It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Branching out: Tomato genes point to new medicines
Tomatoes grow on the vine at Uplands Farm, about a mile east of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s main campus on Long Island. The agricultural research station offers a shared resource for CSHL scientists studying various topics, from plant genetics to quantitative biology and cancer.
Picture juicy red tomatoes on the vine. What do you see? Some tomato varieties have straight vines. Others are branched. The question is why. New research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) provides the strongest evidence to date that the answer lies in what are called cryptic mutations. The findings have implications for agriculture and medicine, as they could help scientists fine-tune plant breeding techniques and clinical therapeutics.
Cryptic mutations are differences in DNA that don’t affect physical traits unless certain other genetic changes occur at the same time. CSHL Professor & HHMI Investigator Zachary Lippman has been researching cryptic mutations’ effects on plant traits alongside CSHL Associate Professor David McCandlish and Weizmann Institute Professor Yuval Eshed. Their latest study, published in Nature, reveals how interactions between cryptic mutations can increase or decrease the number of reproductive branches on tomato plants. Such changes result in more or fewer fruits, seeds, and flowers. The interactions in question involve genes known as paralogs.
“Paralogs emerge across evolution through gene duplication and are major features of genetic networks,” Lippman explains. “We know paralogs can buffer against each other to prevent gene mutations from affecting traits. Here, we found that collections of natural and engineered cryptic mutations in two pairs of paralogs can impact tomato branching in myriad ways.”
One crucial component of the project was the pan-genome Lippman and colleagues completed for Solanum plants around the globe, including cultivated and wild tomato species. Where genomes typically encompass one species, pan-genomes capture DNA sequences and traits across many species. The pan-genome pointed Lippman’s lab toward natural cryptic mutations in key genes controlling branching. Lippman lab postdoc Sophia Zebell then engineered other cryptic mutations using CRISPR. That enabled Lippman’s lab to count the branches on more than 35,000 flower clusters with 216 combinations of gene mutations. From there, McCandlish lab postdoc Carlos Martí-Gómez used computer models to predict how interactions between specific combinations of mutations in the plants would change the number of branches.
“We can now engineer cryptic mutations in tomatoes and other crops to modify important agricultural traits, like yield,” Lippman says.
Additionally, the kind of modeling done here could have many other applications. McCandlish explains: “When making mutations or using a drug that mimics the effects of a mutation, you often see side effects. By being able to map them out, you can choose the manner of controlling your trait of interest that has the least undesirable side effects.”
In other words, this research points not only to better crops but also better medicines. So, you see tomatoes? Science sees tomorrow.
Wild relatives of cultivated plants are a vital source of genetic diversity for improving crops and provide a valuable reservoir of resistance against biotic and abiotic stressors. Although their value has been recognised for decades, technological obstacles have long hindered their exploration. Thanks to advances in high-throughput genomic research, the same tools can now be used in crops and their wild relatives.
“The tetraploid forms have two origins, one in Greece and one in southwestern Asia. In Asia they originated already between one and two million years ago, while in Greece tetraploids arose only within the last 100,000 years”, explains Jia-Wu Feng, first author of the study. “We found evidence that both types are now interbreeding, which provides a way for polyploids to enrich their genomic diversity through multiple origins”, Dr. Frank Blattner adds.
Although H. bulbosum is barley’s closest wild relative, with an estimated divergence time of 4.5 million years, the species has evolved quite differently genetically. The most obvious difference is the expansion of the barley genome. “Quite surprising, we showed that this expansion did not occur uniformly across the genome, but mainly at the ends of the chromosomes”, says Jia-Wu Feng.
A common way of transferring genes from wild relatives into domesticated plants is through introgression lines. These are derived from crosses between crops and their wild relatives and contain a small proportion of the wild parent’s genes within a cultivated genomic background. Based on the reference genomes, the research team has decoded the Ryd4 resistance locus's structure approximately 40 years after its introgression from H. bulbosum into barley. "This is without question the most promising crop-wild introgression in barley to date, and the only one close to being deployed in commercial varieties. It provides qualitative resistance to the devastating barley yellow dwarf virus, which affects several cereal crops”, explains Dr. Martin Mascher, head of IPK’s “Domestication Genomics” research group and a member of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig.
“Having genome sequences for crop wild relatives will be useful for more targeted introgression breeding in the future”, says Dr. Martin Mascher. “The systematic genomic characterisation of crop plants and their wild relatives is important foundational research to make plant genetic resources better accessible for crop improvement”, emphasises Prof. Dr. Nils Stein, head of the Federal Ex situ Genebank for agricultural and horticultural crops at IPK Leibniz Institute, “and it is the driver to evolve the genebank from a seedstore into a biodigital resources centre”.
Enzymes catalyze chemical reactions in organisms - without which life would not be possible. Leveraging AlphaFold2 artificial intelligence, researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now succeeded in analyzing the laws of their evolution on a large scale. In the journal Nature*, they describe the parts of enzymes that change comparatively quickly and the parts that remain practically unchanged over time. These findings are relevant to the development of new antibiotics, for example.
Enzymes resemble nature's tiny little chemists: the nanometer-sized protein molecules ensure that chemical reactions can take place in every single cell of every organism. Unnoticed by most people, enzymes permeate our lives: they enable the digestion of food - both for us and for microorganisms. Without enzymes, there would be no bread, no beer and no cheese. They are also at work in industry, as evidenced in the production of medicines and detergents. And likewise, enzymes play a pivotal role in the effectiveness and mechanism of action of many medicines.
"We wanted to understand the rules according to which enzymes change their spatial shape over time," as study leader Prof. Markus Ralser, Director of the Institute of Biochemistry at Charité explains. "Because if we know these rules, we can predict, for example, where and how a bacterium will become resistant to an antibiotic." Many antibiotics and antifungal drugs are directed against specific enzymes of the pathogens they target. If these enzymes change their shape precisely where the respective active ingredient docks on, the drug will lose its effect. The same principle applies to numerous other drugs. Many cancer drugs target enzymes in the tumor that can change their shape during the course of treatment, rendering the drug ineffective as a result.
An AI system was the only way to solve the research questions
Determining the principles of enzyme evolution, however, is easier said than done. What is needed is a comparison of the three-dimensional shape of innumerable enzymes. This information, however, was not known for many enzymes, as determining the 3D structure of just a single enzyme by experimental means is time-consuming and can take up to several months. "Instead, by leveraging AlphaFold2, we calculated the shape of almost 10,000 enzymes in a matter of just a few months," says Markus Ralser.
AlphaFold2 is an AI model that deduces what an enzyme's 3D structure should look like based solely on its amino acid sequence, i.e. its chemical composition - and has proven to deliver exceptionally high accuracy. In 2020, AlphaFold2 was celebrated worldwide as a breakthrough and only four years later, last year, the developers of the AI model were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Supercomputing tracking the course of evolution
Unleashing AlphaFold2 calls for hefty computing power - and masses of it. "We harnessed the Berzelius supercomputer in Sweden for our calculations," as Dr. Oliver Lemke, a scientist in Markus Ralser's laboratory and one of the two lead authors of the paper related. The 300-petaflops computer is operated by the National Supercomputer Centre at Linköping University and is available to international research teams on request.
At Charité, the researchers finally analyzed the similarities and differences of a total of almost 11,300 enzymes and examined them in the context of the metabolic reactions for which they are responsible. In addition to the approximately 10,000 3D structures that they had calculated themselves, they took around 1,300 3D structures into account that had previously been predicted using AlphaFold2 and made publicly available.
The team’s work focused on enzymes from yeasts, i.e. unicellular fungi, which include baker's yeast, for example. As Dr. Benjamin Heineike, the second lead author of the study from the Ralser laboratory, explains: "Yeast fungi are among the best-studied organisms. Whether in terms of enzyme genes or metabolism, we had the most comprehensive data on them." The enzymes studied came from 27 different yeast species that have developed over an evolutionary period totaling 400 million years.
Chemistry determines enzyme change
The research team discovered several laws that govern the way in which enzymes evolve. For example, they change faster on their surface than underneath. By contrast, their so-called active center - the site where the chemical reaction takes place - barely changes over a long period of time. If the enzyme has to bind other molecules on its surface in order to fulfil its role, those areas are also frozen in terms of their shape. "To summarize, we can say that enzymes primarily undergo further development in areas that have no effect on the chemical reactions," Markus Ralser explains. "The metabolism itself therefore plays a key role in the evolution of the enzyme structure."
The results of the study are relevant to the optimization of biotechnological processes, for example, but also the development of new active ingredients. To return to the example of antibiotics: "Sometimes, when a new antibiotic comes onto the market, it does not take long before the first resist strains appear," Markus Ralser adds. "The reason for this is that the bacterial enzymes targeted by the active agents evolve at a rapid pace. Our data can be used to identify the parts of the enzymes unlikely to change much. New antibiotics that target precisely these areas could potentially retain their effect over a longer period of time."
*Lemke O, Heineike BM et al. The role of metabolism in shaping enzyme structures over 400 million years. Nature 2025 Jul 09. doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09205-6
About the study The study was led by Prof. Markus Ralser, Einstein Professor of Biochemistry. He heads a research group at the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford in addition to the Institute of Biochemistry at Charité. Markus Ralser is also a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG) and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH).
Scientists have shed new light on the rhino family tree after recovering a protein sequence from a fossilised tooth from more than 20 million years ago.
The recovered protein sequences allowed researchers to determine that this ancient rhino diverged from other rhinocerotids during the Middle Eocene-Oligocene epoch, around 41-25 million years ago.
The data also shed new light on the divergence between the two main subfamilies of rhinos, Elasmotheriinae and Rhinocerotinae, suggesting a more recent split in the Oligocene, around 34-22 million years ago, than shown previously through bone analysis.
The successful extraction and sequencing of ancient enamel proteins from a fossilized rhino tooth extends the timescale for recoverable, evolutionary-informative protein sequences by ten-fold compared to the oldest known ancient DNA.
The team at York were involved in confirming that the proteins and amino acids were genuinely ancient. They analysed the rhino tooth, which was unearthed in Canada's High Arctic, using a technique known as chiral amino acid analysis to gain a clearer understanding of how the proteins within it had been preserved.
By measuring the extent of protein degradation and comparing it to previously analysed rhino material, they were able to confirm that the amino acids were original to the tooth and not the result of later contamination.
Dr Marc Dickinson, co-author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of York’s Department of Chemistry, said: “It is phenomenal that these tools are enabling us to explore further and further back in time. Building on our knowledge of ancient proteins, we can now start asking fascinating new questions about the evolution of ancient life on our planet.”
The rhino is of particular interest as it is now classified as an endangered species, and so understanding its deep-time evolutionary history, allows us to gain vital insights into how past environmental changes and extinctions shaped the diversity we see today.
To date, scientists have relied on the shape and structure of fossils or, more recently, ancient DNA (aDNA) to piece together the evolutionary history of long-extinct species. However, aDNA rarely survives beyond 1 million years, limiting its utility for understanding deep evolutionary past.
While ancient proteins have been found in fossils from the Middle-Late Miocene, - roughly the last 10 million years - obtaining sequences detailed enough for robust reconstructions of evolutionary relationships was previously limited to samples no older than four million years.
The new study, published in the journal Nature, significantly expands that window, demonstrating the potential of proteins to persist over vast geological timescales under the right conditions.
Fazeelah Munir, who analysed the tooth as part of her doctoral research at the University of York’s Department of Chemistry, said: “Successful analysis of ancient proteins from such an old sample gives a fresh perspective to scientists around the globe who already have incredible fossils in their collections. This important fossil helps us to understand our ancient past.”
The fossil was in a region of Canada currently characterized by permafrost, and researchers say that dental enamel and the relatively cold environment the fossil was found in, played an important part in the long preservation of the proteins.
Dental enamel provides a stable ‘scaffold’ that can protect ancient proteins from degradation over geological time. The hardness of enamel, which results from a complex structure of minerals, acts as a protective barrier, slowing down the breakdown of proteins that occurs after death.
Professor Enrico Cappellini, from Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, said: "The Haughton Crater may be a truly special place for palaeontology: a biomolecular vault protecting proteins from decay over vast geological timescales.
“Its unique environmental history has created a site with exceptional preservation of ancient biomolecules, akin to how certain sites preserve soft tissues. This finding should encourage more paleontological fieldwork in regions around the world."
Ryan Sinclair Paterson, postdoctoral researcher at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, added: “This discovery is a game-changer for how we can study ancient life.”
Proteins degrade over time, making their history hard to study. But new research has uncovered ancient proteins in the enamel of the teeth of 18-million-year-old fossilized mammals from Kenya’s Rift Valley, opening a window into how these animals lived and evolved.
In their new paper in Nature, researchers from Harvard andthe Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute discuss their findings. “Teeth are rocks in our mouths,” explained Daniel Green, field program director in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and the paper’s lead author. “They're the hardest structures that any animals make, so you can find a tooth that is a hundred or a hundred million years old, and it will contain a geochemical record of the life of the animal.” That includes what the animal ate and drank, as well as its environment.
“In the past we thought that mature enamel, the hardest part of teeth, should really have very few proteins in it at all,” said Green. However, utilizing a new newer proteomics technique called liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), the team was able to detect a “a great diversity of proteins. . . . in different biological tissues.”
“The technique involves several stages where peptides are separated based on their size or chemistry so that they can be sequentially analyzed at higher resolutions than was possible with previous methods,” explained Kevin T. Uno, associate professor in HEB and one of the paper’s corresponding authors.
“We and other scholars recently found that there are dozens – if not even hundreds – of different kinds of proteins present inside tooth enamel,” said Green.
With the realization that many proteins are found in contemporary teeth, the researchers turned to fossils, collaborating with the Smithsonian and the National Museum of Kenya for access to fossilized teeth, particularly those of early elephants and rhinos. As herbivores, they had large teeth for grinding their diet of plants. These mammals, continued Green, “can have enamel two to three millimeters thick. It was a lot of material to work with.”
What they found – peptide fragments, chains of amino acids, that together form proteins as old as 18 million years – was “field-changing,” according to Green. “Nobody’s ever found peptide fragments that are this old before,” he said, calling the findings “kind of shocking.” Until now, the oldest published materials are about three and a half million years old, he said. “With the help of our colleague Tim Cleland, a superb paleoproteomicist at the Smithsonian, we’re pushing back the age of peptide fragments by five or six times what was known before.”
The newly discovered peptides cover a range of proteins that perform different functions, altogether known as the proteome, Green said.
“One of the reasons that we’re excited about these ancient teeth is that we don't have the full proteome of all proteins that could have been found inside the bodies of these ancient elephants or rhinoceros, but we do have a group of them.” With such a collection, “there might be more information available from a group of them than just one protein by itself.”
This research “opens new frontiers in paleobiology, allowing scientists to go beyond bones and morphology to reconstruct the molecular and physiological traits of extinct animals and hominins,” said Emmanuel K. Ndiema, senior research scientist at the National Museum of Kenya, and paper coauthor. “This provides direct evidence of evolutionary relationships. Combined with other characteristics of teeth, we can infer dietary adaptations, disease profiles, and even age at death – insights that were previously inaccessible.”
In addition to shedding light on the lives of these creatures, it helps place them in history. Uno elaborated: “We can use these peptide fragments to explore the relationships between ancient animals, similar to how modern DNA in humans is used to identify how people are related to one another.”
“Even if an animal is completely extinct – and we have some animals that we analyze in our study who have no living descendants – you can still, in theory, extract proteins from their teeth and try to place them on a phylogenetic tree,” said Green. Such information “might be able to resolve longstanding debates between paleontologists about whatother mammalian lineagesthese animals are related to using molecular evidence.”
Although this research began as “a small side project” of a much larger project involving dozens of institutions and researchers from around the world, said Green, “we were surprised at just how much we found. There really are a lot of proteins preserved in these teeth.”
This research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation and Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute.
IMAGES AND EMBARGOED DRAFT OF PAPER AVAILABLE AT THIS LINK:
It would involve sending two robot orbiters to the fourth planet from the Sun to unravel the complex workings of the Martian magnetosphere (the region around a planet dominated by its magnetic field), ionosphere (a layer of ionized gas in the upper atmosphere) and thermosphere (where Mars loses its atmospheric gases to space), as well as the planet's lower atmosphere and radiation build-up.
This, researchers say, could help forecast potentially hazardous situations for spacecraft and astronauts, making it an essential precursor to any future robotic and human exploration.
It will also shed further light on the planet's habitability.
If the project gets the green light from the European Space Agency (ESA) next year, M-MATISSE would be the first mission solely dedicated to understanding planetary space weather at Mars.
Dr Beatriz Sánchez-Cano, of the University of Leicester, said: "M-MATISSE will provide the first global characterisation of the dynamics of the Martian system at all altitudes, to understand how the atmosphere dissipates the incoming energy from the solar wind, including radiation, as well as how different surface processes are affected by space weather activity.
"This is important because understanding the behaviour of the Martian system and the chain of processes that control space weather and space climate at Mars is essential for exploration.
"It leads to accurate space weather forecasts (i.e. accurate understanding of solar energy and particles at Mars) and, thus, prevents hazardous situations for spacecraft and humans on the Red Planet, as we well know from Earth space weather monitoring experience."
M-MATISSE, the 'Mars Magnetosphere ATmosphere Ionosphere and Space-weather SciencE', is one of the current three candidates in competition for ESA's next 'medium' mission. It is expected that one candidate mission will be chosen by mid-2026.
Solar Orbiter and Euclid are other examples of flying medium-class ESA missions, while Plato and Ariel are currently being built for launch in the next six years.
If selected, M-MATISSE would study Mars using two identical spacecraft, each carrying an identical set of instruments to observe the Red Planet simultaneously from two different locations in space.
One of the spacecraft, named Henri, would spend most of its time within the Martian plasma system, while the other called Marguerite is intended to mainly be in the solar wind and/or far tail of Mars, a largely unexplored region.
The mission could reveal how the solar wind influences Mars's atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere. It also aims to investigate the impact of these interactions on Mars's lower atmosphere and surface, which is a key aspect to understand the Red Planet's habitability, as well as the evolution of its atmosphere and climate.
Dr Sánchez-Cano, winner of the RAS Fowler Award in 2022, added: "The UK is spearheading this large international effort during the mission selection phase.
"In particular, it is responsible for the particle instrument suite which will provide the most accurate to date observations of all particles at Mars, including neutrals, ions and electrons of different energies.
"It is also responsible for the mission Science Centre, where in coordination with the European Space Agency, the science of the mission will be planned and its data exploitation coordinated."
Caption: The differing orbit configurations of the M-MATISSE spacecraft are revealed in this video, along with a flyby to Phobos and the field of view of their instruments.
Credit: Dr Beatriz Sánchez-Cano/European Space Agency
Further information
The talk 'The M-MATISSE mission: Mars Magnetosphere ATmosphere Ionosphere and Space weather SciencE. An ESA Medium class (M7) candidate in Phase-A.' will take place at NAM at 14:55 BST on Wednesday 9 July 2025 in room TLC101. Find out more at: https://conference.astro.dur.ac.uk/event/7/contributions/458/
If you would like a Zoom link and password to watch it online, please email press@ras.ac.uk
The UK would provide one of the payloads of the proposed M-MATISSE mission. It is responsible for the leadership of the Mars Ensemble of Particle Instruments (M-EPI), a set of particle instruments combined in a single unit with a common Data Processing Unit unique interface with the spacecraft.
One of these instruments is the Mars - Electron Analyser System (M-EAS), for in-situ detection of electrons on both M-MATISSE spacecraft. M-EPI measurement principle is to characterise the Martian particle environment at different energies, including atmospheric neutral particles, ionospheric ions, electrons and negative ions, magnetospheric ions and electrons, solar wind ions and electrons, and solar energetic particles.
The answer to whether tiny bacterial lifeforms really do exist in the clouds of Venus could be revealed once-and-for-all by a UK-backed mission.
Over the past five years researchers have detected the presence of two potential biomarkers – the gases phosphine and ammonia – which on Earth can only be produced by biological activity and industrial processes.
Their existence in the Venusian clouds cannot easily be explained by known atmospheric or geological phenomena, so Cardiff University's Professor Jane Greaves and her team are plotting a way to get to the bottom of it.
This would involve building a CubeSat-sized probe with a budget of 50 million euros (£43 million) to hitch a ride with the European Space Agency's EnVision mission – scheduled for 2031. VERVE (the Venus Explorer for Reduced Vapours in the Environment) would then detach on arrival at Venus and carry out an independent survey, while EnVision probes the planet’s atmosphere, surface and interior.
"Our latest data has found more evidence of ammonia on Venus, with the potential for it to exist in the habitable parts of the planet's clouds," Professor Greaves said.
"There are no known chemical processes for the production of either ammonia or phosphine, so the only way to know for sure what is responsible for them is to go there.
"The hope is that we can establish whether the gases are abundant or in trace amounts, and whether their source is on the planetary surface, for example in the form of volcanic ejecta.
"Or whether there is something in the atmosphere, potentially microbes that are producing ammonia to neutralise the acid in the Venusian clouds."
However, that didn't deter the team of researchers behind the JCMT-Venus project – a long term programme to study the molecular content of the atmosphere of Venus which first involved the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii.
They tracked the phosphine signature over time and found that its detection appeared to follow the planet's day-night cycle – i.e. it was destroyed by sunlight.
They also established that the abundance of the gas varied with time and position across Venus.
"This may explain some of the apparently contradictory studies and is not a surprise given that many other chemical species, like sulphur dioxide and water, have varying abundances, and may eventually give us clues to how phosphine is produced," said Dr Dave Clements, of Imperial College London, who is the leader of the JCMT-Venus project.
It was then revealed at last year’s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull that ammonia had also been tentatively detected on Venus. On Earth, this is primarily produced by biological activity and industrial processes.
But there are no known chemical processes or any atmospheric or geological phenomena which can explain its presence on Venus.
Although temperatures on the surface of the planet are around 450C, about 50km (31 miles) up it can range from 30C to 70C, with an atmospheric pressure similar to Earth's surface.
Under these conditions it would be just about possible for "extremophile" microbes to survive, potentially having remained in the Venusian clouds after emerging during the planet's more temperate past.
But the only way to know for sure, the JCMT-Venus researchers say, is to send a probe to find out.
New research papers about the latest discoveries are expected to be published later this year.
ENDS
The mission would involve building a CubeSat-sized probe with a budget of 50 million euros to hitch a ride with the European Space Agency’s EnVision mission. VERVE would then detach on arrival at Venus and carry out an independent survey.
Caption: An artist's impression of the proposed VERVE mission to Venus the answer whether tiny bacterial lifeforms really do exist in the planet's clouds.
Caption: The mission would involve building a CubeSat-sized probe with a budget of 50 million euros to hitch a ride with the European Space Agency's EnVision mission. VERVE would then detach on arrival at Venus and carry out an independent survey.
If you would like a Zoom link and password to watch it online, please email press@ras.ac.uk
JCMT-Venus is a long term programme to study the molecular content of the atmosphere of Venus. The team first used the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii to detect the phosphine on Venus.
The NAM 2025 conference is principally sponsored by the Royal Astronomical Society and Durham University.
About the Royal Astronomical Society
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.
The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.
The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.
The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.
The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.
About the Science and Technology Facilities Council
The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is the UK’s largest public funder of research into astronomy and astrophysics, particle and nuclear physics, and space science. We operate five national laboratories across the UK which, supported by a network of additional research facilities, increase our understanding of the world around us and develop innovative technologies in response to pressing scientific and societal issues. We also facilitate UK involvement in a number of international research activities including the ELT, CERN, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Square Kilometre Array Observatory.
Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.
We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.
We conduct research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2026).
We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top five university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide and The Complete University Guide).
The Moon's near and far sides exhibit striking asymmetry—from topography and crustal thickness to volcanic activity—yet the origins of these differences long puzzled scientists. China's Chang'e-6 mission, launched on May 3, 2024, changed this by returning 1,935.3 grams of material from the lunar farside's South Pole–Aitken Basin (SPA), the Moon's largest, deepest, and oldest known impact structure, measuring 2,500 kilometers in diameter. The samples arrived on Earth on June 25, 2024.
Previous studies indicated that the SPA was formed by a colossal impact approximately 4.25 billion years ago, releasing energy greater than that of a trillion atomic bombs. But the effect of this impact on lunar geology and thermal evolution was one of planetary science's greatest unsolved questions until recently.
In the past year, research teams led by CAS institutions including the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) and the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC), along with Nanjing University and others, have made four landmark discoveries based on the SPA samples. Their findings were published in four cover articles in the journal Nature.
According to Prof. WU Fuyuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at IGG, the profound geological consequences of the impact that formed the SPA are, for the first time, revealed collectively in these four Nature papers.
The cover stories focus on the following areas:
Prolonged Volcanic Activity: Analysis identified two distinct volcanic phases on the lunar farside—4.2 billion and 2.8 billion years ago—indicating that volcanic activity persisted for at least 1.4 billion years, far longer than previously thought.
Fluctuating Magnetic Field: Measurements of paleomagnetic intensities in basalt clasts revealed a rebound in the Moon's magnetic field 2.8 billion years ago, suggesting that the lunar dynamo, which generates magnetic fields, fluctuated episodically rather than fading steadily.
Asymmetric Water Distribution: The farside mantle was found to have significantly lower water content than the nearside mantle, indicating that volatile elements are unevenly distributed within the lunar interior—adding another aspect to the Moon's asymmetry.
Mantle Depletion Signatures: Geochemical analysis of basalt points to an "ultra-depleted" mantle source, likely resulting from either a primordial depleted mantle or massive melt extraction triggered by large impacts. This highlights the role of major impacts in shaping the Moon's deep interior.
The first analysis of the samples was published by NAOC and its collaborators, detailing the samples' physical, mineralogical, and geochemical properties. The Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry at CAS subsequently confirmed 2.8-billion-year-old farside volcanic activity, linking it to a highly depleted mantle. IGG, in turn, dated the SPA to 4.25 billion years ago, providing a critical reference point for studying early Solar System impacts.
These findings not only illuminate the evolution of the Moon's farside but also underscore the transformative impact of the Chang'e-6 mission, paving the way for deeper insights into planetary formation and evolution.
The future of sustained space habitation depends on our ability to grow fresh food away from Earth. The revolutionary new collaborative Moon-Rice project is using cutting-edge experimental biology to create an ideal future food crop that can be grown in future deep-space outposts, as well as in extreme environments back on Earth.
Modern space exploration relies heavily on resupplies of food from Earth, but this tends to be largely pre-prepared meals that rarely contain fresh ingredients. To counteract the negative effects that the space environment can have on human health, it’s important to have a reliable source of food rich in vitamins, antioxidants, and fibres.
The Moon-Rice project aims to develop the perfect crop for sustaining life in space for long-duration missions, such as the occupation of permanent bases on the Moon or on Mars. “Living in space is all about recycling resources and living sustainably,” says Marta Del Bianco, a plant biologist at the Italian Space Agency. “We are trying to solve the same problems that we face here on Earth.”
Dr Del Bianco explains that one of the major challenges is the current size of crops grown on Earth. Even many dwarf varieties of rice are still too big to be grown reliably in space. “What we need is a super-dwarf, but this comes with its own challenges,” she says. “Dwarf varieties often come from the manipulation of a plant hormone called gibberellin, which can reduce the height of the plant, but this also creates problems for seed germination. They're not an ideal crop, because in space, you just don't have to be small, you must also be productive.”
The Moon-Rice project is not just a solo effort by the Italian Space Agency and also involves the collaboration of three Italian Universities. “The University of Milan has a very strong background in rice genetics, the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’ specialises in the manipulation of crop physiology and the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ has an amazing heritage in space crop production,” says Dr Del Bianco. “We started this four-year project nine months ago, so it’s very much a work in progress, but the preliminary results we have now are really promising,” says Dr Del Bianco.
“Researchers at the University of Milan are isolating mutant rice varieties that can grow to just 10 cm high, so they’re really tiny and this is a great starting point,” says Dr Del Bianco. “At the same time, Rome has identified genes that can alter the plant architecture to maximize production and growth efficiency.” Additionally, since meat production will be too inefficient for resource and space-limited space habitats, Dr Del Bianco and her team are looking into enriching the protein content of the rice by increasing the ratio of protein-rich embryo to starch.
Dr Del Bianco’s own personal focus is on how the rice plants will cope with micro-gravity. “We simulate micro-gravity on Earth by continually rotating the plant so that the plant is pulled equally in all directions by gravity. Each side of the plant gets activated continuously and it doesn't know where the up and down is,” says Dr Del Bianco. “It's the best we can do on Earth because, unfortunately, doing experiments in real microgravity conditions, i.e. in space, is complex and expensive.”
Not only can fresh food be more nutritious than pre-cooked and packaged space meals, but it has significant psychological benefits too. “Watching and guiding plants to grow is good for humans, and while pre-cooked or mushy food can be fine for a short period of time, it could become a concern for longer-duration missions,” says Dr Del Bianco.
Space exploration is a very demanding job, which requires astronauts to be in peak physical and psychological condition. “If we can make an environment that physically and mentally nourishes the astronauts, it will reduce stress and lower the chances of people making mistakes. In space, the best case of a mistake is wasted money, and the worst case is the loss of lives,” says Dr Del Bianco.
The Moon-Rice project is not only beneficial for space explorers but will have useful applications for growing plants in controlled environments on Earth too. “If you can develop a robust crop for space, then it could be used at the Arctic and Antarctic poles, or in deserts, or places with only a small amount of indoor space available,” says Dr Del Bianco.
This research is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Antwerp, Belgium on the 9th July 2025.
Scientific breakthrough uses cold atoms to unlock cosmic mysteries
Scientists have used ultracold atoms to successfully demonstrate a groundbreaking method of particle acceleration that could unlock new understanding of how cosmic rays behave, a new study reveals.
After more than 70 years from its formulation, researchers have observed the Fermi acceleration mechanism in a laboratory by colliding ultracold atoms against engineered movable potential barriers – delivering a significant milestone in high-energy astrophysics and beyond.
Fermi acceleration is the mechanism responsible for the generation of cosmic rays, as postulated by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1949. The process itself features also some universal properties, that have spawned a wide range of mathematical models, such as the Fermi-Ulam model. Until now, however, it has been difficult to create a reliable Fermi accelerator on Earth.
Publishing their findings today in Physical Review Letters, the international research team from the Universities of Birmingham and Chicago reveal their success in building a fully controllable Fermi accelerator and using this to observe significant particle acceleration.
The accelerator - just 100 micrometres in size - can quickly accelerate ultracold samples to velocities of more than half a meter per second. It does this making movable optical potential barriers collide with trapped ultracold atoms.
By combining energy gain and particle losses, the scientists can also obtain energy spectra analogous to those observed in cosmic rays - providing the first direct verification of the so-called Bell’s result, which is at the core of every cosmic ray acceleration model.
Co-author Dr Amita Deb, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Results delivered by our Fermi accelerator surpass the best-in-class acceleration methods used in quantum technology. The technology has the additional advantages of featuring an exceptionally simple and miniaturised setup, and no theoretical upper limits.”
The accelerator’s generation of ultracold atomic jets demonstrates the potential for high-precision control over particle acceleration. The ability to study Fermi acceleration with cold atoms opens new possibilities for investigating phenomena relevant to high-energy astrophysics.
Future areas of research include the study of particle acceleration at shocks, magnetic reconnection, and turbulence which are critical processes in the universe. Studying quantum Fermi acceleration could lead to the development of new tools for manipulating quantum wavepackets, offering promising avenues for advancements in quantum information science.
Dr Vera Guarrera, one of the leading authors from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Our work represents the first step towards the study of more complex astrophysical mechanisms in the lab. The simplicity and effectiveness of our Fermi accelerator make it a powerful tool for both fundamental research and practical applications in quantum technology.”
The research team plans to further explore the applications of their Fermi accelerator in various fields, including quantum chemistry and atomtronics. They aim to investigate how different kinds of interactions affect the acceleration rate and the maximum energy attainable, providing valuable insights for both theoretical and experimental physics.
ENDS
For more information, interviews or an embargoed copy of the research paper, please contact the Press Office at University of Birmingham on pressoffice@contacts.bham.ac.uk or +44 (0) 121 414 2772.
Notes to editor:
The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.
‘Observation of Fermi acceleration with cold atoms’ - G. Barontini, V. Naniyil, J. P. Stinton, D. G. Reid, J. M. F. Gunn, H. M. Price, A. B. Deb, D. Caprioli, and V. Guarrera is published in Physical Review Letters
A new kind of cosmic object could help solve one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark matter.
Particle Astrophysicists have proposed the existence of a strange new type of star-like object, called a ‘dark dwarf’, which may be quietly glowing in the centre of our galaxy.
Far from being dark in appearance, these unusual objects are powered by dark matter (the invisible substance thought to make up about a quarter of the universe).
The discovery comes from a UK-US research team and the full research findings has been published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP).
Using theoretical models, the scientists suggest that dark matter can get trapped inside young stars, producing enough energy to stop them from cooling and turning them into stable, long-lasting objects they call dark dwarfs.
Dark dwarfs are thought to form from brown dwarfs, which are often described as failed stars.
Brown dwarfs are too small to sustain the nuclear fusion that powers most stars, so they cool and fade over time. But if they sit in a dense pocket of dark matter, like near the Milky Way’s centre, they could capture dark matter particles.
If those particles then collide and destroy each other, they release energy keeping the dark dwarf glowing indefinitely.
The existence of these objects depends on dark matter being made of specific kinds of particles, known as WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles).
These are heavy particles that barely interact with ordinary matter, but could annihilate with one another inside stars, providing the energy needed to keep a dark dwarf alive.
To tell dark dwarfs apart from other faint objects like brown dwarfs, the scientists point to a unique clue: lithium.
The researchers believe dark dwarfs would still contain a rare form of lithium called lithium-7.
In normal stars, lithium-7 gets burned up quickly. So, if they find an object that looks like a brown dwarf but still has lithium-7 that’s a strong hint it’s something different.
Study co-author Dr Djuna Croon of Durham University, said: “The discovery of dark dwarfs in the galactic centre would give us a unique insight into the particle nature of dark matter.”
The team believes that telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope could already be capable of spotting dark dwarfs, especially when focusing on the centre of the galaxy.
Another approach might be to look at many similar objects and statistically determine whether some of them could be dark dwarfs.
Finding just one of these dark dwarfs, the researchers say, would be a major step towards uncovering the true nature of dark matter.
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Source
‘Dark Dwarfs: Dark Matter-Powered Sub-Stellar Objects Awaiting Discovery at the Galactic Center’, (2025), D. Croon, J. Sakstein, J. Smirnov and J. Sreeter, Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP).
An embargoed copy of the paper is available from Durham University Communications Office. Please email communications.team@durham.ac.uk.
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