cells.

They inserted the genetic instructions for WIND1, ESR1, and several other regeneration genes into Agrobacterium, along with a gene that causes red coloration. Then, they pruned plants and applied the genetically modified Agrobacterium to the wound site.

This technique could help us transform species that are usually very difficult to grow in tissue culture because it's faster and more natural.

 A synthetic transcription cascade enables direct in planta shoot regeneration for transgenesis and gene editing in multiple plants, Molecular Plant (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.molp.2025.09.017

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Scientists have unlocked a way to dye polyester using 90% fewer chemicals and 40% less water

Fizzy water was the key to making polyester dye less harmful to the environment in the creation of a new method developed by an interdisciplinary team.

Polyester makes up more than half of all global fiber output, with production increasing each year—but it takes centuries to decompose and it can be difficult to recycle from garment-to-garment. Textile production is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of global clean water pollution, largely due to chemicals released in the wastewater from dyeing.

The startup aims to tackle these challenges at the dyeing stage by reducing harmful chemicals, water waste and costs. This could also make it easier and safer to recycle polyester garments, according to researchers.

Not many people know that even more toxic chemicals are used to turn brightly colored wastewater into transparent liquid. When released into freshwater, this is a secret killer that harms people, animals and the environment.

The new method makes it easier to insert and remove dyes from the fiber by injecting a small amount of carbonated water into the dye bath. This triggers the dyes' unique switching behavior within the polyester fibers.

Switch Dye also works on other synthetic fibers, such as nylon and elastane, and is just as effective as a widely used dye, without compromising on colour. Importantly, it uses all the same equipment that manufacturers already have.

SwitchDye can be more easily removed from the fiber, making the clothes much more recyclable. Ultimately, SwitchDye helps to make the textile industry more circular and sustainable, in both the dyeing and recycling stages.

Source: University of Leeds

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Fake or the real thing? How AI can make it harder to trust the pictures we see

A new study has revealed that artificial intelligence can now generate images of real people that are virtually impossible to tell apart from genuine photographs.

Using AI models ChatGPT and DALL·E, a team of researchers  created highly realistic images of both fictional and famous faces, including celebrities.

They found that participants were unable to reliably distinguish them from authentic photos—even when they were familiar with the person's appearance.

Across four separate experiments, the researchers noted that adding comparison photos or the participants' prior familiarity with the faces provided only limited help.

The research has just been published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications and the team say their findings highlight a new level of "deepfake realism," showing that AI can now produce convincing fake images of real people which could erode trust in visual media.

 Robin S. S. Kramer et al, AI-generated images of familiar faces are indistinguishable from real photographs, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2025). DOI: 10.1186/s41235-025-00683-w

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Universe's expansion 'is now slowing, not speeding up': Evidence mounts that dark energy weakens over time

The universe's expansion may actually have started to slow rather than accelerating at an ever-increasing rate as previously thought, a new study suggests.

"Remarkable" findings published recently in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society cast doubt on the long-standing theory that a mysterious force known as 'dark energy' is driving distant galaxies away increasingly faster.

Instead, they show no evidence of an accelerating universe.

If the results are confirmed, it could open an entirely new chapter in scientists' quest to uncover the true nature of dark energy, resolve the 'Hubble tension,' and understand the past and future of the universe.

With the new tools in their arsenal, astronomers will now be better equipped to find clues about what exactly dark energy is and how it influences the universe.

Junhyuk Son et al, Strong Progenitor Age-bias in Supernova Cosmology. II. Alignment with DESI BAO and Signs of a Non-Accelerating Universe, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2025). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1685

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Friday

Woodpeckers grunt and brace their bodies like athletes to maximize drilling power

Woodpeckers pack a punch, pounding wood with extreme force and experiencing decelerations of up to 400g. Now, researchers reveal in the Journal of Experimental Biology that drilling woodpeckers turn themselves into hammers by bracing their head, neck, abdomen and tail muscles to hold their bodies rigid when they pound on wood, driving each impact with the hip flexor and front neck muscles.

In addition, they discovered that the birds synchronize their breathing with their movements each time they strike wood, like ace tennis stars that grunt noisily to stabilize core muscles when they take a shot. The birds exhaled forcefully, as if grunting, at the instant that the beak struck wood. This type of breathing pattern is known to generate greater co-contraction of trunk musculature.

The team also realized that the birds perfectly synchronized their breathing with each impact as they tapped more softly at rates of up to 13 strikes per second, inhaling a mini-breath (~40 ms) between each rapid blow.

Woodpeckers use their entire bodies when drilling and tapping like a hammer, from the tip of their beaks to their tails, but unlike tennis players, their grunts are drowned out by the drumming.

Neuromuscular coordination of movement and breathing forges a hammer-like mechanism for woodpecker drilling, Journal of Experimental Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1242/jeb.251167

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

Researchers discover an 'all-body brain' in sea urchins

An international team of researchers has uncovered a surprisingly complex nervous system in sea urchins. The animals appear to possess an "all-body brain" whose genetic organization resembles that of the vertebrate brain. The team also identified light-sensitive cells distributed across the entire body—comparable to structures found in the human retina.

Using state-of-the-art single-cell and gene expression analyses, the researchers mapped the cell types of young post-metamorphic sea urchins. They found that the adult body plan is largely "head-like."

The body is made entirely of head-like organs Genes that in other animals define trunk structures are active only in internal organs such as the gut and the water vascular system. In sea urchins, a true trunk region is missing altogether.

Most striking is the extraordinary diversity of neuronal cell types. Hundreds of different neurons express both echinoderm-specific "head" genes and highly conserved genes otherwise found in the vertebrate central nervous system. These findings suggest that sea urchins do not possess a simple decentralized nerve net, but rather an integrated, brain-like system that extends throughout the entire body.

The team also discovered numerous light-sensitive cells (photoreceptors) expressing different opsins—proteins that respond to light.
One particular cell type combines melanopsin and go-opsin, suggesting a complex ability to detect and process light stimuli, and hinting at a previously underestimated visual capacity. In addition, large parts of the sea urchin nervous system appear to be light-sensitive and may even be regulated by light cues.

The findings challenge long-standing assumptions about the simplicity of echinoderm nervous systems and open up new perspectives on how complex neural and visual systems can evolve—even in animals without a centralized brain or true eyes.

Periklis Paganos et al, Single-nucleus profiling highlights the all-brain echinoderm nervous system, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx7753

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Thursday

Rabies research unlocks how viruses do so much with so few proteins

New antivirals and vaccines could follow the discovery by  researchers of strategies used by viruses to control our cells. Published in Nature Communications, the study reveals how rabies virus manipulates so many cellular processes despite being armed with only a few proteins.

Researchers think other dangerous viruses like Nipah and Ebola may also work the same way, possibly enabling the development of antivirals or vaccines to block these actions.

Viruses such as rabies can be incredibly lethal because they take control of many aspects of life inside the cells they infect.  They hijack the machinery that makes proteins, disrupt the 'postal service' that sends messages between different parts of the cell, and disable the defenses that normally protect us from infection.

A major question for scientists has been: how do viruses achieve this with so few genes? Rabies virus, for example, has the genetic material to make only five proteins, compared with about 20,000 in a human cell.

Understanding how these few viral proteins performed so many tasks could unlock new ways to stop infection.

Scientists now discovered that one of the rabies virus's key proteins, called P protein, gains a remarkable range of functions through its ability to change shape and to bind to RNA.

RNA is the same molecule used in new-generation RNA vaccines, but it plays essential roles inside our cells, carrying genetic messages, coordinating immune responses, and helping make the building blocks of life.

 By targeting RNA systems, the viral P protein could switch between different physical "phases" inside the cell. This allows it to infiltrate many of the cell's liquid-like compartments, take control of vital processes, and turn the cell into a highly efficient virus factory.

Although this study focused on rabies, the same strategy is likely used by other dangerous viruses such as Nipah and Ebola. Understanding this new mechanism opens exciting possibilities for developing antivirals or vaccines that block this remarkable adaptability.

 Stephen M. Rawlinson et al, Conformational dynamics, RNA binding, and phase separation regulate the multifunctionality of rabies virus P protein, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65223-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Wednesday

Fixate on the cross and you will see the moving grey circle become purple. Credit: Communications Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00331-5

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