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Department of Agriculture will expand effort to describe genetics of seed banks

Department will also initiate new fellowship program to shorten path to Ph.D.

The “ungraceful exit” of Chronicle Heritage leaves many researchers fearful for the future

Nicotine e-cigarettes appear to help more smokers quit than patches, gum, and several other common approaches, according to a major review of 80 clinical trials. Researchers say regulated vaping products are not risk-free, but may be a significantly less harmful alternative for people who would otherwise continue smoking.

Five natural compounds, including curcumin and berberine, were tested for their effects on cancer cells and healthy muscle cells. All disrupted cancer cell energy production and pushed many of the cells into a non-dividing state, with curcumin producing the strongest overall effect. Curcumin also showed a relatively favorable safety profile, while some other compounds caused more toxicity.

Researchers at Yale have identified a promising new approach to osteoarthritis that could do more than simply ease pain. The epilepsy drug lacosamide appears to block a protein involved in both pain signaling and cartilage destruction, helping damaged joints shift back toward repair in preclinical studies.

Ban on hunting for new viruses in wildlife is at odds with program’s mission, researchers say

The agency spent its full budget, but left many applicants out of luck

Despite prolific genomic data from individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD), translation into treatments has lagged. Here we applied Mendelian randomization to multiple AD genome-wide association studies and functional multiomics datasets to nominate druggable targets, identifying 19 targets for individuals of European ancestry and 7 for African ancestry. This included epoxide hydrolase 2 (EPHX2), for which we identified a protective missense variant (p.Arg287Gln). Experiments in induced...

Chronological age accounts for much of the variance in structural brain measures, yet aging is spatially distributed, modality-dependent and often nonlinear, features that conventional T1-only brain-age models overlook. We introduce a population-calibrated, multimodal framework in 2,796 adults that integrates gray-matter volume with diffusion-derived metrics to fit linear and quadratic age-association profiles across cortical and subcortical regions. We define the Age of Structural Transition...

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Oocyte activation and follicular development are fundamental for fertility in mammals, yet the dynamics of activated oocytes (Act-Oos) remain unclear. Here we use a Zp3-based lineage-tracing mouse model to label Act-Oos and reconstruct their developmental trajectories and folliculogenesis across the lifespan. We uncovered age-dependent heterogeneity in Act-Oo longevity: some oocytes activated in early adulthood progressed rapidly, whereas others persisted into late or even terminal reproductive...

Hematopoiesis depends on the sustained function of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). However, aging progressively impairs HSPC function, contributing to immunosenescence, hematologic malignancies, and degenerative disorders. Therefore, elucidating the mechanisms underlying HSPC aging is essential for developing strategies to alleviate age-related dysfunction. Here, we identify angiopoietin-like 8 (ANGPTL8), a secreted glycoprotein known for its role in glucose and lipid...

The retina is an extension of the central nervous system and a recognized indicator of systemic health, yet the link between the brain care score (BCS) and retinal health remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to assess the associations of BCS with retinal layer thickness and retinal biological age and to evaluate potential metabolic mediation for retinal thickness. A total of 28,657 UK Biobank participants with optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging at baseline were included, of whom...

Aging biology still lacks a fully mechanistic explanation for why functional decline accelerates after sexual maturity in the absence of a single initiating pathology. Here, we integrate cross-species epigenetic, transcriptomic, and proteomic datasets to test whether aging is associated with a post-maturity imbalance between two genome partitions: housekeeping genes (HG), which encode the cellular maintenance infrastructure, and integrative genes (IntG), which support specialized tissue...

Proteome integrity is continuously challenged by diverse forms of molecular damage, yet, in contrast to DNA, proteins have long been considered largely disposable rather than repairable. This view has shaped the prevailing paradigm of proteostasis, in which damaged proteins are primarily eliminated and replaced. However, emerging evidence from both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems indicates that enzymatic protein repair is more widespread and functionally significant than previously...

Cellular senescence, characterized by irreversible cell cycle arrest and the acquisition of a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), is a fundamental hallmark of aging and a key driver of numerous age-related diseases. However, conventional two-dimensional cell cultures and animal models fail to fully replicate the complex cellular architecture, multicellular interactions, and tissue-specific microenvironments in which senescence develops in vivo. Organoids, three-dimensional tissue...

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, exosome-mediated delivery of a dual miRNA sponge represents a mechanism-driven strategy to reprogram senescence-associated gene networks and restore MSC function. This approach provides a promising cell-free nucleic acid therapeutic platform for regenerative medicine applications.

INTRODUCTION: Gait alterations have been proposed as functional indicators of neural dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease; however, their ability to capture disease-associated locomotor changes in preclinical models remains insufficiently characterized.

As organisms age, mitochondrial metabolic activity declines, and disrupted gene expression regulation mediated by histone acetylation induces the emergence of senescent physiological phenotypes in tissues. In this study, we found that periodic exposure to red light significantly increased histone H3 Lys9 acetylation (H3K9ac) levels in the tissues and organs of aged mice. Following red light exposure, silent information regulation factor 4 (SIRT4) protein levels in keratinocytes were notably...