Unveiling Inaoside A: An Antioxidant Derived from Mushrooms

Discovering a new antioxidant compound, Inaoside A from Laetiporus cremeiporus
Image credit: Atsushi Kawamura from Shinshu University, Japan

Natural products have unique chemical structures and biological activities and can play a pivotal role in advancing pharmaceutical science. In a pioneering study, researchers from Shinshu University discovered Inaoside A, an antioxidant derived from Laetiporus cremeiporus mushrooms. This breakthrough sheds light on the potential of mushrooms as a source of therapeutic bioactive compounds.

The search for novel bioactive compounds from natural sources has gained considerable momentum in recent years due to the need for new therapeutic agents to combat various health challenges. Among a diverse array of natural products, mushrooms have emerged as a rich reservoir of bioactive molecules with potential pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications. The genus Laetiporus has attracted attention for its extracts exhibiting antimicrobial, antioxidant, and antithrombin bioactivities. The species Laetiporus cremeiporus, spread across East Asia, has also been reported to show antioxidant properties. However, the identification and characterization of specific antioxidant compounds from this species have not been conducted.

In a groundbreakng study, researchers led by Assistant Professor Atsushi Kawamura from the Department of Biomolecular Innovation, Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University, along with Hidefumi Makabe from the Department of Agriculture, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shinshu University, and Akiyoshi Yamada from the Department of Mountain Ecosystem, Institute for Mountain Science, Interdisciplinary Cluster for Cutting Edge Research, Shinshu University, recently discovered the antioxidant compound derived from L. cremeiporus.

Gene discovered that can protect against severe muscle disease

The researchers behind the study. Front row from the left: Hanna Nord, Fatima Pedrosa Domellöf, Jingxia Liu. Rear row: Abraha Kahsay, Nils Dennhag, Jonas von Hofsten
Photo Credit: Per Stål

A specific gene may play a key role in new treatments that prevent muscle in the body from breaking down in serious muscle diseases. This is shown in a new study at Umeå University, Sweden. Protein expressed by the gene naturally prevents the muscles around the eye from being affected when other muscles in the body are affected by muscular dystrophies. In the study the gene is expressed in all muscles. The effects were that muscular dystrophy was alleviated throughout the body.

"You could say that the eye muscles function both as an eye-opener for understanding the disease and as a door opener to a treatment for the whole body," says Fatima Pedrosa Domellöf, professor of eye diseases at Umeå University and one of the study's authors.

Muscular dystrophies are a group of congenital genetic diseases that affect muscle tissue and often lead to severe disability and greatly reduced life expectancy. Despite intensive research, there are still no effective treatments for patients suffering from muscular dystrophy.

Decomposition under the microscope

Lara Indra photographically documenting an animal cadaver. Attached to the tree trunk and behind the researcher are camera traps; an insect trap is positioned to the left.
Photo Credit: Sandra Lösch / Dept. of Anthropology, IRM, University of Bern

Researchers at the University of Bern have investigated the process of decomposition on pig carcasses left in nature. The researchers discovered that the previous standard method for assessing decomposition in Switzerland needs to be adapted – with an impact on forensic analysis. The method presented by the researchers aims to better determine the post-mortem interval.

A dead body decomposes with the help of various organisms – such as intestinal bacteria, flies, maggots and beetles. This makes it difficult to establish the post-mortem interval of cadavers in forensics: the more advanced the decomposition, the harder it is to determine the time of death. Therefore, various methods have the goal of correlating the degree of decomposition with the postmortem interval. With respect to this, the body is divided into three areas – the head and neck, the trunk and the extremities – and its condition is assessed using a point value system. The findings from the three areas are then added together, resulting in the total body score (TBS). 

Researchers provide unprecedented view into aerosol formation in Earth’s lower atmosphere

Researchers identified evidence of Criegee intermediate oligomerization in the Amazon rainforest.
 Image Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

Eighty-five percent of the Earth’s air resides in the lowest layer of its atmosphere, or troposphere. Yet, major gaps remain in our understanding of the atmospheric chemistry that drives changes in the troposphere’s composition.

One especially important gap in knowledge is the formation and prevalence of secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), which impact the planet’s radiation balance, air quality and human health. But that gap is closing — due to the groundbreaking discoveries of an international team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The scientists detail their findings in a new paper published in Nature Geosciences. 

The team focused on a class of compounds known as Criegee intermediates (CIs). Researchers suspect that CIs play a critical role in the formation of SOAs when they combine via a process called oligomerization. But no one had ever directly identified the chemical signatures of this process in the field — until now.

Can ‘Super Volcanoes’ Cool the Earth in a Major Way? A New Study Suggests No.

Quizapu Volcano, Chile
Photo Credit: Kevin Krajick / Earth Institute

Scientific Frontline: "At a Glance" Summary

• Main Discovery: Volcanic super-eruptions likely cause significantly less global cooling than previously estimated, with temperature drops probably not exceeding 1.5°C (2.7°F) even for the most powerful events.
• Methodology: Researchers from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies utilized advanced computer modeling to simulate climate responses to super-eruptions, specifically varying the diameter of microscopic sulfate particles injected into the stratosphere.
• Key Data: Previous estimates suggested cooling of 2°C to 8°C (3.6°F to 14.4°F), but new simulations align more closely with the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, which caused a 0.5°C (1°F) drop; a super-eruption requires releasing over 1,000 cubic kilometers of magma.
• Significance: The findings explain the lack of archaeological or geological evidence for global-scale biological catastrophes following historical super-eruptions, such as the Toba event 74,000 years ago.
• Future Application: The study highlights the high level of uncertainty regarding aerosol particle behavior, suggesting that intentional geoengineering via stratospheric aerosol injection remains a non-viable climate mitigation strategy for the foreseeable future.
• Branch of Science: Earth Science, Volcanology, and Climate Modeling.
• Additional Detail: Sulfate particles influence temperature through two counteracting mechanisms: reflecting incoming solar radiation to cause cooling and trapping outgoing thermal energy to create a greenhouse effect.

Earliest-yet Alzheimer’s biomarker found in mouse model could point to new targets

Illinois graduate student Yeeun Yook, left, and professor Nien-Pei Tsai worked with their team to find the earliest marker of Alzheimer’s disease yet reported in the brains of mice. The work could create new targets for early detection or treatment options.
Photo Credit: Fred Zwicky

A surge of a neural-specific protein in the brain is the earliest-yet biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease, report University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers studying a mouse model of the disease. Furthermore, the increased protein activity leads to seizures associated with the earliest stages of neurodegeneration, and inhibiting the protein in the mice slowed the onset and progression of seizure activity. 

The neural-specific protein, PSD-95, could pose a new target for Alzheimer’s research, early diagnosis and treatment, said study leader Nien-Pei Tsai, an Illinois professor of molecular and integrative physiology. 

Tsai’s group studies mice that make more of the proteins that form amyloid-beta, which progressively aggregates in Alzheimer’s disease to form plaques in the brain that hamper neural activity. However, in the new work, the group focused on a time frame much earlier in the mouse lifespan than others have studied – when no other markers or abnormalities have been reported, Tsai said.

Aluminum nanoparticles make tunable green catalysts

Aaron Bayles is a Rice University doctoral alum, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a lead author on a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Aaron Bayles / Rice University

Catalysts unlock pathways for chemical reactions to unfold at faster and more efficient rates, and the development of new catalytic technologies is a critical part of the green energy transition.

The Rice University lab of nanotechnology pioneer Naomi Halas has uncovered a transformative approach to harnessing the catalytic power of aluminum nanoparticles by annealing them in various gas atmospheres at high temperatures.

According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rice researchers and collaborators showed that changing the structure of the oxide layer that coats the particles modifies their catalytic properties, making them a versatile tool that can be tailored to suit the needs of different contexts of use from the production of sustainable fuels to water-based reactions.

“Aluminum is an earth-abundant metal used in many structural and technological applications,” said Aaron Bayles, a Rice doctoral alum who is a lead author on the paper. “All aluminum is coated with a surface oxide, and until now we did not know what the structure of this native oxide layer on the nanoparticles was. This has been a limiting factor preventing the widespread application of aluminum nanoparticles.”

Aluminum nanoparticles absorb and scatter light with remarkable efficiency due to surface plasmon resonance, a phenomenon that describes the collective oscillation of electrons on the metal surface in response to light of specific wavelengths. Like other plasmonic nanoparticles, the aluminum nanocrystal core can function as a nanoscale optical antenna, making it a promising catalyst for light-based reactions.

Juno Spacecraft Measures Oxygen Production on Jupiter's Moon, Europa

For the first time, SwRI scientists used the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument to definitively detect oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere of one of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa. NASA's Juno spacecraft, using its SwRI-developed instrument, made the measurements during a 2022 flyby of Europa.
Image Credit: Courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has directly measured charged oxygen and hydrogen molecules from the atmosphere of one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. According to a new study co-authored by SwRI scientists and led by Princeton University, these observations provide key constraints on the potential oxygenation of its subsurface ocean.

“These findings have direct implications on the potential habitability of Europa,” said Juno Principal Investigator Dr. Scott Bolton of SwRI, a co-author of the study. “This study provides the first direct in-situ measurement of water components existing in Europa’s atmosphere, giving us a narrow range that could support habitability.”

In 2022, Juno completed a flyby of Europa, coming as close as 352 kilometers to the moon. The SwRI-developed Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument aboard Juno detected significant amounts of charged molecular oxygen and hydrogen lost from the atmosphere.

Harmful ‘forever chemicals’ removed from water with new electrocatalysis method

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they break down very slowly. Rochester scientists have developed nanocatalysts that can more affordably remediate a specific type of PFAS called Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS).
Photo Credit: J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester 

A novel approach using laser-made nanomaterials created from nonprecious metals could lay the foundation for globally scalable remediation techniques.

Scientists from the University of Rochester have developed new electrochemical approaches to clean up pollution from “forever chemicals” found in clothing, food packaging, firefighting foams, and a wide array of other products. A new Journal of Catalysis study describes nanocatalysts developed to remediate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS.

The researchers, led by assistant professor of chemical engineering Astrid Müller, focused on a specific type of PFAS called Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which was once widely used for stain-resistant products but is now banned in much of the world for its harm to human and animal health. PFOS is still widespread and persistent in the environment despite being phased out by US manufacturers in the early 2000s, continuing to show up in water supplies.

How Does a River Breathe?

Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been studying processes that affect how rivers and streams breathe, particularly in the Columbia River Basin, to help prepare for future changes related to water quality and climate change. 
Photo Credit: Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Take a deep breath.

Pay attention to how air moves from your nose to your throat before filling your lungs with oxygen.

As you exhale your breath, a mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide leaves your nose and mouth.

Did you know that streams and rivers “breathe” in a similar way?

The United States is home to more than 250,000 of these flowing bodies of water that connect to coastal zones and oceans. They vary in size, from small streams to large rivers, but all take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane. 

Over recent years, a team of scientists led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been immersed in crucial research around the processes and interactions that contribute to greenhouse gas dynamics. Their work focuses on whole networks of streams and rivers, as well as the land surrounding these systems.       

Their work also includes factors that can disturb how streams and rivers breathe. Some of these disturbances happen beyond streams, like wildfires, but still impact how streams breathe by changing how material enters streams. Understanding these impacts is key to addressing challenges related to water quality, global carbon cycling, and climate change.

Possible ‘Trojan Horse’ found for treating stubborn bacterial infections

Transmission electron microscope (TEM) image of the bacterial cell with an extracellular vesicle attached.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Washington State University

Bacteria can be tricked into sending death signals to stop the growth of their slimy, protective homes that lead to deadly infections, a new study demonstrates.

The discovery by Washington State University researchers could someday be harnessed as an alternative to antibiotics for treating difficult infections. Reporting in the journal Biofilm, the researchers used the messengers, which they named death extracellular vesicles (D-EVs), to reduce growth of the bacterial communities by up to 99.99% in laboratory experiments.

“Adding the death extracellular vesicles to the bacterial environment, we are kind of cheating the bacteria cells,” said Mawra Gamal Saad, first author on the paper and a graduate student in WSU’s Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. “The cells don’t know which type of EVs they are, but they take them up because they are used to taking them from their environment, and with that, the physiological signals inside the cells change from growth to death.”

A Larger Area of Arctic Seafloor is Exposed to Sunlight

Photo Credit: © Ignacio Garrido

Most of the sunlight reaching the Arctic Ocean is reflected by sea ice, shielding ocean ecosystems from light. As Arctic sea ice continues to melt, larger areas of the ocean and seafloor become exposed to sunlight, potentially allowing more photosynthesis to occur and making the Arctic Ocean more productive. However, this does not seem to be occurring uniformly across the Arctic Ocean.

Over the past 25 years, the amount of summer Arctic sea ice has diminished by more than 1 million square kilometers. As a result, vast areas of the Arctic Ocean are now, on average, ice free in summer. Scientists are closely monitoring how this impacts sunlight availability and marine ecosystems in the far north.

Many questions arise when such large areas become ice-free and can receive sunlight. A prevailing paradigm suggests that the Arctic Ocean is rapidly becoming more productive as sunlight becomes more abundant in the marine environment. However, it is unclear how ecosystems will evolve in response to increasing sunlight availability and how different parts of the marine ecosystem will be affected, says Karl Attard, a marine scientist and Associate Professor at the Department of Biology.

Attard has led an international research team investigating sunlight availability and photosynthetic production on the understudied Arctic seafloor. Their study has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Groundbreaking survey reveals secrets of planet birth around dozens of stars

This research brings together observations of more than 80 young stars that might have planets forming around them in spectacular discs. This small selection from the survey shows 10 discs from the three regions of our galaxy observed in the papers. V351 Ori and V1012 Ori are located in the most distant of the three regions, the gas-rich cloud of Orion, some 1600 light-years from Earth. DG Tau, T Tau, HP Tau, MWC758 and GM Aur are located in the Taurus region, while HD 97048, WW Cha and SZ Cha can be found in Chamaeleon I, all of which are about 600 light-years from Earth.  The images shown here were captured using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). SPHERE’s state-of-the-art extreme adaptive optics system corrects for the turbulent effects of Earth’s atmosphere, yielding crisp images of the discs around stars. The stars themselves have been covered with a coronagraph — a circular mask that blocks their intense glare, revealing the faint discs around them.  The discs have been scaled to appear roughly the same size in this composition. 
Full Size Zoomable Image
Image Credit: ESO/C. Ginski, A. Garufi, P.-G. Valegård et al.

In a series of studies, a team of astronomers has shed new light on the fascinating and complex process of planet formation. The stunning images, captured using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, represent one of the largest ever surveys of planet-forming discs. The research brings together observations of more than 80 young stars that might have planets forming around them, providing astronomers with a wealth of data and unique insights into how planets arise in different regions of our galaxy.

“This is really a shift in our field of study,” says Christian Ginski, a lecturer at the University of Galway, Ireland, and lead author of one of three new papers published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. “We’ve gone from the intense study of individual star systems to this huge overview of entire star-forming regions.”

How artificial intelligence learns from complex networks

Multi-layered, so-called deep neural networks are highly complex constructs that are inspired by the structure of the human brain. However, one shortcoming remains: the inner workings and decisions of these models often defy explanation.
Image Credit: Brian Penny / AI Generated

Deep neural networks have achieved remarkable results across science and technology, but it remains largely unclear what makes them work so well. A new study sheds light on the inner workings of deep learning models that learn from relational datasets, such as those found in biological and social networks.

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are artificial neural networks designed to represent entities—such as individuals, molecules, or cities—and the interactions between them. These networks have practical applications in various domains; for example, they predict traffic flows in Google Maps and accelerate the discovery of new antibiotics within computational drug discovery pipelines.

GNNs are notably utilized by AlphaFold, an acclaimed AI system that addresses the complex issue of protein folding in biology. Despite these achievements, the foundational principles driving their success are poorly understood.

A recent study sheds light on how these AI algorithms extract knowledge from complex networks and identifies ways to enhance their performance in various applications.

Scientists Have Created Organic Films to Charge Cardiac Pacemakers

The resulting films have high biocompatibility.
Photo Credit: Andrei Ushakov

UrFU scientists, together with colleagues from the University of Aveiro (Portugal), have succeeded in obtaining biocompatible crystalline films. They have high piezoelectric properties - they generate an electric current under mechanical or thermal stress. This property will be useful in the design of elements for invasive medical devices, such as pacemakers. Detailed information about the films obtained and the new method of their synthesis has been published by the scientists in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering. 

"We have succeeded in obtaining films from diphenylalanine that have high piezoelectric properties comparable to their inorganic counterparts. Under mechanical or thermal stress, these films generate electricity. The use of such films will be particularly useful for making invasive cardiac pacemakers - devices that reside inside the human body. When the heart moves or beats, these films generate electricity, which is stored in the pacemaker's batteries. Energy storage devices based on such materials could solve the problem of replacing depleted batteries and reduce the number of surgical procedures," explains Denis Alikin, Head of the Laboratory of Functional Nanomaterials and Nanodevices at the UrFU Research Institute of Physics and Applied Mathematics.