Researchers revive yoghurt made from... ants

Photo Credit: David Zilber

An old traditional recipe for yoghurt made from ants has been recreated by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. In a new study, they show how ants and the bacteria that live on them can transform milk into yoghurt. This provides new knowledge about the food traditions of the past and one of today's major food trends, and the study may also inspire new sustainable foods.

Take four live forest ants. Put them in a jar of warm milk. Cover with a piece of cloth, then place the jar in a colony overnight. Voila! Now you have tasty yoghurt. This is how yoghurt was made for generations in many parts of Turkey and the Balkans. Today, the tradition has largely died out. But what is actually the science behind the method? And what can modern research learn from this method?

A team of biologists, food scientists and anthropologists from the University of Copenhagen and DTU, among others, set out to investigate this in collaboration with chefs from the Michelin-starred restaurant The Alchemist. No one has ever described the biology behind this mysterious recipe.

New mechanism revealed: How leukemia cells trick the immune system

Thoas Fioretos, Niklas Landberg, and Carl Sandén are the research team behind the study now being published in Nature Cancer.
Photo Credit: Tove Smeds

A research team at Lund University in Sweden has discovered a mechanism that helps acute myeloid leukemia cells to evade the body’s immune system. By developing an antibody that blocks the mechanism, the researchers could restore the immune system’s ability to kill the cancer cells in laboratory trials and in mice. The discovery is published in Nature Cancer.

Immunotherapy has improved the treatment for many cancers, but progress has been limited in leukemia. Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is particularly intractable, with a five-year survival rate of just over 30 per cent. The existing treatments are often aggressive and may include both strong chemotherapy and stem cell transplantations.

“We wanted to see if we could find surface proteins unique to leukemia stem cells, and which would therefore act as interesting targets for a targeted treatment. If such proteins were not present on healthy blood stem cells it might be possible to attack the tumor – without harming the healthy blood system,” says Thoas Fioretos, research group leader and professor of clinical genetics at Lund University, and senior consultant at Skåne University Hospital.

Scientists Have Created New Lanthanum Complex Promising for Anti-cancer Therapy

Lanthanum complexes demonstrate antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory effect, acceleration of tissue regeneration and anesthesia.
Photo Credit: Louis Reed

As a result of the joint work of an international group of scientists from Russia (Ural Federal University), Bulgaria (Medical University, Sofia), and Spain (Complutense University of Madrid, Rey Juan Carlos University), a new lanthanum (III) complex with a luminescent triazole ligand has been obtained that is able to selectively regulate the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells. The result opens up prospects for the development of new anti-cancer and anti-infective drugs. The interim results of the study were published in the journal Molecules.

“New lanthanum complexes demonstrate a wide range of biological effects such as antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory effect, acceleration of tissue regeneration and anesthesia. In a study that we conducted together with biologists from the Medical University of Sofia, we found out that both lanthanum complexes of La(III) and free organic ligands can affect the level of reactive oxygen species. At the same time, we found that they have a dual effect: in some tests, they act as antioxidants, protecting healthy cells, in others, as pro-oxidants, contributing to the death of tumor cells. This specific focus of action makes them promising candidates for the development of new drugs for cancer,” said Natalia Belskaya, Professor at UrFU Department of Technology pf Organic Synthesis.

Finding treasures with physics: the fingerprint matrix

Left: Artistic impression of metal spheres buried in small glass beads. Middle: Conventional ultrasound picture. Right: With the new technology, the positions of the metal spheres can be precisely determined.
Image Credit: © TU Wien / Arthur Le Ber

How do you find objects buried in sand or hidden in thick fog? A team from the Institut Langevin (Paris) and TU Wien (Vienna) has developed an astonishing method.

Can we reveal objects that are hidden in environments completely opaque to the human eye? With conventional imaging techniques, the answer is no: a dense cloud or layer of material blocks light so completely that a simple photograph contains no information about what lies behind it.

However, a research collaboration between the Institut Langevin and TU Wien has now shown that, with the help of innovative mathematical tricks, objects can be detected even in such cases – using what is known as the ‘fingerprint matrix’. The team tested the newly developed method on metal objects buried in sand and in applications in the field of medical imaging. A joint publication on this topic has just appeared in the journal Nature Physics.

Rare glimpse at understudied ecosystem prompts caution on deep-sea mining

Some of the animals identified in the deep-sea that spend their life in the benthic boundary layer.
Photo Credit: Gabrielle Ellis

An enormous but poorly understood region of the global ocean–referred to as the abyssal benthic boundary layer–lies a few meters above the seafloor and has only been sampled a handful of times. A study by oceanographers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa provided the first in-depth look at this habitat, revealing a dynamic community that may be more sensitive to seasonal changes than previously understood. The research, published in Limnology and Oceanography, also concluded that deep-sea mining could have significant and unavoidable impacts on biodiversity, regardless of the time of year.

“Given the remoteness of this environment, we have extraordinarily limited knowledge of the animals that inhabit this zone,” said Gabrielle Ellis, lead author of the study and recent oceanography graduate from the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “This study represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the benthic boundary layer community, and it starts to unravel temporal dynamics in the abyss.”

Sudan Ebola virus can persist in survivors for months

Image Credit: AI Generated

More than half of survivors of the Sudan Ebola virus still suffer serious health problems two years post-infection and the virus can persist in semen and breast milk for months after recovery, according to the first study examining the virus’s long-term effects.

The study, led by researchers at Washington State University, found 57.5% of the survivors of an outbreak in Uganda from 2022–23 reported ongoing and debilitating health issues that interfered with their daily lives. The detection of traces of the virus in semen and breast milk also raised concerns about the potential for sexual and mother-to-child transmission. The findings were recently published in the journal BMC Medicine.

“This is the first time anyone has been able to closely follow Sudan Ebola survivors over the long term, and the results show the virus continues to affect people’s lives well after an outbreak ends,” said lead researcher Kariuki Njenga, a professor in the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Health and senior scientist at WSU Global Health – Kenya. “Just as concerning is the fact we detected the virus in semen and breast milk, which shows there is a risk survivors could pass on Ebola months after recovery.”

What Is: Microplastics

Microplastic
Credit: Scientific Frontline

The Invisible Tide of Plastic

The modern era has been defined, in part, by the versatility and ubiquity of plastic. Yet, this celebrated 20th-century material has given rise to a paradoxical form of pollution—one so pervasive and minute that its scale was largely unrecognized until recently. Microplastics, the synthetic dust of our industrial age, represent a global environmental challenge of unprecedented complexity. These tiny particles, born from the fragmentation of larger debris and the intentional design of microscopic products, have infiltrated every corner of the planet. Scientific expeditions have confirmed their presence from the summit of Mount Everest to the abyssal depths of the Mariana Trench. More alarmingly, this invisible tide has crossed the final frontier, entering the human body itself, with researchers detecting microplastic particles in human blood, lung tissue, and even the placenta.

The ubiquity of microplastics signals a fundamental disruption of planetary systems. They are not merely inert debris but active agents in the environment, interacting with ecosystems and organisms in complex and often detrimental ways. Their journey spans the globe, carried by ocean currents, river systems, and atmospheric winds, connecting the most remote wilderness to the most densely populated urban centers in a shared system of contamination. This report provides a definitive, evidence-based synthesis of the current scientific understanding of microplastics. It aims to dissect the full scope of this issue, beginning with a fundamental definition of the pollutant and a detailed accounting of its myriad sources. It will then trace the environmental fate and transport of these particles through aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems. Finally, the report will conduct an exhaustive analysis of their multifaceted impacts on ecological integrity and human health, concluding with a critical evaluation of the policies, technologies, and strategies required to mitigate this pervasive threat.

3D-printed shelters increase baby coral survival rates

Researchers place the modules onto experimental tables in Kāneʻohe Bay.
Photo Credit: Jessica Reichert

To dramatically increase coral survival rates, scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) have developed innovative 3D-printed ceramic structures that provide crucial protection for baby corals. These new designs offer a low-cost and scalable solution to enhance reef recovery worldwide.

The discovery, published in Biological Conservation, addresses a critical challenge in reef restoration—the low settlement and survival rates of juvenile corals, which often die before adulthood due to predation, being overgrown by algae or being swept away by waves.

“We developed structures that help baby corals find safe homes in the reef,” said Josh Madin, principal investigator at HIMB’s Geometric Ecology Lab and co-author of the study. “Our new designs, with small spiral-shaped shelters called ‘helix recesses,’ give young corals the protection they need during this critical stage.”

Rock art shows earliest known human return to Arabia after the last Ice Age

Rock art has led scientists to revise the timeline of humans repopulating Saudi deserts.
Photo Credit: Sahout Rock Art and Archaeology Project

An international team of scientists, including from Saudi Arabia, use rock art and sediment samples to find that humans returned to Arabia earlier than previously thought after the last ice age  

The Heritage Commission has, in collaboration with an internation team including King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), revealed in Nature Communications the discovery of life-sized rock art panels in the Nefud Desert that were carved 12 000 years ago. 

These findings shift the timelines of when humans and wildlife repopulated the interior desert areas of Saudi Arabia after the Last Glacial Maximum by several thousand years.    

These findings, which can be read in Nature Communications, shift the timelines of when humans and wildlife repopulated the interior desert areas of Saudi Arabia after the Last Glacial Maximum by several thousand years.   

Breast Cancer Polygenic Risk Score Associated with Outcomes after In Situ Breast Disease

Photo Credit: National Cancer Institute

Studying a person’s genetic makeup can predict if they will go on to develop invasive breast cancer after abnormal cells have been found in their breast tissue.

For the first time, researchers at King’s College London have shown the connection between a person’s genetic risk score and their risk of developing the disease after irregular cells have been detected.

The research, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention and funded by Breast Cancer Now, included over 2,000 women in the UK who had been tested for 313 genetic changes, known as a genetic risk score.

These patients had already been diagnosed with either ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) or lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) – the most common types of abnormal cells found in breast tissue.

A genetic risk score estimates a person's inherited likelihood of developing a disease or trait by combining the influence of multiple common genetic variants.