UTA0388 uses ChatGPT-driven phishing to deploy GOVERSHELL malware across Asia, Europe, and North America.
Category: evolution – Page 6
300,000-year-old genomes: History of the Schöningen horses deciphered
For the first time, a research team from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and the Schöningen Research Center have reconstructed the genomes of an extinct horse species, Equus mosbachensis, from the archaeological site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, which is approximately 300,000 years old.
Thanks to exceptionally favorable preservation conditions, the researchers were able to identify the oldest DNA yet discovered from an open-air site. Their analyses show that the Schöningen horses belong to a lineage that is considered to be the origin of all modern horses. The study is published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Domestic and wild horses, donkeys and zebras all belong to the sole genus of the family Equidae still in existence today. But a look into the fossil record shows that more than 35 different genera and hundreds of now extinct equine species occurred throughout the past.
Long-term radio observations track the evolution of a tidal disruption event
Astronomers from Curtin University in Australia and elsewhere have performed radio observations of a tidal disruption event known as AT2019azh. Results of the new study, published September 22 on the arXiv preprint server, provide crucial information regarding the evolution of this event.
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are phenomena that occur when a star passes close enough to a supermassive black hole (SMBH) and is destroyed by the black hole’s tidal forces. As a result, around half of the stellar debris is unbound from the system, while the rest of the material remains bound, producing a luminous flare as it accretes onto the SMBH.
AT2019azh is a TDE at a redshift of 0.022, detected in 2019 in the galaxy KUG 0180+227. It showcases persistent blue colors, has a high blackbody temperature, and previous observations have reported a lack of spectroscopic features associated with a supernova or an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which confirmed its TDE nature.
Human genome rearrangement with programmable bridge recombinases
Bridge recombinases were discovered from parasitic mobile genetic elements that hijack bacterial genomes for their own survival. Presented last year in the journal Nature, the same team found these elements encode both a new class of structured guide RNA, which they named a “bridge RNA”, and a recombinase enzyme that rearranges DNA. The researchers repurposed this natural system by reprogramming the bridge RNA to target new DNA sequences, creating the foundation for a new type of precise gene editing tool they called bridge recombinases.
Starting with 72 different natural bridge recombinase systems isolated from bacteria, the team found that about 25% showed some activity in human cells, but most were barely detectable. Only one system, called ISCro4, showed enough measurable activity to enable further optimization. They then systematically improved both the protein and its RNA guide components, testing thousands of variations until they achieved 20% efficiency for DNA insertions and 82% specificity for hitting intended targets in the human genome.
While CRISPR uses a single guide RNA to target one DNA location, bridge RNAs are unique because they can simultaneously recognize two different DNA targets through distinct binding loops. This dual recognition enables the system to perform coordinated rearrangements such as bringing together distant chromosomal regions to excise genetic material or flipping existing sequences in reverse orientation. The system acts as molecular scaffolding that holds two DNA sites together while the recombinase enzyme performs the rearrangement reaction.
As a proof-of-concept, the researchers created artificial DNA constructs containing the same toxic repeat sequences that cause progressive neuromuscular decline in Friedreich’s ataxia patients. While healthy individuals carry fewer than 10 sequential copies of a three-letter DNA sequence, people with the disorder can harbor up to 1,700 copies, which interferes with normal gene function. The engineered ISCro4 successfully removed these repeats from the artificial constructs, in some cases eliminating over 80% of the expanded sequences.
The team also demonstrated that bridge recombinases could replicate existing therapeutic approaches by successfully removing the BCL11A enhancer, the same target disrupted in an FDA-approved sickle cell anemia treatment. And because bridge recombinases can move massive amounts of DNA, the technology could also help model the large-scale genomic rearrangements associated with cancers.
For decades, gene-editing science has been limited to making small, precise edits to human DNA, akin to correcting typos in the genetic code. The researchers are changing that paradigm with a universal gene editing system that allows for cutting and pasting of entire genomic paragraphs, rearranging whole chapters, and even restructuring entire passages of the genomic manuscript.
Shining a light on dark valleytronics: First direct observation of dark excitons in atomically thin materials
In a world-first, researchers from the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have directly observed the evolution of the elusive dark excitons in atomically thin materials, laying the foundation for new breakthroughs in both classical and quantum information technologies.
Their findings have been published in Nature Communications.
Professor Keshav Dani, head of the unit, says, Dark excitons have great potential as information carriers, because they are inherently less likely to interact with light, and hence less prone to degradation of their quantum properties. However, this invisibility also makes them very challenging to study and manipulate.
The Solar Wind Is Hiding Strange Particles That Could Rewrite Space Weather
Data may challenge and reshape current models of solar wind evolution.
A recent study led by Dr. Michael Starkey of the Southwest Research Institute has delivered the first observational evidence from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ions (PUIs) and their related wave activity in the solar wind near Earth. NASA launched the MMS mission in 2015, deploying four spacecraft to study Earth’s magnetosphere, the magnetic field that protects the planet from harmful solar and cosmic radiation.
Formation and behavior of PUIs.
Shape-shifting collisions offer new tool for studying early matter produced in Big Bang’s aftermath
This summer, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) took a breath of fresh air. Normally filled with beams of protons, the 27-km ring was reconfigured to enable its first oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions. First results from the new data, recorded over a period of six days by the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb experiments, were presented during the Initial Stages conference held in Taipei, Taiwan, on 7–12 September.
Smashing atomic nuclei into one another allows physicists to study the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), an extreme state of matter that mimics the conditions of the universe during its first microseconds, before atoms formed. Until now, exploration of this hot and dense state of free particles at the LHC relied on collisions between heavy ions (like lead or xenon), which maximize the size of the plasma droplet created.
Collisions between lighter ions, such as oxygen, open a new window on the QGP to better understand its characteristics and evolution. Not only are they smaller than lead or xenon, allowing a better investigation of the minimum size of nuclei needed to create the QGP, but they are less regular in shape. A neon nucleus, for example, is predicted to be elongated like a bowling pin—a picture that has now been brought into sharper focus thanks to the new LHC results.
Researchers trace genetic code’s origins to early protein structures
Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way it is?
A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign sheds new light on the origin and evolution of the genetic code, providing valuable insights for genetic engineering and bioinformatics. The study is published in the Journal of Molecular Biology.
“We find the origin of the genetic code mysteriously linked to the dipeptide composition of a proteome, the collective of proteins in an organism,” said corresponding author Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and Biomedical and Translation Sciences of Carle Illinois College of Medicine at U. of I.