Scientists have discovered the first known transmissible cancer in fish, the 4th naturally occurring cancer known to spread between animals Anglers noticed the disease in 2012 in bullhead catfish in a Vermont-Québec lake. Thoreau might even have seen it in the 1850s. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Rare contagious cancer discovered in wild catfish

Transmissible tumours have been found in only a few types of animal, but there might be many more out there.

nature.com

another #Nature #News feature: from billion-fold volumetric expansion to in situ structural biology. www.nature.com/articles/d41... The recent #UMG - #MIT preprint shows what is possible on purified systems. Next challenge: same but inside intact cells a brilliant piece from @ecallaway.bsky.social

Making samples one billion times bigger lets simple microscopes pinpoint amino acids

Stretching protein samples in all directions pulls molecules farther apart, allowing them to be visualized using only light microscopy.

nature.com

For the first time (?), researchers have recovered ancient human DNA from cave art. But does it belong to the artists? The published reviews suggest that they claims were toned down somewhat. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Investigating ancient human DNA preservation on cave walls and in rock art - Nature Communications

Ancient DNA can be preserved on materials from archaeological floor deposits such as bones, sediments and artifacts. Here, the authors investigate whether Palaeolithic wall art can preserve human DNA ...

nature.com

This is the first @thisiscolossal.com paper that I've covered to be published in a journal. This rebuts a critique I've heard that they make a big splash in preprints and fail to follow-up with peer-reviewed publications.

Stephen Turner@stephenturner.us · last mo.

Derivation of elephant induced pluripotent stem cells: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In just his second ever tweet - though, from an account only set up in June 2025 - John Jumper drops the mic. x.com/JohnJumperSc....

John Jumper (@JohnJumperSci) on X

A bit of news: After nearly 9 years, I have decided to leave Google DeepMind and join Anthropic (after taking some time to recharge). I am incredibly grateful for my time at GDM. @demishassabis took a...

x.com

Can anyone recommend a hype-free (or at least light), human-written summary of bio-AI news and research? Other than just following @delalamo.xyz and @anshulkundaje.bsky.social? I'm drowning!

This is fascinating work. Did they get analytical advice from anyone with expertise in phylogenomics/viral evolution eg scientists developing @nextstrain.org @pathoplexus.org tools used?

Greg Folkers@gregfolkers.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What ProPublica Found in the Genetic Code of America’s Measles Outbreaks by Nat Lash and Patricia Callahan @natlash.bsky.social @sheinvestigates.bsky.social @propublica.org ▶️ bit.ly/4e8K6hI

I'd love to hear evo/pop geneticists' thoughts. The argument that structure has been ignored feels like a straw-man. Odd not to quote anyone else working on this. There are many people with no connection to initial discovery. www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/14/1...

@ecallaway.bsky.social wrote a news article on our AlphaFold complex work. Thank you for covering it. 📄 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AlphaFold hits ‘next level’: the AI database now includes protein pairing

The database of 200 million protein-structure predictions now includes homodimers, adding new biological relevance.

nature.com

@jdiggans.bsky.social Hi James, I'm interested in speaking to you for a Nature news story. I've also contacted media team at Twist, but not yet heard back. Thanks!

The results are finally in! 🏆💻🧬 I'm thrilled to announce that the manuscript for the Bits to Binders protein design competition is out on bioRxiv! Here's a summary of our findings, including some simple criteria that nearly *double* success rates when applied as a filter 🧵

Ewen's writeup of the new Evo 2 paper in Nature is reliably good. I can imagine this foundation model will be useful for doing synthetic biology in microbes. But it's important to recognize that making this work for eg humans is not just a scaling-up issue... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI can write genomes — how long until it creates synthetic life?

The Evo2 genomic language model can generate short genome sequences, but scientists say further advances are needed to write genomes that will work inside living cells.

nature.com

After 5 years, 150k papers and 17 million genomes, here's what we learned about SARS-CoV-2 and viruses in general. It holds lessons for future pandemics - only if we listen. "We’re in a worse place in terms of pandemic prevention" @eddieholmes.bsky.social told me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Four ways COVID changed virology: lessons from the most sequenced virus of all time

After 150,000 articles and 17 million genome sequences, what has science taught us about SARS-CoV-2?

nature.com

Anyone been to Park Street lately? Me neither.

Martin Booth@beardedjourno.bsky.social · last yr.

"You talk to anybody around here, we're very worried. We all have signs up in our windows: Save Park Street." Traders on what was once Bristol's most prestigious shopping road are united in their opposition to close it to through-traffic

I wrote about Colossal's new woolly mouse (left), engineered with a mix of mammoth-inspired edits and mouse phenotypes. My story: www.nature.com/articles/d41.... 20+ years ago Jackson Lab bred a 'wooly' mouse (right) missing a gene called Fam83g. bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

This. Again, RFK Jr is lying and needs to be called out as a liar by the press. This is the first U.S. death *in 10 years*! So yeah, pretty damn unusual.

BK. Titanji@boghuma.bsky.social · last yr.

Actually, a measles outbreak IS an unusual occurrence. Especially in a country like the US, which had eliminated the disease thanks to vaccination until recently. It's so unusual that most physicians in the U.S. have NEVER seen a case! www.nbcnews.com/now/video/-i...

I feel so strongly about the need for evidence-based policy and a dogged defence of science I said it in 2020, and will reiterate it til the end of time. The world may change - our principles should not

PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · last yr.

In 2025, we continue to advocate for policy based on scientific evidence. This 2020 Editorial, “We need leaders that believe in scientific evidence”, resonates today as loudly as ever: plos.io/34lyl59. PLOS Biology also continues to push for DEI and a diverse scientific community: plos.io/3rzxczU 🧪

This is indeed a great story from Ewen (Science magazine has reported on this too). Ewen makes it properly clear that there are many questions about the functionality (or not) of all these "mini-proteins". Many may turn out to be "junk peptides". BUT...

Brendan Maher@bmaher.bsky.social · 2y ago

If you need a bio-break from all the political news in the US, this extremely geeky exploration of 'dark proteins' is a great read www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I wrote for @natureportfolio.bsky.social about 'dark proteins' encoded by our genomes. Once overlooked, they may be central to cancers, cellular biology and evolutionary innovation. As @sebastiaanvheesch.bsky.social told me: "There's new biology here." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Dark proteins’ hiding in our cells could hold clues to cancer and other diseases

The human genome encodes potentially thousands of tiny proteins that were previously overlooked. The search is on to find out what they do.

nature.com

Hi palaeopeople - this new Robyn Pickering account is a fake. The real Prof Pickering is @pickeringrobyn.bsky.social This new account has an extra ‘bsky’ after the handle and started DM-ing me immediately after I followed it.

The 2024 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who discovered microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that help to control how genes are expressed in multicellular organisms. Read the Nature article. 🧪

Medicine Nobel awarded for gene-regulating ‘microRNAs’

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun identified a class of tiny molecules that have a crucial role in controlling gene expression.

go.nature.com