3+ min ago   (56+ words) A team of researchers in Japan has coaxed two bacteria working together to make one of the food industry’s most important amino acids directly from nitrogen gas, a feat that could loosen the grip of the energy-hungry Haber–Bosch process…...

6+ min ago   (55+ words) Immunotherapy has transformed the outlook for people with advanced bladder and kidney cancer. Drugs known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, which block molecular brakes such as CTLA-4, PD-1 and PD-L1 to unleash the immune system against tumours, have dramatically improved long-term…...

12+ min ago   (618+ words) Every day, computational biologists release new methods for analyzing genomes, single cells, microbiomes and molecular signatures, and every day researchers struggle with the same question: which method actually works best for their data? The answer usually depends on benchmarks—structured…...

16+ min ago   (55+ words) In the world of traditional Chinese medicine, few raw materials are as quietly ubiquitous as Cicadae Periostracum, the papery slough that cicadas abandon when they molt from nymph to adult. For centuries, this discarded exoskeleton has been prescribed for sore…...

27+ min ago   (96+ words) Rice paddies are among the most productive agricultural ecosystems on Earth, feeding billions of people across Asia and beyond. Yet beneath the flooded fields lies a complex microbial world whose balance determines whether the soil stays fertile or degrades over…...

27+ min ago   (53+ words) Triple-negative breast cancer is the form of the disease that clinicians fear most. Lacking the three molecular targets — the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and the HER2 protein — that anchor modern targeted therapies, it leaves patients with fewer options and a…...

27+ min ago   (582+ words) Exercise is one of the most powerful medicines for the heart, enlarging cardiomyocytes in a healthy way and shielding the organ from the devastating damage that follows a heart attack. Yet the molecular arithmetic behind this benefit has remained stubbornly…...

44+ min ago   (571+ words) For patients diagnosed with small kidney cancers tucked dangerously close to the organ’s blood vessels, urine-collecting system, or neighboring bowel, treatment options have long been fraught with compromise. Surgery risks sacrificing precious kidney function, while conventional heat-based ablation risks burning…...

44+ min ago   (707+ words) Detecting dangerous bacteria in a patient’s sample can take hours or even days, and the fastest molecular tests demand expensive laboratory infrastructure and highly trained staff....

44+ min ago   (55+ words) Immune checkpoint inhibitors have rewritten the outlook for some patients with gastrointestinal cancers, turning once uniformly fatal diagnoses into manageable chronic conditions for a fortunate minority. Yet for every dramatic response there are many more patients whose tumours barely flinch,…...