Michael Le Page

Nobel prize for medicine goes to trio for work on immune tolerance The 2025 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine has gone to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for their discoveries around how we keep our immune system under control

Regulatory cells in our blood play a key role in preventing our immune systems attacking us - and the discovery of these cells by Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi was today rewarded with a Nobel prize 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

Would a ban on genetic engineering of wildlife hamper conservation? Some conservation groups are calling for an effective ban on genetic modification, but others say these technologies are crucial for preserving biodiversity

There should be no genetic engineering of wildlife, says a motion to be voted on at an IUCN meeting this month 🧪

But many scientists think synthetic biology is crucial to saving biodiversity - for instance, to make corals 🪸 heat tolerant #wildlifeconservation

www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

Great, thanks so much

Should we worry AI will create deadly bioweapons? Not yet, but one day AI tools are being used to design proteins and even viruses, leading to fears these could eventually be used to evade bioweapon controls

A study suggests AI could help evade controls on synthesising bioweapons. Here's why this is like doing a fancy Mission Impossible-style bank raid when the vault door has been left open, the alarm is off and the guards are asleep 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

tubular clear animal being held near a beach

I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina...
[a thread 🧵]
📸 m_patton bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf
🌿🧪🦑🐙🌊

How Jane Goodall changed the way we see animals - and the world Jane Goodall, who chronicled the social lives of chimps, has died, but has left a lasting legacy on how we view the natural world

My piece on the exceptional legacy of Jane Goodall www.newscientist.com/article/2498...

This is worth a read 🧪

So it's not going to used for fertility treatments any time soon if ever, and it doesn't help with the shortage of donor eggs, because it consumes eggs rather than generating them. Yes, it's a technical feat but it's unlikely to be much more than that 3/

Because of the serious health problems that many if not most cloned animals have, there's no way this would be safe. What's more, I don't see an obvious route to making it safe 2/

I do think this human egg story is being massively overhyped. To be clear, no eggs have been "generated", "created" or "made" from human skin cells - rather, existing human eggs have been given the DNA from skin cells using a kind of cloning 1/

How regrowing your own teeth could replace dentures and implants Losing a tooth as an adult is par for the course for many of us. The only option to replace them? Artificial substitutes. But an era of regrowing living teeth may now be almost upon us

NS did a feature on this earlier this year. TLDR - the tech is there but the money to bring it to market isn't

www.newscientist.com/article/2487...

How fast you age may be controlled by a DNA repair boss in your cells When a key protein regulator dials down DNA repair mechanisms, our cells accumulate more mutations, which may cause us to age faster

We've found a master regulator that controls the level of DNA repair 🧬 and thus how fast we accumulate mutations 🧪

The team that discovered it thinks this also determines the rate of ageing 👵, but they haven't quite proved it yet

www.newscientist.com/article/2497...

Two-in-one inhalers slash asthma attacks among young children Inhalers that combine relieving breathlessness with preventing it seem to be the most effective option for reducing asthma attacks in young children

If you or your child have mild asthma 🫁 and are still using a salbutamol/albuterol (blue) reliever inhaler, you should talk to your GP/doctor about switching to the combination inhaler 🧪

www.newscientist.com/article/2497...

As Reform's Nathan Gill admits taking bribes from Russian 'secret service pawn' Oleg Voloshyn, here’s a nice photo of Nigel Farage with Voloshyn’s wife.

The emperor has no clothes

I love this

Critics of renewables often point to land use as a reason not to invest in wind & solar. Land use IS a real issue for all energy assets incl renewables (unless on-site).

But what critics conveniently forget is the huge land impact of fossil fuels. Aerial view of fracking sites in Wickett, Texas. 👇

Some viruses like to cheat – and that may be good for our health Mutations can result in viruses that infect cells, but can't copy themselves without help from other viruses - now it seems these cheats may outnumber normal viruses in a third of influenza cases, red...

In as much as a third of flu infections, parasitic "cheating" viruses 🦠 come to outnumber normal viruses - which helps limit the severity of infections 🧪

That's what @asherleeks.bsky.social and co have found by analysing sequencing data

www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

Simple menu tweak can nudge people into choosing climate-friendly food Rejigging the meal choices on offer in a canteen can prompt people to make healthier, climate-friendlier decisions

Changing the choices on offer at any one time can make people eat climate-friendlier, healthier foods 🍱 without them even realising 🧪

In a trial at a university canteen, the carbon footprint of meals was reduced by a third with no recipe changes

www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

Indeed, but tbf Lamm isn't quoted as saying that, that might be a Grauniad subeditor conflating claims:

“This isn’t a process where we’re going to one day just throw thousands of dodos into Mauritius. Obviously it will be a slow and careful and deliberate process,” said Shapiro.

Really? A quick scan of the preprint reveals most of the "AI-designed" viruses weren't viable and the few that were had most minor gene changes like small deletions

I suspect random mutations would be equally as good at "composing genomes"

Coming late this as Colossal have stopped sending us press releases after I pointed out they have not in fact brought back dire wolves

But it's just a potential way to genetically modify pigeons - necessary but hardly sufficient for re-dodofication

Modular nuclear reactors sound great, but won't be ready any time soon The UK government has announced a raft of tiny nuclear power projects, while Russia, China and a host of tech giants are also betting big on small nuclear reactor designs. Does the idea make sense and...

Small modular nuclear reactors sound great, but they won't be ready any time soon.

”This is very rich men giving a few crumbs off the table to this technology they’ve always loved the idea of, without really looking too carefully,” says one expert.

www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

Covid-19 vaccine benefits worth up to $38 trillion in first year alone The global health and economic benefits of covid-19 vaccines came to between $5 trillion and $38 trillion in their first year, showing an incredible return on investment

In the first year alone, covid vaccines are estimated to have delivered between $5 trillion and $38 trillion in global benefits in terms of averted sick days, avoided hospitalisations and prevented deaths 🧪

They cost $69 billion to develop and deliver

www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

The range of blue and green jays has begun overlapping in Texas because of global warming, and they are now forming hybrids (middle pic below) despite being separated by an estimated 7 million years of evolution 🧪

Jaguar breaks records by swimming at least 1.3 kilometres A 1.3-kilometre swim by a jaguar is the longest ever confirmed, but the cat's motives for making the journey are unclear

Camera traps show a jaguar swam 🏊‍♂️ at least 1.3 kilometres - and possibly 2.3 kilometres - to reach an island in central Brazil 🧪

That's by far the longest any jaguar has been recorded swimming, but there is reason to think they swim even further

www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

This is so crucial. When people think about these land comparisons, they don't think about the entire sprawling infrastructure behind FF.

We evolved to match local micronutrient levels, which may be a problem Most human populations evolved to cope with low or high local levels of micronutrients such as zinc, but these localised adaptations might now be problematic

Before people began trading food 🌽 over long distances, we had to adapt to the local availability of trace elements like iodine 🧪

The resulting evolutionary changes may have had side effects such as dramatic changes in body size in some peoples

www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

What could work? Which specific approach?

Our paper is out, providing alternative viewpoints to some polar geoengineering ideas covered in the media recently. Lots still to talk about but let's focus on decarbonising instead of drilling Antarctica for now? 🇦🇶
Thanks @newscientist.com @mjflepage.bsky.social for covering this important issue!