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Ancient DNA retrieved from the wolf cub’s final meal revealed the tissue belonged to a woolly rhinoceros. Chacón-Duque and his team used the devoured morsel to reconstruct the woolly rhino’s entire genome—the first time scientists have sequenced an Ice Age animal’s complete genome from the contents of another animal’s stomach. They published their findings on Wednesday in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.

Researchers recover a woolly rhino genome from inside a frozen wolf's stomach The work marks the first time an Ice Age animal’s complete genome has been recovered from tissue preserved inside another ancient animal.

Un pársec es una unidad astronómica creada para medir distancias fuera del Sistema Solar, donde los kilómetros y hasta los años luz se vuelven poco prácticos. Su definición es completamente precisa: es la distancia a la que una unidad astronómica, la separación promedio entre la Tierra y el Sol, se observa bajo un ángulo de un segundo de arco. Ese ángulo es extremadamente pequeño, equivalente a la tres mil seiscientasava parte de un grado.

La idea proviene del método de paralaje estelar. Cuando la Tierra se desplaza alrededor del Sol, observamos una estrella desde dos posiciones opuestas con seis meses de diferencia. Ese cambio produce un desplazamiento aparente minúsculo. Midiendo ese ángulo se puede calcular su distancia usando geometría básica. Un pársec representa exactamente la distancia para el caso en que ese ángulo sea de un segundo de arco.

En términos numéricos, un pársec equivale a unos 3.26 años luz, lo que corresponde a aproximadamente treinta billones de kilómetros. Gracias a esta unidad sabemos que Próxima Centauri está a alrededor de 1.3 pársecs de nosotros, mientras que para describir escalas mayores, como el tamaño de la Vía Láctea o la distancia a otras galaxias, se usan múltiplos como kilopársecs y megapársecs.

In 2017, Romiguier and his colleagues discovered that the worker ants of M. ibericus had unexpectedly diverse DNA, perhaps a sign their queens had mated with distantly related males. Further genetic analysis hinted at another surprise. The hybrid workers’ fathers seemed to belong to M. structor, another species altogether.

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Interspecies mating is known in a few ant species, where the s***m of a queen’s own species can produce larvae that become new queens but not sterile workers. The queens have solved this challenge by also mating with males of another species to produce workers, and M. ibericus queens seemed to be using this strategy, too. But there was something puzzling. Colonies were thriving even in regions outside of the range of M. structor, such as the northern Mediterranean coast and the Italian island of Sicily, where the closest M. structor colonies are more than 700 kilometers away. “It was impossible to imagine,” Romiguier says.

To figure out what was happening, Romiguier had to collect some males, which is harder than it sounds. Harvester colonies can contain 10,000 ants, with only a few males around during specific times of the year. Romiguier and his colleagues dug up some 50 nests along farm roads near Lyon, France, before they finally got their first quarry.

After collecting 132 males from 26 M. ibericus colonies, they found that about half of the males were nearly hairless and resembled M. structor. These males also had the nuclear genomes of M. structor but the mitochondria of M. ibericus, proving the males had hatched from eggs laid by M. ibericus queens.

The researchers think the M. ibericus queens are cloning the M. structor males. The queens allow the M. structor s***m to enter their eggs, but at some point they remove their own genes from the egg’s nucleus to prevent fertilization, thereby ensuring the egg develops into a male and not a sterile female worker. By keeping these cloned males on hand, M. ibericus ant colonies can live in places that lack M. structor. This trick is “a bit mind-bending,” says Chris Smith, an evolutionary biologist at Utah State University.

Ant queen lays eggs that hatch into two species Bizarre discovery of interspecies cloning “almost impossible to believe,” biologists say

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Boas and pythons possess a unique superpower—infrared-sensing pits that allow them to detect warm-blooded prey in complete darkness. But how did these heat-sensing innovations evolve, and what role do they play in snake ecology? A new study reveals that labial pits evolved multiple times and drove a strong preference for arboreal lifestyles and an endotherm-based diet. Surprisingly, they did not boost diversification rates, challenging traditional views on key innovations. These findings shed light on how sensory adaptations shape ecological niches, offering new insights into the evolution of one of nature’s most fascinating predators.

Read the article published in Proceedings B:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2025.0199

The first example of cellular origami discovered in protist Combining a deep curiosity and "recreational biology," Stanford researchers have discovered how a simple cell produces remarkably complex behavior, all without a nervous system. It's origami, they say.

Impressively, the modified enzyme also reduced the amount of time it takes for the plastic to degrade from months to a just single week.

The process, called depolymerization, has the added benefit of allowing the broken down monomers to be reconstituted back into virgin PET plastic, a potentially revolutionary way of recycling the astronomical amounts of plastic waste we've accumulated.

That all depends, though, on figuring out a reliable and affordable way to scale up and industrialize the process.

Virgin Plastic
The fact that PET plastic can be turned back into virgin plastic is a big deal.

"This has advantages over traditional belt recycling," Hal Alper, professor in chemical engineering and author on the paper, told Vice. "If you were to melt the plastic and then remold it, you'd start to lose the integrity of the plastic each round that you go through with recycling."

This new method, however, can be used to make "virgin PET plastic each and every time," Alper added.

Scientists Claim New Enzyme Can Break Down Plastic in a Single Week Scientists used machine learning to discover a new enzyme that could speed up the process of plastic breaking down significantly, Vice reports.