Researchers have discovered how to guide the evolution of proteins with light to develop more complex proteins, paving the way for new possibilities in synthetic biology and biotechnology.
Read the OPN story: biotech technology physics.
New technique creates new possibilities for synthetic biology and biotechnology.
Quantum mechanical effects are known to be easily disrupted by disturbances from the surrounding environment, commonly referred to as noise. To minimize these disturbances, physicists often study these effects in small and carefully controlled systems, in which environmental noise can be minimized.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University set out to study quantum effects in macroscopic spin ensembles, systems comprised of large numbers of spins (spins is the intrinsic angular momentum of elementary particles). Their paper, published in Nature Physics, introduces a new approach to directly observe quantum spin fluctuations in macroscopic spin ensembles, precisely monitoring their evolution over time.
“Quantum effects are typically observed and exploited in microscopic systems, where individual qubits can be precisely controlled and measured,” Alexander O. Sushkov, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org.
https://vist.ly/4u8bp Macroecology Odonates Parasites
The immune system is the primary defense against parasites. With the ever-increasing rate of disease, epidemiologic models considering geographic variation in immune responses could prove useful. Despite increasing interest in the macroecology of parasitism and infectious diseases, we know little about the macroecology of immune responses (i.e. macroimmunology). Host characteristics, parasite exposure, and environmental factors can all affect immunity, but how these factors shape spatial variation in the strength of immune responses remains underexplored. We captured odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) and their conspicuous ectoparasitic mites from 42 sites spread across a geographic area spanning the temperate and boreal forest biomes in eastern Canada. We then conducted immune response bioassays on 1237 individuals from 63 odonate species. We used generalized additive models and structural equation models to relate immune responses to host body size, parasite load, pH, temperature and precipitation while accounting for spatial autocorrelation in immune ability and evolutionary relationships among host species. We found significant differences in the strength of immune response among host individuals, and this variation was best explained by climatic conditions, specifically strongly decreasing with precipitation. While host species significantly differed in immune response strength, we found no effect of host body size, evolutionary relationships among hosts, or parasitism on immune response. Our study investigating the drivers of immune response across dozens of species spread across two biomes is the most comprehensive to date. Climatic conditions have a strong influence on host immune response, regardless of host characteristics or parasitism rates. Strong immune responses were associated with low levels of annual precipitation, which could relate to the role of cuticular melanin content in desiccation resistance, and the melanin-based encapsulation response being a byproduct of this adaptation. A spatially explicit understanding of the biological processes affecting immunity could improve epidemiological models of disease risk that inform disease management globally.
Predicting parasite and pathogen spread is increasingly relevant and challenging in a highly connected world (Tsiotas and Tselios 2022), and an animal’s immune system is the first line of defense against attack by parasites and pathogens. Yet, the factors driving variation in immunity among individuals, populations, and species are poorly studied and rarely factored into epidemiologic models (Becker et al. 2019). Characteristics of the host, exposure to parasites or pathogens, and the abiotic environment can interact in complex ways to affect immunity (Sweeny and Albery 2022), but their interactions are challenging to elucidate (Johnson et al. 2019).
As the immune system is the primary line of defense against infection by parasites, pathogens, and disease, it is assumed to be costly in terms of fitness and should therefore lead to tradeoffs with life-history traits (e.g. fecundity, fertility, Albery et al. 2021). Although a plethora of studies have provided key evidence of immune variation due to such tradeoffs, most studies emphasize the role of biotic factors such as predation (Duong and McCauley 2016) and resource availability (Hasik et al. 2025a) without considering that of abiotic factors (Lazzaro and Little 2008). A relationship between immune response and temperature is expected in both invertebrate ectotherms (Mastore et al. 2019) and vertebrate endotherms (Butler et al. 2013), due to the thermal sensitivity of the enzymes involved in immune responses (Catalán et al. 2012). When one scales this temperature-dependent immunity to explore the effect of climate (specifically, temperature and humidity), then climate is expected to be a clear driver of geographic variation in immunity (Li et al. 2024).
Parasites are a leading cause of disease and death around the world and thus are drivers of life-history evolution via their effects on host fitness (Hasik and Siepielski 2022a) that have the potential to affect host macroevolutionary dynamics (Hasik et al. 2025b). The majority of organisms on earth are infected by at least one parasite (Price 1980), and yet, we have a very limited understanding of the multifarious factors governing the intensity of infection and, therefore, the health cost. Immune responses are necessary to defend organisms from the deleterious and fitness-reducing effects of parasites (and disease in general, Hasik and Siepielski 2022a). Although there is increasing interest in the macroecology of parasites and infectious diseases (Stephens et al. 2016), we know very little about macroimmunology (Becker et al. 2020). Both among-individual and interspecific variation in immune response surely plays a central role, but the factors regulating immunity in natural settings are poorly understood, which can interfere with the accuracy of predictive epidemiologic models. Environmental factors and local parasite pressure can independently drive differences in immunity across space, but they could also act in concert (Becker et al. 2020). Parasitism varies among host populations distributed across large-scale environmental gradients (LoScerbo et al. 2020, Hasik and Siepielski 2022b) and at fine spatial scales, within populations (Albery et al. 2019, Hasik et al. 2025a). To date, however, the focus on a limited set of taxa, specifically vertebrates (Becker et al. 2020), limits our ability to identify generalities regarding the relative influence of environmental conditions and parasitism on immune defenses that would apply across host–parasite systems (Rolff and Siva-Jothy 2003).
Neocortical expansion driven by basal progenitors.
The emergence of indirect neurogenesis, driven by highly proliferative basal progenitors, contributed to the significant enlargement of the mammalian neocortex during brain evolution.
In recent years, several human-specific genes and enhancers have been described that differentially affect the biology of progenitor cells and potentially contribute to the increased neocortical complexity and disease-susceptibility of the human brain.
Emerging research is uncovering multiple pathways that disrupt basal progenitor biology, emphasizing these pathways’ involvement not only in classical neurogenesis-related disorders such as microcephaly but also in neurodevelopmental conditions traditionally linked to impairments in neuronal connectivity. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/Basal-progenitors
The diversification and expansion of distinct progenitor cell subtypes during embryogenesis are essential to form the sophisticated brain structures present in vertebrates. In particular, the emergence of highly proliferative basal progenitors contributed to the evolutionary enlargement of the mammalian neocortex. Basal progenitors are at the center of indirect neurogenesis and can be divided into two main subtypes: the classical TBR2-positive intermediate progenitor cells and the outer radial glial cells, which are especially abundant in gyrencephalic species. While the function of some transcriptomic regulators is conserved across the mammalian clade, recent studies have identified human-specific genes and enhancers that uniquely affect progenitor biology, possibly driving the increased neocortical complexity and disease-susceptibility of the human brain.
A new University of California San Diego study published in Cell challenges a long-standing assumption about how animal viruses become capable of sparking human epidemics and pandemics. Using a phylogenetic, genome-wide analysis across multiple viral families, researchers report that most zoonotic viruses—infectious pathogens that spread from animals to humans, including the cause of COVID-19—do not show evidence of special evolutionary adaptation before spilling over into humans.
“This work has direct relevance to the ongoing controversy around COVID-19 origins,” said Joel Wertheim, Ph.D., senior author and professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
“From an evolutionary perspective, we find no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was shaped by selection in a laboratory or prolonged evolution in an intermediate host prior to its emergence. That absence of evidence is exactly what we would expect from a natural zoonotic event—and it represents another nail in the coffin for theories invoking laboratory manipulation.”
A team of 48 astronomers from 14 countries, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has discovered a population of dusty, star-forming galaxies at the far edges of the universe that formed only a billion years after the Big Bang, believed to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago. The galaxies may represent a snapshot in the galactic life cycle, linking recently discovered ultradistant bright galaxies formed 13.3 billion years ago with early “quiescent” (dead) galaxies that stopped forming stars about two billion years after the Big Bang.
Challenging what we know about cosmos The new discovery challenges current models of the universe, making the findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a step toward revising cosmic history.
“My research involves trying to identify and understand a population of rare, dusty star-forming galaxies that were only discovered at the end of the 1990s,” says Jorge Zavala, assistant professor of astronomy at UMass Amherst and the paper’s lead author.
EPFL researchers have developed a light-based method that can produce proteins that switch states, respond to signals, and even compute, using light and the cell cycle.
Evolution is biology’s powerful method of engineering. It works by generating many variants of DNA, RNA, and proteins inside cells and letting nature “select” the organism that performs best. Early farmers started taking advantage of evolution by interfering with natural selection and letting only the most productive livestock and crops mate.
In laboratories, researchers have developed methods for directed evolution of proteins, especially enzymes and antibodies, that are used in household detergents, medicine, and industry.
With Dr. Tomasz (Tom) Beer MD – Chief Medical Officer for MCED at Exact Sciences
From precision oncology pioneer to leading the shift toward population-scale early detection via blood-based tech. The future of cancer care: intercepting it before it’s too late.
Dr. Tomasz Beer, MD is a nationally recognized medical oncologist and clinical research leader who serves as Chief Medical Officer for Multi-Cancer Early Detection at @ExactSciences Corporation (https://www.exactsciences.com/), a molecular diagnostics company focused on the eradication of cancer by preventing it, detecting it earlier, and guiding personalized treatment.
Before joining Exact Sciences, Dr. Beer spent decades at the forefront of academic oncology, including serving as Deputy Director of the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute, where he helped build one of the country’s leading precision cancer programs.
A prostate cancer specialist by training, Dr. Beer has led numerous clinical trials, authored hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, and been a driving force in advancing biomarker-guided cancer therapy. His career has spanned the evolution of oncology—from empiric chemotherapy to precision medicine and now toward population-scale cancer detection.
An international team of scientists has taken a closer look at how memory functions in quantum systems and their time evolution. Their study reveals that whether a quantum process appears to have memory depends on how it is examined. From one angle, the process may seem completely memoryless. From another, traces of past behavior remain visible. The findings open new paths for research in quantum science and emerging technologies.
In classical physics, memory is defined in a straightforward way. If a system’s future behavior depends only on its current condition, it is considered memoryless. If earlier states continue to influence what happens next, the system is said to have memory.
Quantum physics complicates this picture. Quantum systems can store and transmit information in ways that have no counterpart in classical science. In addition, measurement is not just a passive observation. It plays an active and fundamental role in how quantum systems evolve.