Imagine a container of tomatoes arriving at the container terminal in Aarhus. The papers state that the tomatoes are from Spain, but in reality, we have no way of knowing if that is true.

That is, unless we take a sample and have it analyzed in a laboratory, where scientists use DNA markers to determine whether the tomato is Spanish, South American or Chinese. This is both time-consuming and expensive.

But thanks to a scientific breakthrough in the research group of Professor Alexander Zelikin at Aarhus University, we will be able to examine tomatoes a lot quicker and cheaper, using special light producing proteins and our phone’s camera. Not right now, but in the near future.

The results were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

“We have figured out how to instruct the proteins to generate light when specific DNA sequences appear. This could be used, as in the example with the tomatoes, but could also be useful in the health care sector, agriculture, or the pharmaceutical industry to analyze samples easily and cheaply,” Professor Zelikin explains.

“We believe that there are huge possibilities in this.”

Experimenting with the building blocks of life

In Zelikin’s laboratory, they engineered molecules and cells. In some instances, his team designs new molecules and installs these into mammalian cells to bring new functions into the cell. But they also strive to build synthetic cells from scratch, one chemical building block at a time.

“We will hardly create new life this way any time soon. This is not why we are doing it. We are doing it to better understand and control natural cells.”

“Our primary goal is to control the activity of molecules in space and time, inside and outside of the cell. Specifically, we focus on enzymes that can create ATP, which is the cell’s fuel, and polymerases, which the cell uses to build RNA and DNA.”

By doing this kind of research, his team gets a deeper understanding of how cellular mechanisms work. And it is through this research that they learned how to engineer proteins that generate light when certain DNA sequences are present—as in the example with the tomatoes.

Like building LEGO without the instruction manual

Designing cells from scratch is exciting, because our imagination is the only limit, Zelikin explains. He compares it to building with LEGO, but without an instruction manual and even without a defined set of building blocks.

xExperimenting with the building blocks of life

In Zelikin’s laboratory, they engineered molecules and cells. In some instances, his team designs new molecules and installs these into mammalian cells to bring new functions into the cell. But they also strive to build synthetic cells from scratch, one chemical building block at a time.

“We will hardly create new life this way any time soon. This is not why we are doing it. We are doing it to better understand and control natural cells.”

“Our primary goal is to control the activity of molecules in space and time, inside and outside of the cell. Specifically, we focus on enzymes that can create ATP, which is the cell’s fuel, and polymerases, which the cell uses to build RNA and DNA.”

By doing this kind of research, his team gets a deeper understanding of how cellular mechanisms work. And it is through this research that they learned how to engineer proteins that generate light when certain DNA sequences are present—as in the example with the tomatoes.

Like building LEGO without the instruction manual

Designing cells from scratch is exciting, because our imagination is the only limit, Zelikin explains. He compares it to building with LEGO, but without an instruction manual and even without a defined set of building blocks.

“The first step is to assemble the membrane that defines the interior of an artificial cell. In our work, like in natural cells, the membrane is built of lipids that assemble in a bilayer,” he explains. “Next, we design ways to transfer information across the membrane. Last but not least, we assemble the tools to interpret this information, which is done by putting together the parts inside the cell, including DNA and proteins.”

Zelikin’s research group strives to build intelligent synthetic cells, which are programmed to react in specific ways to the environment.

“For us, the most fundamental challenge is to design the mechanisms of communication, so that the artificial cells can communicate with the environment, understand the information they receive and react to it.

“And I think we are making good progress,” Zelikin adds.

Broad international efforts are underway, and when a research group succeeds, the synthetic cells could possibly solve problems in biotechnology and agriculture, possibly biomedicine, as well as the atmospheric and climate sciences.

Zelikin’s research group strives to build intelligent synthetic cells, which are programmed to react in specific ways to the environment.

“For us, the most fundamental challenge is to design the mechanisms of communication, so that the artificial cells can communicate with the environment, understand the information they receive and react to it.

“And I think we are making good progress,” Zelikin adds.

Broad international efforts are underway, and when a research group succeeds, the synthetic cells could possibly solve problems in biotechnology and agriculture, possibly biomedicine, as well as the atmospheric and climate sciences.

Researchers have developed a new “color-coded” genetic method that makes it easy to distinguish male and female mosquitoes. This innovation can help solve a major bottleneck in mosquito control strategies that rely on releasing only sterile males. The approach uses gene editing to produce dark males and pale females, offering a practical and safer alternative to current sex-separation techniques.

A new study led by Doron Zaada and Prof. Philippos Papathanos from the Department of Entomology at Hebrew University, introduces a powerful genetic approach for separating male and female mosquitoes, an essential step for large-scale mosquito control programs aimed at reducing the spread of infectious diseases such as Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya.

Mosquito control strategies based on the mass release of males rely on the complete removal of females, which bite and transmit disease. Existing separation methods, largely based on size differences at the pupal stage, are labor-intensive, difficult to scale, and prone to letting biting females slip through. This new study presents a genetically engineered “Genetic Sexing Strain” (GSS) of the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) that allows sexes to be sorted automatically based on visible pigmentation.

Hijacking sex determination

The researchers used CRISPR gene editing to disrupt the mosquito’s yellow pigmentation gene, creating albino-like mosquitoes. They then restored normal dark pigmentation only in males by combining the yellow gene with nix, a “master switch” that converts females into fertile males. The result is a stable strain in which all males are dark and all females remain yellow, enabling fast and accurate sex separation without the need of complex equipment.

This produces an engineered sex-linked trait in mosquitoes that uses the insect’s own genes,” said Prof. Papathanos. “By understanding and controlling the sex determination pathway, we were able to create a system where males and females are visually different at the genetic level.

Built-in safety mechanism

Beyond visual sorting, the study revealed additional advantages for field use. The researchers discovered that the yellow females lay eggs that are highly sensitive to desiccation (drying out). Unlike wild mosquito eggs, which can survive dry conditions for months, the eggs of this engineered strain die quickly if they dry out.

“This acts as a built-in genetic containment mechanism,” says Doron Zaada, the study’s lead author. “Even if some females are accidentally released, their eggs won’t survive in the wild, preventing any engineered strain containing our system from establishing itself in the environment.”

The researchers also showed that genetically converted males closely resemble natural males in gene expression and reproductive behavior, suggesting that the technique does not compromise male fitness, an important requirement for control programs such as the Sterile Insect Technique.

“Our approach provides a versatile platform for mosquito sex separation,” adds Prof. Papathanos. “By combining cutting-edge gene editing with classical genetics, we have created a scalable, safe, and efficient system. The next step is now to build on this platform and to make females different in more ways, for example in their ability to survive high temperatures or specific additives used in mosquito mass-rearing biofactories. This could finally overcome one of the biggest hurdles in genetic mosquito control.”

Published in Nature Communications, the study establishes a foundation for developing next-generation mosquito control tools that are more precise, efficient, and adaptable to real-world public health needs.

The gut microbiome is intimately linked to human health and weight. Differences in the gut microbiome—the bacteria and fungi in the gut—are associated with obesity and weight gain, raising the possibility that changing the microbiome could improve health. But any given person’s gut contains hundreds of different microbial species, making it difficult to tell which species could help.

Now, research at the University of Utah has identified a specific type of gut bacteria, called Turicibacter, that improves metabolic health and reduces weight gain in mice on a high-fat diet.

People with obesity tend to have less Turicibacter, suggesting that the microbe may promote healthy weight in humans as well. The results could lead to new ways to control weight by adjusting gut bacteria.

The results are published in Cell Metabolism.

A microscopic needle in a haystack

The researchers had known from previous work that a large group of about 100 bacteria was collectively able to prevent weight gain in mice, but finding a specific microbe that was key to weight maintenance was a laborious task.

“The microbes that live in our gut don’t like to live outside the gut at all,” explains Kendra Klag, Ph.D., MD candidate at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah and first author on the paper. Many are killed by the presence of oxygen and must be exclusively handled in airtight bubbles.

But after years of culturing individual microbes, Klag found that a rod-shaped bacterium called Turicibacter could single-handedly reduce blood sugar, levels of fat in the blood, and weight gain for mice on a high-fat diet.

“I didn’t think one microbe would have such a dramatic effect—I thought it would be a mix of three or four,” says June Round, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and immunology at U of U Health and senior author on the paper.

“So when [Klag] brought me the first experiment with Turicibacter and the mice were staying really lean, I was like, “This is so amazing.” It’s pretty exciting when you see those types of results.”

Turicibacter appears to promote metabolic health by producing fatty molecules that are absorbed by the small intestine. When the researchers added purified Turicibacter fats to a high-fat diet, they had the same weight-controlling effects as Turicibacter itself.

They don’t yet know which fatty molecules are the important part—the bacterium produces thousands of different fats, in what Klag describes as a “lipid soup”—but they hope to narrow down on the most important molecules in future work for potential therapeutic use.

A fatty feedback loop

Turicibacter appears to improve metabolic health by affecting how the host produces a fatty molecule called ceramides, the researchers found. Ceramide levels increase on a high-fat diet, and high levels of ceramides are associated with many metabolic disorders, including type 2 diabetes and heart disease. But the fats produced by Turicibacter are able to keep ceramide levels low, even for mice on a high-fat diet.

Turicibacter levels are themselves affected by how much fat the host eats, the researchers discovered. The bacterium won’t grow if there’s too much fat in its environment, so mice fed a high-fat diet will lose Turicibacter from their gut microbiome unless their diet is regularly supplemented with the microbe.

The results point to a complex feedback loop, in which a fatty diet inhibits Turicibacter and fats produced by Turicibacter improve how the host responds to dietary fats.

Future directions

The researchers say that Turicibacter’s effects are unlikely to be unique; many different gut bacteria probably contribute to metabolic health. And results based in animal models may not apply to people.

“We have improved weight gain in mice, but I have no idea if this is actually true in humans,” Round says.

But they’re hopeful that Turicibacter could provide a starting point for developing treatments that promote healthy metabolism and prevent excessive weight gain.

“Identifying what lipid is having this effect is going to be one of the most important future directions,” Round says.

“Both from a scientific perspective, because we want to understand how it works, and from a therapeutic standpoint. Perhaps we could use this bacterial lipid, which we know really doesn’t have a lot of side effects, because people have it in their guts, as a way to keep a healthy weight.”

“With further investigation of individual microbes, we will be able to make microbes into medicine and find bacteria that are safe to create a consortium of different bugs that people with different diseases might be lacking,” Klag says.

“Microbes are the ultimate wealth of drug discovery. We just know the very tip of the iceberg of what all these different bacterial products can do.”

Imagine a container of tomatoes arriving at the container terminal in Aarhus. The papers state that the tomatoes are from Spain, but in reality, we have no way of knowing if that is true.

That is, unless we take a sample and have it analyzed in a laboratory, where scientists use DNA markers to determine whether the tomato is Spanish, South American or Chinese. This is both time-consuming and expensive.

But thanks to a scientific breakthrough in the research group of Professor Alexander Zelikin at Aarhus University, we will be able to examine tomatoes a lot quicker and cheaper, using special light producing proteins and our phone’s camera. Not right now, but in the near future.

The results were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

“We have figured out how to instruct the proteins to generate light when specific DNA sequences appear. This could be used, as in the example with the tomatoes, but could also be useful in the health care sector, agriculture, or the pharmaceutical industry to analyze samples easily and cheaply,” Professor Zelikin explains.

“We believe that there are huge possibilities in this.”

Experimenting with the building blocks of life

In Zelikin’s laboratory, they engineered molecules and cells. In some instances, his team designs new molecules and installs these into mammalian cells to bring new functions into the cell. But they also strive to build synthetic cells from scratch, one chemical building block at a time.

“We will hardly create new life this way any time soon. This is not why we are doing it. We are doing it to better understand and control natural cells.”

“Our primary goal is to control the activity of molecules in space and time, inside and outside of the cell. Specifically, we focus on enzymes that can create ATP, which is the cell’s fuel, and polymerases, which the cell uses to build RNA and DNA.”

By doing this kind of research, his team gets a deeper understanding of how cellular mechanisms work. And it is through this research that they learned how to engineer proteins that generate light when certain DNA sequences are present—as in the example with the tomatoes.

Like building LEGO without the instruction manual

Designing cells from scratch is exciting, because our imagination is the only limit, Zelikin explains. He compares it to building with LEGO, but without an instruction manual and even without a defined set of building blocks.

“The first step is to assemble the membrane that defines the interior of an artificial cell. In our work, like in natural cells, the membrane is built of lipids that assemble in a bilayer,” he explains. “Next, we design ways to transfer information across the membrane. Last but not least, we assemble the tools to interpret this information, which is done by putting together the parts inside the cell, including DNA and proteins.”

Zelikin’s research group strives to build intelligent synthetic cells, which are programmed to react in specific ways to the environment.

“For us, the most fundamental challenge is to design the mechanisms of communication, so that the artificial cells can communicate with the environment, understand the information they receive and react to it.

“And I think we are making good progress,” Zelikin adds.

Broad international efforts are underway, and when a research group succeeds, the synthetic cells could possibly solve problems in biotechnology and agriculture, possibly biomedicine, as well as the atmospheric and climate sciences.

Canada’s canola industry generates $43.7 billion in economic activity each year, according to the Canola Council of Canada. Canola oil is currently the primary output, but researchers from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) are exploring new ways to get even more value from this hybrid plant developed in the 1970s.

Runrong Yin is a graduate student in USask’s College of Engineering; Edgar Martinez Soberanes conducted this research as part of his Ph.D. (engineering) and now works in USask’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources. They used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at USask to analyze a new processing technique that could enable companies to make better use of all parts of canola seeds.

A canola seed consists of an outer hull that tightly encases an inner kernel. During standard canola processing, the entire seed is crushed to produce oil and a mixture (called meal) that contains the hull and the protein. The meal is either used as low-quality feed for cattle or is disposed of as waste. However, if the hull and kernel can be separated first, it creates opportunities for more primary products from canola besides just oil.

As much as 30% of the canola kernel is protein, which could be used as a source of plant-based protein for humans, according to Martinez Soberanes. “My colleague has used canola meal to make high-protein crackers, but it could be used in many other foods too,” he says. “I can picture it in a variety of products on grocery store shelves.”

Canola protein could also be used as a high-quality feed for more animals, such as fish and poultry. The canola hull also has valuable omega-7 oils. “About $5 could buy you a kilogram of canola oil, but for canola hull oil you’d need to pay $7,000,” says Yin. The hull must be separated from the kernel to generate this valuable oil, a challenge given how tightly the hull is wrapped around the kernel.

The new process the USask team has developed for separating the hull from the kernel involves heating, cooling, and adding moisture to the canola seeds. They used the non-destructive synchrotron X-rays at the CLS to analyze their method’s effect on the seeds.

“We’re talking about a seed the size of 2 millimeters. That’s very small and the changes inside are even smaller. That’s why we needed to use the CLS’s intense X-rays. Otherwise, we would not be able to see the changes,” says Martinez Soberanes.  

They found their method created a small gap between the seed’s hull and kernel. Once this gap is created, you can break the hull without damaging the kernel, he explains. “It’s like breaking open a peanut shell. The gap inside helps to separate the nut and it protects the nut when the shell is crushed.”

Martinez Soberanes says the fact that their method uses equipment already common in the industry suggests that integrating the proposed dehulling process could be feasible. However, additional work is needed to address challenges related to implementation and scalability.

“We want to be able to utilize everything from canola: the oil, kernel, and hull,” says Yin. “Being able to separate these components of the seeds makes this possible. With our process, you can easily and economically get canola oil, omega-7 oil, and canola protein products from canola seeds.”

While more research is needed to scale up the method for industry, the team is excited about the potential in their new process.

“We feel confident that we can provide an increase to the value that canola already has that will benefit Saskatchewan and Canada,” says Martinez Soberanes.

The findings are published in the journal Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies.

A team of researchers from Yokohama National University, Japan, have discovered a previously unknown species of marine fungus that can kill harmful, bloom-forming algae.

The new species, Algophthora mediterranea, is a form of microscopic chytrid fungus that can occupy a broad range of hosts, suggesting that chytrid fungi—a diverse group of aquatic fungi—may play a greater role in marine ecosystems than previously thought.

Critically, the fungus was identified as a destructive parasite in a species of algae, Ostreopsis cf. ovata, known to cause toxic blooms that have adverse health effects on humans. The findings were published online in Mycologia.

Toxic algae

Algal blooms are a growing problem in oceans, rivers, and lakes. The rapid, excessive growth of algae is generally caused by an overload of nutrients and warm temperatures, and can affect water quality and wreak havoc on ecosystems. Blooms can also produce toxins that affect humans and animals alike.

Huge blooms of Ostreopsis cf. ovata have been increasingly reported in the Mediterranean in the past few decades. The alga produces a toxin called ovatoxin (OVTX), which can cause major issues in humans, including a runny nose, cough, breathlessness, conjunctivitis, itching, and dermatitis.

Algae-killer

Algophthora mediterranea was discovered in Spanish seawater in 2021 by the team from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) in Spain, led by Dr. E. Garcés and Dr. A. Reñé, and it has now been described by Professor Maiko Kagami and Ph.D. student Núria Pou-Solà, both from YOKOHAMA National University.

DNA analysis confirmed the fungus represents not only a new species but also a new genus. The team have named the new genus Algophthora, combining “alga” and the Greek word “phthora,” meaning “destruction.”

The fungus was found as a parasite in cells of O. cf. ovata, which it kills within days. Further analysis showed it can also infect several other species of algae and can even feed off pollen grains.

“Although previous DNA-based surveys have revealed a wide diversity of marine fungi, only a handful of parasitic species have ever been isolated, and their ecology has remained largely unknown,” said Pou-Solà.

“Our newly described species stands out for its unusually broad host range and distinctive feeding strategy, demonstrating that some chytrid fungi possess remarkable ecological resilience.”

The researchers isolated the fungus and took time-lapse photos every ten minutes for four days. Samples of the fungus were also analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), where a focused beam of electrons scans the surface of a sample, creating a high-resolution image. The fungus was then sampled for DNA.

“The next step is to investigate how such versatile parasites operate within complex marine communities,” said Kagami.

“Ultimately, our goal is to understand how parasitic fungi contribute to—and potentially shape—the ocean’s biogeochemical cycles, an ecosystem role that has been largely overlooked until now.”

“In the future we aim to build the necessary knowledge to improve our predictive capacity and support the management of harmful algal blooms,” adds Pou-Solà.

Putting solar panels above agricultural crops may do more than produce food and clean energy on the same land: It can also significantly augment quality of life for farmworkers, according to new research to be presented at AGU’s 2025 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Worker-reported benefits include shelter from the sun, cooler drinking water and reduced fatigue, while physical measurements indicate the panels can help farms avoid conditions conducive to dangerous heat stress.

“In a lot of [food] sustainability conversations, we’re thinking about resource use and not about farmworkers and their bodies,” said Talitha Neesham-McTiernan, a human-environment researcher at the University of Arizona who led the research. She will present her work on 15 December at AGU25, joining more than 20,000 scientists discussing the latest Earth and space science research.

A bundle of overlooked, but crucial, benefits

Hybrid solar-food fields, better known as “agrivoltaics” systems, typically involve solar panels mounted at or above head height, spaced among crops to allow sunlight to pass through the gaps between. In addition to making efficient use of land, these systems can benefit crops by reducing both sun damage and water lost to evaporation—and even by trapping some heat near the ground during colder months, Neesham-McTiernan said.

In her four years of fieldwork on farms like these, often during brutal Arizona summers, Neesham-McTiernan noticed a pattern: Researchers and farmworkers alike would strategically plan to work in the panels’ shade during the hottest hours.

“It just seemed to be something that people in these systems were doing, but nobody in the research area was talking about it,” she said. That struck her as odd, as farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die from heat-related illness than non-agricultural workers. With climate change pushing that figure higher, making any tool to reduce heat stress would be increasingly valuable.

To end that silence, Neesham-McTiernan and her co-authors asked seven full-time farmworkers at Jack’s Solar Garden, a small agrivoltaics farm near Longmont, Colorado, how their experiences differed from those on traditional farms.

The biggest reported perk, by far, was shade. One worker, Neesham-McTiernan said, confessed they found it hard to imagine ever going back to work on traditional full-sun farms—where, they added, their favorite crops had always been tomatoes, because of the shade the tall plants offered.

“By 9 a.m., in the summer, you’re just cooking,” Neesham-McTiernan said. “Being able to take that direct heat load off makes such a difference.”

Shade keeps drinking water cool too, the workers noted—a crucial benefit, given water’s role in mitigating heat stress. “They can pop their bottles under the panels and they stay cool all day,” Neesham-McTiernan said, “rather than it being, as one of the farmworkers described it, like drinking tea.”

Another worker said these benefits helped them feel less exhausted by day’s end, leaving more energy for social life and allowing a faster recovery for the next day’s work. Others said simply knowing shade was nearby reduced their mental stress.

To tell the full story of heat stress, gather stories and numbers alike

The researchers also recorded air temperature, wind speed, humidity and solar radiation to quantify heat stress metrics such as wet bulb globe temperature, which is commonly used to identify dangerous outdoor work conditions.

Compared to open-field farms, they found, agrivoltaics reduced wet bulb globe temperature by up to 5.5 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit)—the difference, Neesham-McTiernan estimates, between stop-work conditions and simply requiring a break every hour. “When that builds up over a day, over a season, over a lifetime of harvesting, that’s really significant.”

That’s not to say the measurements always matched farmworkers’ testimonies: for instance, they occasionally disagreed over which parts of the farm were hottest at which times of day. But fully understanding the experience of heat stress, Neesham-McTiernan said, requires both personal and measured evidence.

“Every farmworker said one benefit was being able to lean against the beams that hold up the panels, just to take the weight off a bit,” she noted. “If I just had my sensors in the field, I wouldn’t know that, but it clearly makes such a difference in their day-to-day comfort.”

Neesham-McTiernan said she’s working to expand the research into other regions to see whether the benefits apply in different environments. She also hopes to eventually collect more rigorous physiological and health data to quantify the impacts of agrivoltaics on workers’ bodies.

“[Agrivoltaics] isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “It can’t be used everywhere. But with the threat of heat, we need a catalog of ways we can protect farmworkers. Without them, we can’t feed ourselves. Protecting them and their bodies should be paramount to everyone.”

UC Riverside scientists have created a small-scale system that transforms food waste into high-protein animal feed and fertilizer using black soldier flies, offering a sustainable solution to a major environmental problem.

Black soldier flies have long been used by cities and industry to break down food scraps and agricultural waste. Compared to industrial-scale operations, which require significant infrastructure and staffing, the DIY system is far more affordable and accessible.

“A commercial facility might process tons of food waste a day, but that comes with big capital and labor costs,” said Kerry Mauck, UCR entomologist who helped design and test the system.

“Our system can be built with off-the-shelf materials, maintained by one person, and still produce useful products that can help grow more food.”

A paper co-authored by Mauck describing the bioreactor system and its effectiveness as a food transformation tool has been published in the journal Waste Management.

“This setup lets you recycle food waste right where it’s produced, either on a farm, in a greenhouse, or even at a large residence,” Mauck said. “We ran ours using food waste from a campus dining hall.”

How the system works and its benefits

The research team found that with basic oversight, the system becomes remarkably stable, producing about a pound of larvae per square yard every day.

Black soldier fly larvae are sought after as protein-rich feed for poultry and fish. Their manure, called frass, is a valuable soil amendment. Unlike house flies, which transmit disease and are a nuisance, black soldier flies are harmless and uninterested in human environments.

The bioreactor’s primary output is frass, which is produced in even greater quantities than the larvae themselves. But frass offers more than nutrients. Insect body parts mixed in from molting stimulate natural plant defenses and improve soil microbial health.

“There’s a lot we’re still learning about how frass boosts plant immunity,” Mauck said. “We’re seeing that when insect fragments are part of the soil, it helps plants resist disease, almost like a vaccine.”

Climate control is key to keeping the bioreactor running smoothly. Researchers found that larvae need a shaded or greenhouse space that stays below 100 degrees Fahrenheit. During rearing, users occasionally add water and wood chips, and monitor basic metrics like temperature and pH, then adjust as needed.

Challenges and ecological impact

“One of our big takeaways was that monitoring pH really matters,” Mauck said. “If the system gets too wet, anaerobic bacteria can take over, dropping the pH and harming the larvae. But small tweaks, like less water or more wood chips, can quickly bring things back into balance.”

By mimicking natural cycles where insects feed and die in soil, the bioreactor reconnects farming with the ecosystems it often disrupts. For farms seeking to reduce waste and input costs, the insect-powered solution offers both ecological and economic benefits.

“This isn’t just waste management, it’s resource creation,” Mauck said. “We’re taking what we don’t want and turning it into something we do.”

A research group has developed a novel and highly accessible technology for producing uniform biomolecular condensates using a simple, low-cost vibration platform.

The study is published in the journal Materials Horizons. The work was led by Professor Hiroaki Suzuki and Takeshi Hayakawa from the Faculty of Science.

This method builds upon the unique vibration control technology originally pioneered by Professor Hayakawa. It eliminates the need for expensive equipment or complex microfluidic circuits. By utilizing simple mechanical vibration, it achieves precise control over condensate formation within a single aqueous phase similar to the cellular environment, establishing a highly versatile technology.

The research group’s novel study employs the Vibration-Induced Local Vortex (VILV) platform. This technology bypasses complex microfluidic pumping systems by employing stable micro-vortex arrays within a simple open device featuring a micropillar array. This is achieved using a standard piezoelectric vibrator.

These vortices function as molecular traps, inducing uniform condensation by capturing and concentrating DNA molecules at their central regions. This approach enables condensation control within a single aqueous phase, preserving the activity of sensitive biomolecular components. The team successfully constructed highly uniform DNA condensates and demonstrated precise regulation of their stability through a low-frequency “maintenance mode.”

Furthermore, the team successfully demonstrated the formation of complex patchy DNA condensate structures, highlighting the platform’s capability to construct spatially organized biomaterials. Beyond this specific application, the versatility of the VILV platform is expected to contribute significantly to the fields of bottom-up synthetic biology and the fundamental study of cellular phase separation.

The researchers anticipate that this simple and accessible technology will be widely utilized as a standard tool for developing functional artificial cells and novel smart materials.

A new study shows that machine-learning models can accurately predict daily crop transpiration using direct plant measurements and environmental data. By training models on seven years of high-resolution lysimeter data, the researchers demonstrate strong performance across tomatoes, wheat, and barley. The findings point toward future tools that may support both irrigation management and early detection of plant stress.

When it comes to irrigation, the difference between “just enough” and “too much” water can make or break a season. The new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem sheds light on a promising direction: a machine-learning method that predicts plant water use each day, using high-resolution data that captures how healthy plants naturally behave.

The research, jointly led by first authors Shani Friedman and Nir Averbuch under the supervision of Prof. Menachem Moshelion, brings together seven years of continuous monitoring from tomato, wheat, and barley plants grown in semi-commercial greenhouses. Using a high-precision load-cell lysimeter system—technology that records subtle changes in plant weight—the team generated highly accurate measurements of daily transpiration, the evaporation of water through leaves that reflects the plant’s water use.

By feeding these measurements into models such as Random Forest and XGBoost, the study showed that machine learning can reliably predict daily transpiration from environmental conditions and plant characteristics. In independent tests, the XGBoost model reached an R² of 0.82, closely matching measured transpiration even under differing climate conditions and in outside facilities. While the models currently rely on lysimeter-based weight data—technology that growers do not typically use in the field—they highlight an important conceptual step toward plant-driven prediction tools.

The research is published in the journal Plant, Cell & Environment.

Two factors stood out as especially important: plant biomass and daily temperature. “These variables consistently shaped how much water plants consumed,” said Friedman. “Understanding how a healthy, well-irrigated plant is expected to behave on a given day also allows us to detect when something is off.”

Because the model predicts what a healthy plant should be doing, unexpected changes in transpiration may serve as early warning signs of stress, whether caused by drought, salinity, disease, root damage, or other environmental pressures. “If a plant behaves differently than the model predicts, that deviation can be an indicator of abnormal or unhealthy plant behavior,” Friedman added.

Averbuch, whose work focuses on precision irrigation, emphasized the long-term potential. “Today, many irrigation decisions still rely on indirect estimates,” he explained. “Although this model is not yet field-ready, the findings show how future systems could incorporate physiological predictions to support more accurate irrigation scheduling.”

The study comes at a time of rising interest in data-driven agriculture, especially as growers face increasing pressure from drought, heat waves, and fluctuating weather patterns. While the approach is not yet a practical farm-deployable solution, it offers a glimpse into how machine learning, environmental sensing, and plant physiology may eventually combine into tools that support both irrigation management and stress diagnostics.

Importantly, the model performed well when tested on plants grown in a different research greenhouse at Tel Aviv University, suggesting the approach could adapt across climates and production setups.

For growers, the message is clear: Machine learning is becoming more than a buzzword. In the near future, predictive models based on real plant behavior may help identify stress earlier, support better water-use decisions, and improve crop resilience.