Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 9 hours ago

To test whether condensates can alter cell membrane voltage, the researchers used cell models called Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs). To allow them to visualize changes in voltage, they stained GUV membranes with a dye that changes color in response to changes in electrical charge. Then, they put GUVs in the same vessel as lab-made condensates and photographed their interactions under the microscope.

They showed that when the condensates and GUVs collided, it caused a local change in the GUV membranes' electrical charge at their point of contact.
By varying the chemical makeup of the condensates, the researchers showed that the more electrical charge a condensate carried, the bigger its impact on cell membrane voltage. They also found that the shape of the condensates appeared to be correlated with variations in the voltage change.

In some instances, the voltages induced are quite substantial in magnitude—on the same scale as voltage changes in nerve impulses.

Anthony Gurunian et al, Biomolecular Condensates Can Induce Local Membrane Potentials, Small (2025). DOI: 10.1002/smll.202509591

Part 2

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 9 hours ago

Biophysicists uncover new electrical transmission in cells

Many biological processes are regulated by electricity—from nerve impulses to heartbeats to the movement of molecules in and out of cells.

A new study by search scientists reveals a previously unknown potential regulator of this bioelectricity: droplet-like structures called condensates. Condensates are better known for their role in compartmentalizing the cell, but this study shows they can also act as tiny biological batteries that charge the cell membrane from within.

The team showed that when electrically charged condensates collide with cell membranes, they change the cell membrane's voltage—which influences the amount of electrical charge flowing across the membrane—at the point of contact.

The discovery, published in the journal Small, highlights a new fundamental feature about how our cells work, and could one day help scientists treat certain diseases.

Condensates are organelles—structures within cells that carry out specific functions—but unlike more well-known organelles such as the nucleus and mitochondria, they are not enclosed within membranes. Instead, condensates are held together by a combination of molecular and electrical forces. They also occur outside of cells, such as at neuronal synapses.

Condensates are involved in many essential biological processes, including compartmentalizing cells, protein assembly and signaling both within and between cells. Previous studies have also shown that condensates carry electrical charges on their surfaces, but little is known about how their electrical properties relate to cellular functions.

If condensates can alter the electrical properties of cell membranes, it could have big implications, because many cellular processes are controlled by changes in the cell membrane voltage. For example, ion channels—proteins that rapidly transport molecules across the cell membrane—are activated by changes in cell membrane voltage.
In the nervous system, this rapid, one-directional transport of electrically charged molecules is what drives the propagation of electrical signals between nerves.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 9 hours ago

New 'cloaking device' concept shields electronics from disruptive magnetic fields

Unwanted magnetic fields can disrupt the operation of precision instruments, sensors, and electronic components, leading to signal distortion, data errors, or equipment malfunction. This is a growing concern in environments such as hospitals, power grids, aerospace systems, and scientific laboratories, where increasingly sensitive technologies require effective protection from magnetic interference.

Researchers have unveiled a concept for a device designed to magnetically "cloak" sensitive components, making them invisible to detection.
A magnetic cloak is a device that hides or shields an object from external magnetic fields by manipulating how these flow around an object so that they behave as if the object isn't there.

In Science Advances, the team of engineers demonstrate for the first time that practical cloaks can be engineered using superconductors and soft ferromagnets in forms that can be manufactured.

Using computational and theoretical techniques such as advanced mathematical modeling and high-performance simulations based on real-world parameters, they have developed a new physics-informed design framework that allows magnetic cloaks to be created for objects of any shape. Until now, cloaks were mostly theoretical or restricted to simple shapes like cylinders.

This study demonstrates for the first time how to design magnetic cloaks for the irregular geometries we see in the real world. These cloaks also maintain their effectiveness across a broad range of field strengths and frequencies.

Magnetic cloaks could play a vital role in protecting sensitive electronics and sensors from magnetic interference, which is a growing challenge in everything from medical devices to renewable energy and space technology.

 Yusen Guo et al, Designing Functional Magnetic Cloaks for Real-World Geometries, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2468. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea2468

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 9 hours ago

Ancient viral DNA shapes early embryonic development

A new study reveals how ancient viral DNA once written off as "junk" plays a crucial role in the earliest moments of life. The research, published in Science Advances, begins to untangle the role of an ancient viral DNA element called MERVL in mouse embryonic development and provides new insights into a human muscle wasting disease.

Transposable elements are stretches of DNA that can move around the genome. Many of these DNA sequences originate from long ago, when viruses inserted their genetic material into our ancestors' genomes during infection. Today, these viral transposable elements make up around 8-10% of the mammalian genome.

Once disregarded as "junk" DNA, we now know that many transposable elements play an important role in influencing how genes are turned on and off, especially during early development. They have a variety of beneficial and harmful roles in the body, for example, some help regulate normal immune responses, while others can disrupt genes and contribute to diseases like cancer.

The latest work focuses on a viral transposable element called MERVL. 

This element becomes highly active for a short window of time when a mouse embryo reaches the two-cell stage—the point at which a fertilized egg has divided into two cells and switches on its own genome for the first time. Cells in this state are considered "totipotent," meaning they can generate every cell type of the embryo and extraembryonic tissues like the placenta.

MERVL acts as a central switch to activate a large network of genes specific to the two-cell stage of development.

To work out the role of MERVL, the team used a gene manipulation technique called CRISPR activation to turn on MERVL elements in mouse embryonic stem cells, to mimic what happens in two-cell embryos.

In cells where only MERVL was activated, the cells looked like they were only partially similar to cells of the two-cell stage, but they still had several characteristics of totipotency. The researchers described this in-between state as an "intermediate phenotype." They showed that activating MERVL alone is sufficient to create totipotent features in early embryonic development.

Paul Chammas et al, CRISPRa-mediated disentanglement of the Dux-MERVL axis in the 2C-like state, totipotency and cell death, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu9092. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu9092

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa 9 hours ago

Quantum computers have memory problems over time

A team of  international scientists has, for the first time, created a full picture of how errors unfold over time inside a quantum computer—a breakthrough that could help make future quantum machines far more reliable.

The researchers found that the tiny errors that plague quantum computers don't just appear randomly. Instead, they can linger, evolve and even link together across different moments in time.

The team has made its experimental data and code openly available, and the full study is published in Quantum.

This type of behavior is one of the key obstacles to building practical, large-scale quantum computers.

 The team ran a series of experiments on cutting-edge superconducting quantum processors—some in the lab at the University of Queensland and others accessed through IBM's cloud-based quantum computers.

Previous attempts to map the behaviour of quantum systems over time all hit the same roadblock: after measuring a quantum system mid-experiment, scientists couldn't freely set it up again for the next step, because the setting-up depends on whether the result of the measurement was 0 or 1.

The new method solves this by adding a clever twist, assuming that 50% of the time, the result was 1, and the remaining time, the result was 0. Then, the researchers used software to work backwards with the data, to figure out what state it was in.

What they found is that even today's best quantum machines show subtle but important time-linked noise patterns—including noise that is quantum in nature and comes from nearby qubits on the same chip.

Understanding these patterns will help quantum scientists design better characterization and error-correction tools, a crucial step toward building dependable, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

Multi-time quantum process tomography on a superconducting qubit, Quantum (2025). DOI: 10.22331/q-2025-12-02-1582

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

The Roots of Dementia in Childhood

Dementia is often associated with older people, but it doesn't just appear out of nowhere.

Some risk factors could start before we're even born, while others emerge as we progress through childhood into young adulthood.

According to research, that could be the best time to start intervention.

Even before we are born, some risk factors for dementia may already be present.

Increasingly, evidence suggests that the roots of age-related cognitive decline could begin in early childhood.

One of the most important factors explaining cognitive ability at age 70, researchers say, is cognitive ability at age 11.

Later, in early adulthood, additional potential risk factors include:

Education

Head injuries

Physical activity

Social isolation

Growing up healthy could be key to growing old healthy.

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/78/12/2131/728...

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-roots-of-dementia-trace-back-all-t...
**

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Antifungal vaccine heads for clinical trials
A vaccine designed to protect against infections with certain fungal pathogens is set to move into phase I clinical trials, backed by US$40 million in funding from the US National Institutes of Health. The vaccine, called VXV-01, uses two antigens to elicit an immune response to fungal pathogens such as Candida auris and Candida albicans, which can cause drug-resistant infections in hospitals.

https://www.genengnews.com/topics/infectious-diseases/fungal-vaccin...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Global food systems driving twin crises of obesity and global warming, says review
Unsustainable, profit-driven food systems promote high-calorie, low-fiber diets, contributing to rising obesity and significant greenhouse gas emissions. Animal-based and ultra-processed foods are key drivers of both health and environmental harms. System-level reforms—such as taxes, subsidies, and marketing restrictions—are recommended to improve diets and reduce climate impact.

A major review in Frontiers in Science highlights how tackling unsustainable food systems—reflected by our changing food environment—is urgent for both health and climate.

The paper reviews evidence that both obesity and environmental harms result from a profit-led food system that encourages high intake and poor health. The authors say that our food environment promotes high-calorie, low-fiber products such as some ultra-processed foods (UPFs)—the most caloric of which encourage weight gain.

Those same production systems, especially involving animals, release large amounts of greenhouse gases and put pressure on land and water.

The comprehensive review says that addressing the food environment can therefore deliver double benefits for health and climate.

The authors recommend using subsidies for healthy foods, taxes and warning labels for particularly unhealthy foods, and restrictions on aggressive marketing of high-calorie, low-fiber products, particularly in low-income communities and to children.

They also counter the perception that weight-loss drugs are a panacea for obesity, as they do not address the systemic drivers which also harm the climate.

Obesity and climate change: co-crises with common solutions, Frontiers in Science (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fsci.2025.1613595

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Is aging an act of genetic sabotage? Scientists find a gene that turns off food detection after reproduction

A gene called nhr-76 in roundworms actively suppresses food-odor detection after reproduction by switching off related sensory genes in neurons. This programmed decline, rather than accumulated damage, suggests aging can involve active genetic regulation. Similar genes in mammals may play related roles, but their effects in humans remain unconfirmed.

Rikuou Yokosawa et al, A Nuclear Hormone Receptor nhr‐76 Induces Age‐Dependent Chemotaxis Decline in C. elegans, Aging Cell (2025). DOI: 10.1111/acel.70277

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa yesterday

Bacterium hijacks fruit ripening program in citrus plants to steal sugars, research reveals
Xanthomonas citri, the causative agent of citrus canker, manipulates citrus leaf cells by activating a fruit ripening program, leading to the release of cell wall-bound sugars that fuel rapid bacterial growth. This process mimics natural fruit ripening at the genetic level and highlights a mechanism by which pathogens access otherwise inaccessible nutrients, offering potential strategies for developing disease-resistant citrus varieties.

Trang Thi-Thu Phan et al, Xanthomonas coordinates type III–type II effector synergy by activating fruit-ripening pathway, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adz9239

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• …
• 1162
• Next ›
• Page