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Certain species of shallow-water octopuses have a unique mutation that makes them extremely precise protein builders. The researchers discovered that this mutation causes a break in an RNA strand in the core of the octopus’s protein-making machinery. When they designed a similar irruption in Escherichia coliThe bacteria made about 50% fewer errors when building proteins than bacteria without the mutation. This peculiarity means that the proteins in these octopuses are less likely to misfold and form toxic clumps.

Science | 5 minutes of reading

Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer-reviewed)

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Omar Yaghi has left the United States to work full time at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he will lead a new artificial intelligence-assisted materials discovery institute. Born in Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents, Yaghi came to the United States as a child and did his Nobel-winning work on metal-organic framework composites there. The current state of American science “is not so encouraging,” Yaghi said recently, “because of grant cuts.” In light of these cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration, China has been trying to attract American talent with promises of money and support.

Nature | 6 minutes of reading

For the first time, geophysicists have discovered that the ocean floor is splitting at its seams. Using a series of measuring stations placed across a 100 kilometer-long region of the Indian Ocean, the team witnessed a seismic event that separated two sections of oceanic crust by at least 2 meters in a matter of days, spewing around 160 million cubic meters of lava to the sea floor as it did so.

Nature | 4 minutes of reading

Reference: Nature paper

Features and opinion

The effects of living in microgravity on our bodies are well documented. The impact of spaceflight on the brain is more of a mystery, and discovering it is crucial to knowing if long-distance space missions are feasible. Now, researchers have pooled data from astronaut studies and spaceflight simulation experiments to deduce how the absence of gravity physically affects the human brain. “It is a beautiful neuroplasticity: we discovered that there are both structural and functional alterations,” says cognitive neuroscientist and co-author of the study Elisa Raffaella Ferrè.

Future of the BBC | 7 minutes of reading

Reference: Frontiers in psychology paper

In an attempt to specify the he ne sais quoi That defines life; some scientists have suggested that living beings have “agency,” that is, the ability to pursue a goal. But the term is controversial in biology, not least because there is no agreed-upon definition of agency either. Some researchers maintain that goal-directed behavior is often just a response to a stimulus, with little or no active choice involved. Others suggest that genes can only provide a limited number of instructions and that, at some point, the organism must take over.

how many | 12 minute read

For the past decade, biologists Mathilde Poyet and Mathieu Groussin have traveled the world to collect microbiome samples from as wide a variety of people as possible. On their travels, the couple also interviewed donors about factors such as diet and lifestyle that could affect the bacteria living in their bodies. Their data, housed at the Global Microbiome Conservancy, one of the world’s largest repositories of living bacteria, has revealed that there is no such thing as a “normal” microbiome.

New York Times Magazine | 20 minutes of reading

Today I am captivated by a feat of engineering. A group of students from the University of Pisa has broken the Guinness World Record for the largest paper airplane ever built. His creation has a wingspan of almost 20 meters and traveled about 60 meters in a single glide.

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Jacob Smith, Associate Editor, Nature Briefing

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