View larger. | This image shows a clay-rich mesa in Hellas basin on Mars. A new study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin shows that such clay deposits, widespread on Mars, formed alongside stable standing bodies of liquid water on ancient Mars. The clays on Mars could preserve traces of ancient microbial life, if it ever existed. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UArizona/ University of Texas at Austin.
Clays are ideal for preserving traces of ancient life on Earth. Could the same be true on Mars?
Layers of clay, up to hundreds of feet thick, are common on Mars. A new study from a team of researchers in the U.S. shows they formed alongside standing bodies of liquid water on ancient Mars.
This environment was likely stable enough for microbes to live in, if they ever existed.
Clays on Mars
Clays are some of the best kinds of terrain to preserve traces of ancient life, at least on Earth. They are rich in minerals and require water to form. So what about on Mars? A team of researchers, led by the University of Texas at Austin, conducted a new study of thick clay layers on Mars. The researchers said on June 16, 2025, that most of the clay layers formed alongside standing bodies of surface liquid water, such as lakes. This environment could have been calm and stable enough to provide an ideal habitat for microbes.
These clay layers can be up to hundreds of feet deep. And they can be found in many locations on Mars. So, how did they form?
The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in Nature Astronomy on June 16, 2025.
Thick clay layers on Mars
Clays are common on Mars. In fact, there are widespread layers of clay all over the planet. These layers are also thick, up to hundreds of feet deep. They are similar to thick layers of clay in tropical regions on Earth. The Martian clays formed billions of years ago, when the planet was much wetter than it is today.
And on Earth, clays can preserve traces of ancient life. Is that also the case for Mars?
They Might Be ClaysThis observation targets a region of layered materials exposed along the northern edge of the Hellas Basin. These layers have a light tone, suggesting the presence of clays.uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_08…NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona#Mars #science #NASA
Rhianna Moore at the University of Texas at Austin is the lead author of the new study about clays on Mars. Image via Science and Technology Institute.
A stable, habitable environment
The thick clay deposits are rich in minerals. Combined with the adjacent bodies of water, they could have been well-suited not only for preserving traces of past life, but also sustaining stable, habitable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago. Lead author Rhianna Moore at the University of Texas’ Jackson School of Geosciences said:
These areas have a lot of water but not a lot of topographic uplift, so they’re very stable. If you have stable terrain, you’re not messing up your potentially habitable environments. Favorable conditions might be able to be sustained for longer periods of time.
With this in mind, the researchers examined images and other data from 150 known clay deposits on Mars. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) had previously mapped out the locations of these clay layers. Most of the clays are near former lakes and are similar to clay deposits on Earth. Co-author Tim Goudge is an assistant professor at the Jackson School’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He explained:
On Earth, the places where we tend to see the thickest clay mineral sequences are in humid environments, and those with minimal physical erosion that can strip away newly created weathering products. These results suggest that the latter element is true also on Mars, while there are hints at the former as well.
View larger. | Map of clay deposits on Mars. The white outlines mark basin boundaries. Image via Moore et al./ Nature Astronomy/ EurekAlert!.
Formation of clays on Mars similar to Earth, yet different
Indeed, the clays are further evidence that Mars was once much more Earthlike. But, in addition, they also reveal distinct differences. The reason has to do with plate tectonics. Earth’s crust is divided into plates that can move on top of the mantle below. They expose fresh rock that interacts with water and carbon dioxide. Mars, however, never had plate tectonics.
Also, when Mars’ volcanoes released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere eons ago, there was no source of fresh rock for the gas to interact with. So consequently, it just lingered in the atmosphere. As a result, the planet became warmer and wetter. The researchers said that is how these Martian clays likely formed. The end product was similar to clays on Earth, but the formation process was a bit different.
Puzzle of the missing carbonates
The lack of fresh rock could also help explain another Martian mystery: the seeming lack of extensive carbonates. Carbonates are chemical compounds derived from carbonic acid or carbon dioxide. The lack of newly created fresh rock could have impeded the chemical reactions needed to form carbonate rock. Then, the ongoing formation of clays might have also contributed to the lack of carbonates. It would have sucked up water and sequestered chemical byproducts in the clay. As a result, this would have prevented them from leaching out into the wider environment, where they could react with the surrounding geology. As Moore noted:
It’s probably one of many factors that’s contributing to this weird lack of predicted carbonates on Mars.
However, on that note, another international team of researchers said last April that NASA’s Curiosity rover found rich deposits of carbonates in rocks in Gale crater. The evidence suggests there might indeed be a lot of carbonates on Mars after all, which just haven’t been identified yet.
Bottom line: A new study shows that thick layers of clays on Mars formed close to bodies of water like lakes. This might have provided a stable environment for life.
Source: Deep chemical weathering on ancient Mars landscapes driven by erosional and climatic patterns
Via Texas Geosciences/ The University of Texas at Austin
Read more: New discovery of carbonates on Mars could solve big mystery
Read more: Ancient ‘honeycomb’ mud on Mars boosts chances for life
Paul Scott Anderson
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About the Author:
Paul Scott Anderson has had a passion for space exploration that began when he was a child when he watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. He studied English, writing, art and computer/publication design in high school and college. He later started his blog The Meridiani Journal in 2005, which was later renamed Planetaria. He also later started the blog Fermi Paradoxica, about the search for life elsewhere in the universe.
While interested in all aspects of space exploration, his primary passion is planetary science and SETI. In 2011, he started writing about space on a freelance basis with Universe Today. He has also written for SpaceFlight Insider and AmericaSpace and has also been published in The Mars Quarterly. He also did some supplementary writing for the iOS app Exoplanet.
He has been writing for EarthSky since 2018, and also assists with proofing and social media.
A representational image shows a galaxy. — Nasa/File
Astronomers have found a distant galaxy referred to as a “cosmic fossil” that has stayed virtually unchanged, or “frozen in time,” for billions of years.
Just as dinosaur fossils on Earth help us understand the history of life, this cosmic fossil, called KiDS J0842+0059, provides important insights into the universe’s evolution, reported Space.com.
A cosmic fossil is a galaxy that has avoided significant collisions or interactions with other galaxies, allowing it to serve as a pristine time capsule for studying the characteristics of early galaxies.
Recent studies using data from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) have shown that this galaxy has remained largely unaltered for approximately 7 billion years.
“We have discovered a galaxy that has been ‘perfectly preserved’ for billions of years, a true archaeological find that tells us how the first galaxies were born and helps us understand how the universe has evolved to this day,” team co-leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Crescenzo Dove said in a statement.
“Fossil galaxies are like the dinosaurs of the universe: studying them allows us to understand in which environmental conditions they formed and how the most massive galaxies we see today evolved.”
KiDS J0842+0059, situated about 3 billion light-years from Earth, was discovered in 2018 through the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS).
Astronomers used images from the Very Large Telescope Survey Telescope (VST) to determine the galaxy’s size and mass, with these measurements further refined using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its X-Shooter instrument.
Washed foraminifera being picked for computer tomography and geochemical analysis.
Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of analysing fossils allowing them to see how creatures from millions of years ago were shaped by their environment on a day-to-day basis for the first time.
The research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could revolutionise our understanding of how character traits driven by environmental changes shaped evolutionary history and life on earth.
It could help scientists to understand how much of a species’ evolutionary journey is down to ‘nature vs nurture’.
Researchers from the University of Southampton studied the fossilised remains of prehistoric plankton using high-resolution 3D scanning, like a medical CT scan, to examine tiny fossil shells about the size of a grain of sand.
These plankton, called foraminifera or ‘forams’ for short, are tiny floating seashells that still live in the ocean today. Their shells are made of calcium carbonate and grow every few days by adding a new chamber to their shell in a spiralling pattern.
These chambers act a little like the rings of a tree trunk, providing a permanent record of the growth and lived environment of forams over time.
The shells’ chemical composition also tells us about the conditions the organism lived in, including the chemistry, depth and temperature of the water.
“The fossil record provides the most powerful evidence of biodiversity change on Earth, but it traditionally does so at a scale of thousands and millions of years,” says Dr Anieke Brombacher , lead author of the paper how carried out the research at the University of Southampton and now works at the National Oceanography Centre.
“These fossils however act a bit like chapter summaries of a species’ evolutionary story. This new way of analysing them lets us read the pages within each chapter – allowing us to see how individual organisms adapted to their changing environment, not over the course of generations but within an individual life span at day-to-day resolution.”
The key advance the researchers developed was to combine highly advanced CT scanning with chemical analysis by laser ablation techniques. This combination of methods meant the team was able to ‘zoom in’ and ‘read’ the individual pages of those chapters to reveal how the forams grew and estimate the environment they experienced while growing.
CT models of internal or external growth structures, as well as shell thickness, of individual foraminifera.
The growth rates of all three species were similar at low temperatures, but one species grew much faster in higher temperatures despite reaching the same average size.
“If you’re a foram, temperature appears to be a bigger determinant of your growth rate than even how old you are,” says Dr Brombacher.
“Temperatures change throughout the depth of the ocean water column so being able to optimise growth at different temperatures would have allowed each foram to live in a greater variety of habitats.”
James Mulqueeney a PhD researcher from the University of Southampton and co-author of the study said: “We also found that of the two species with similar environmental sensitivities, one was able to reach the same size but with a thinner shell, indicating a lower energetic cost and potential evolutionary advantage.”
Researchers say the same analysis techniques could be applied to other creatures which preserve their environmental and lifespan information including ammonoids, corals and bivalves like clams, oysters and mussels.
“This sort of data is routine in how we study adaptation in modern populations but has only now been gathered for fossils. By bringing together experts and facilities across the University of Southampton, we’ve been able to make progress on a foundational question in biology that wouldn’t have been possible within a single discipline,” says Prof Thomas Ezard , supervising author on the paper from the University of Southampton.
The research is part of a wider project which aims to scale up the analysis across a wider sample of two thousand plankton specimens to determine if a species’ adaptive flexibility is likely to lead it to diverge into separate, distinct species over time.
Detecting environmentally dependent developmental plasticity in fossilised individuals is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is available online.
The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.
by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
As summer deepens in the Northern Hemisphere, a familiar constellation rises with the galactic core of the Milky Way each evening: Scorpius the Scorpion. One of the twelve zodiacal constellations, Scorpius contains many notable objects, making it an observer’s delight during the warmer months. Here are some items to spy in July:
Antares: referred to as “the heart of the scorpion,” this supergiant has a distinct reddish hue and is visible to the naked eye. If you have good skies, try to split this binary star with a medium-sized telescope. Antares is a double star with a white main-sequence companion that comes in at a 5.4 magnitude.
Messier 4: one of the easiest globular clusters to find, M4 is the closest of these star clusters to Earth at 5,500 light years. With a magnitude of about 5.6, you can spot this with a small or medium-sized telescope in average skies. Darker skies will reveal the bright core. Use Antares as a guide star for this short trip across the sky.
Caldwell 76: If you prefer open star clusters, locate C76, also known as the Baby Scorpion Cluster, right where the ‘stinger’ of Scorpius starts to curve. At a magnitude of 2.6, it is slightly brighter than M4, albeit smaller, and can be spotted with binoculars and the naked eye under good sky conditions.
Lastly, if you have an astrophotography set up, capture the Cat’s Paw Nebula near the stinger of Scorpius. You can also capture the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex in the nearby constellation Ophiuchus. Brilliant Antares can be found at the center of this wondrous structure.
While many cultures tell tales of a ‘scorpion’ in the sky, several Polynesian cultures see the same stars as the demigod Māui’s fishhook, Manaiakalani. It is said that Māui didn’t just use his hook for giant fish in the sea, but to pull new islands from the bottom of the ocean. There are many references to the Milky Way representing a fish. As Manaiakalani rises from the southeast, it appears to pull the great celestial fish across a glittering sea of stars.
While you can use smartphone apps or dedicated devices like a Sky Quality Meter, Scorpius is a great constellation to measure your sky darkness with! On a clear night, can you trail the curve of the tail? Can you see the scorpion’s heart? Use our free printable Dark Sky Wheel, featuring the stars of Scorpius on one side and Orion on the other for measurements during cooler months. You can find this resource and more in the Big Astronomy Toolkit.
A rogue mineral found in a dust grain from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, which was visited and sampled by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission in 2020, could upend decades of perceived wisdom about the conditions in which some asteroids formed.
The mineral in question is named “djerfisherite” (pronounced juh-fisher-ite) after the American mineralogist Daniel Jerome Fisher, is an iron-nickel sulfide containing potassium. It is typically found on asteroids and in meteorites called “enstatite chondrites.” These are quite rare and formed in the inner solar system some 4.6 billion years ago, in temperatures exceeding 662 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius).
So, imagine the surprise of researchers, led by planetary scientist Masaaki Miyahara of Hiroshima University in Japan, when they found djerfisherite in a grain sampled from Ryugu — a carbon-rich CI chondrite that instead formed in cooler conditions in the outer solar system.
“Its occurrence is like finding a tropical seed in Arctic ice — indicating either an unexpected local environment or long-distance transport in the early solar system,” said Miyahara in a statement.
As a CI chondrite, Ryugu was thought to have experienced a very different history when compared to enstatite chondrites. Ryugu is believed to have once been part of a larger protoplanet, but was blasted off due to an impact at some point in the solar system’s history. Born in the outer solar system, that parent body would have been relatively abundant in water- and carbon dioxide-ice. Enough heat should have also been generated within the body through the radioactive decay of radioisotopes locked up in its rocks — that would’ve melted the ice. Taking place about 3 million years after the parent body formed, that resulting liquid would have chemically altered Ryugu’s composition. But importantly, temperatures from such radioisotopic heating are not expected to have exceeded 122 degrees F (50 degrees Celsius).
And yet, somehow, there is a grain of djerfisherite in Ryugu samples.
(Image credit: DARTS archive /Meli thev via Wikimedia Commons)
One possibility is the djerfisherite is not native to Ryugu, and is rather connected to the impact of an enstatite chondrite. The alternative is that the djerfisherite formed in situ on Ryugu — but this could only have occurred in potassium-bearing fluids and iron–nickel sulfides at temperatures greater than 662 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Isotopic data could offer a decent idea as to the origin of the djerfisherite, but that data is currently lacking, so there’s no way to say for sure. However, based on their analysis, Miyahara’s team leans towards the likelihood that the djerfisherite somehow indeed formed in situ on Ryugu. How the conditions arose to make this possible remains, however? That’s a mystery for now.
“The discovery of djerfisherite in a Ryugu grain suggests that materials with very different formation histories may have mixed early in the solar system’s evolution, or that Ryugu experienced localized, chemically heterogeneous conditions not previously recognized,” said Miyahara. “This finding challenges the notion that Ryugu is compositionally uniform and opens new questions about the complexity of primitive asteroids.”
Scientists will now be rushing to re-analyze their samples from Ryugu to try and learn whether this discovery of djerfisherite is a one-off, or whether there is more evidence that supports its in-situ formation.
In doing so, scientists won’t just solve a mystery. They will also come to better understand where and how different minerals formed in the protoplanetary disk around the young sun 4.6 billion years ago, how those minerals subsequently mixed and coalesced to form asteroids and planets, and how subsequent chemical reactions on those bodies produced more minerals. In doing so, they can chart the chemical evolution of the solar system.
The discovery of djerfisherite was reported on May 28 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.
Professor Aerts, from the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven, Belgium, is a pioneer in asteroseismology whose influential research and leadership have earned her top scientific honours, including the Francqui, Kavli, and Crafoord Prizes. She is also widely recognised for her mentoring, academic teaching and leadership in international space missions. The appointment is for an initial term of four years, starting from 1 July 2025.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said:
‘Professor Aerts is an outstanding scientist and a strong voice for European research. Her deep experience and dedication will be a real asset to the ERC Scientific Council. I warmly welcome her and look forward to working together to support excellence in science.’
President of the European Research Council Prof. Maria Leptin said:
‘The independent identification committee has again ensured both the quality and continuity of the ERC governing body. Welcome to Conny Aerts as a new member. She brings her stellar scientific track record to our Scientific Council and also her understanding of the challenges scientists face today. We will benefit from her engagement in mentoring the younger generation of researchers, as well as her experience in making basic science relevant to practical applications.’
Professor Aerts replaces Professor Chryssa Kouveliotou who stepped down at the end of March 2025. ERC Scientific Council members are appointed by the European Commission based a search carried out by an independent Identification Committee, composed of six distinguished researchers and chaired by Prof. Carl-Henrik Heldin. The mandate of this committee is to identify new members for the renewal of the Scientific Council membership and to maintain a pool of candidates for future replacements of Scientific Council members. The selection process involves consultations with the scientific community.
The ERC Scientific Council is composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community. Their main role is to set the ERC strategy and to select the peer review evaluators. The ERC and the Scientific Council is chaired by the ERC President, Maria Leptin.
Biography
Conny Clara Aerts is a Belgian professor in astrophysics. Professor Aerts studied mathematics at Antwerp University and completed her PhD in astrophysics in 1993 at KU Leuven. She was an independent Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) from 1993 to 2001, spending research time at various institutes worldwide, while also acting as an advocate for equal opportunities for women in science. She was appointed as a lecturer at KU Leuven in 2001 and completed the promotion path to full professor by 2007. She has previously been awarded two Advanced Grants and one Synergy Grant by the ERC. She became the first woman to be awarded the Belgian Francqui Prize (2012) and the FWO Excellence Prize (2020) in the category of Science & Technology. In 2022, she became the third woman to be awarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for her pioneering work and leadership in asteroseismology. In 2024, she won the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy for developing methods of asteroseismology and their application to the study of rotating stars.
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Since November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, under the responsibility of European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva.
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The PRISMA flow diagram illustrating the literature search process is presented in Fig. 1. Based on a systematic search across the specified databases, a total of 3,245 articles were initially retrieved. These included 539 articles from Embase, 1037 from PubMed, 847 from Scopus, 770 from Web of Science, and 16 from ProQuest. After removing 1388 duplicate records, two researchers independently screened the titles and abstracts of 1857 articles. Of these, 1,806 articles were excluded due to non-compliance with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The full texts of 51 articles were assessed, and ultimately, 27 primary studies were selected for data extraction [27, 29, 42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66]. The remaining 24 articles were excluded for the following reasons: they did not focus on burn injuries, lacked direct or indirect data extraction possibilities, used alternative effect size metrics, did not utilize MSCs, or employed bilayered scaffolds.
Fig. 1
PRISMA flow diagram detailing study screening and selection
Study characteristics
Animal models
Among the included studies, 14 studies utilized mice, 11 studies employed rats, one study used rabbits, and one study involved pigs (Fig. 2A). Of these, 16 studies focused on male animals, six studies on female animals, and one study included both sexes (Fig. 2B). The sex of the animals was not reported in four studies. Regarding the burn models, 16 studies induced third-degree burns, nine studies created second-degree burns, and the burn model was not specified in two studies (Fig. 2C). The methods employed to induce burns, along with other relevant information pertaining to the animal model, are concisely presented in Table 1.
Fig. 2
Comperhensive overview of included study characteristics
Mesenchymal stem cells
Out of the 20 studies that utilized MSCs, 11 studies employed animal-derived MSCs, while nine studies used human-derived MSCs (Fig. 2D). Specifically, 11 studies used adipose tissue-derived MSCs, six studies utilized bone marrow-derived MSCs, and three studies employed umbilical cord-derived MSCs (Fig. 2E). A summary of the points mentioned, along with the methods for identifying and characterizing MSCs based on ISCT guidelines [67], is provided in Table 2.
Secretome
According to Table 3, among the seven studies that isolated MSCs, three studies focused on exosomes, one study investigated microvesicles, one study examined small extracellular vesicles, one study analyzed paracrine proteins, and one study utilized conditioned medium (Fig. 2F). Of these, four studies investigated secretomes derived from umbilical cord MSCs, two studies explored secretomes from adipose-derived MSCs, and one study used secretomes from iPSC-derived MSCs (Fig. 2G). For isolation, four studies employed ultrafiltration, and three studies used ultracentrifugation as the primary methods.
Scaffold types
In terms of scaffolds, six studies utilized biological-based scaffolds, while 21 studies employed hydrogel-based scaffolds (Fig. 2H). The hydrogel formulations included injectable hydrogels, foam hydrogels, amorphous hydrogels, film hydrogels, freeze-dried hydrogels, nanofiber hydrogels, and bioprinted hydrogels (Fig. 2I). The most commonly used biomaterials in these hydrogels were hyaluronic acid, collagen, chitosan, gelatin, and alginate (Fig. 2J). The information provided pertains to scaffolds, including Scaffold Compositions, Forms, and characterization methods, as well as the Structural and Biological Properties of scaffolds, all of which are comprehensively presented in Table 4.
Result of risk of bias assessment
The risk of bias assessment, conducted using the SYRCLE tool, yielded the following findings across the included studies. In the domain of selection bias, under the subcategory of sequence generation, 18 out of 27 studies (66.7%) were classified as having a low risk of bias. In the baseline characteristics subcategory, all but one study—i.e., 26 out of 27 studies (96.3%)—were deemed to have a low risk of bias. However, in the allocation concealment subcategory, all studies were rated as having an unclear risk of bias. In the domain of performance bias, the random housing subcategory indicated that 15 out of 27 studies (55.6%) were at low risk of bias, whereas in the blinding subcategory, all studies were assessed as having an unclear risk of bias. Regarding detection bias, the random outcome assessment subcategory showed that, with the exception of three studies, the remaining 24 out of 27 studies (88.9%) were classified as low risk. In contrast, the blinding subcategory within this domain revealed that all studies had an unclear risk of bias.In the domain of attrition bias, all but three studies—i.e., 24 out of 27 studies (88.9%)—were determined to have a low risk of bias. Finally, in the domain of reporting bias, all studies were consistently rated as having a low risk of bias. In total, of the 27 studies evaluated, 19 studies (70.4%) were classified as having an overall low risk of bias and were included in our review, while the remaining 8 studies (29.6%) were deemed to have an unclear risk of bias (Fig. 3). Also, to examine the impact of studies with unclear risk of bias on potential under- or overestimation of results, a subgroup analysis was conducted for the primary outcome. As shown in Table 5 and (Supplementary Data S2), these studies did not significantly influence the overall findings.
Fig. 3
Quality assessment of individual studies using SYstematic Review Center for Laboratory animal Experimentation (SYRCLE) tool
Primary outcome
Our analysis demonstrates that the synergistic effect of MSCs and scaffolds significantly improves wound closure rates, measured as the primary outcome, across three time frames. To evaluate the progression of wound healing, these time points were categorized as short-term (1-week), mid-term (2 weeks), and long-term (3 weeks). These intervals align with the inflammatory, proliferative, and remodeling phases of the wound healing process, respectively, and were selected based on standard practices in preclinical burn wound research. Moreover, these time points were chosen due to their frequent reporting in the scientific literature, enabling standardization and comparison of results across studies. These results are derived from 23 studies for the 1-week time point, 25 studies for 2 weeks, and 12 studies for 3 weeks. The effect was most pronounced at 1 week (SMD = 3.97, 95% CI: 2.92 to 5.01), followed by 2 weeks (SMD = 3.47, 95% CI: 2.23 to 4.61), and 3 weeks (SMD = 3.03, 95% CI: 1.96 to 4.11) (Fig. 4A–C). These results indicate that the combination of MSCs and scaffolds is highly effective in promoting wound healing, with the strongest impact observed in the early stages. However, the high heterogeneity (I2 > 50%) across studies suggests variability in experimental conditions, which should be considered when interpreting these findings.
Fig. 4
Forest plot demonstrating the therapeutic efficacy of MSC-scaffold combinations in promoting wound closure in a burn animal model. A Week 1, B Week 2, C Week 3
Subgroup analysis and meta-regression
Due to the presence of high heterogeneity and to investigate its underlying causes as well as identify factors influencing therapeutic efficacy, we conducted a subgroup analysis across three time frames: 1 week, 2 weeks, and 3 weeks. The results revealed noteworthy findings (all results are available in Table 5 and Supplementary Data S2). Our results indicate that, in the comparison between the use of MSCs and MSC-derived secretome, the administration of MSCs (SMD = 4.75, 95% CI: 3.15 to 6.36) demonstrated superior therapeutic efficacy in the short term (1-week) compared to secretome (SMD = 2.90, 95% CI: 1.77 to 4.03). However, in the medium term (2-week) and long term (3-week), specifically in 2-week the therapeutic efficacy of secretome (SMD = 3.94, 95% CI: 2.30 to 5.58) was greater than that of MSCs (SMD = 3.20, 95% CI: 1.71 to 4.68). I2 analysis in this subgroup suggests that one of the main sources of heterogeneity was the inclusion of MSCs and MSC-derived secretome combined with scaffolds. Separate analysis of these combinations reduced heterogeneity; however, due to the limited number of secretome studies, we included both scaffold-based MSC and secretome data in the pooled results. The investigation of the therapeutic efficacy of MSCs across various animal models indicates a significant reduction in I2 (heterogeneity). This suggests that the choice of animal model utilized in the studies may be one of the key factors contributing to the heterogeneity observed in our results. The evaluation of the therapeutic efficacy of MSCs in second- and third-degree burn models reveals significant findings. In the one-week time frame, the wound closure rate in second-degree burns (SMD = 3.95, 95% CI: 2.00 to 5.90) was notably sharp compared to third-degree burns (SMD = 6.36, 95% CI: 2.99 to 9.74). However, as might be expected, the therapeutic efficacy in the second and third weeks was better in second-degree burn models (SMD = 3.49, 95% CI: 1.41 to 5.56; SMD = 3.21, 95% CI: 0.99 to 5.43) compared to third-degree burns (SMD = 2.46, 95% CI: 0.31 to 4.60; SMD = 2.83, 95% CI: 1.64 to 4.01), respectively. Additionally, the reduction in I2 suggests that the type of burn model used may be one of the contributing factors to the heterogeneity observed in our results. In addition, the type of scaffolds used also significantly influences therapeutic efficacy. Our results demonstrate that, in the one-week time frame, MSCs combined with biological scaffolds exhibited superior therapeutic efficacy (SMD = 8.83, 95% CI: 0.76 to 16.90) compared to hydrogels (SMD = 4.02, 95% CI: 2.37 to 5.67). However, in the two- and three-week time frames, the therapeutic efficacy of hydrogels (SMD = 3.41, 95% CI: 1.89 to 4.93; SMD = 3.60, 95% CI: 1.31 to 5.89) was greater than that of biological scaffolds (SMD = 2.75, 95% CI: −0.54 to 6.04; SMD = 2.74, 95% CI: 1.56 to 3.91). The absence of a notable reduction in I2 within the scaffold type subgroup can be attributed to the substantial variation in scaffold nature (i.e., polymer-based vs. biological-based scaffolds) and in their constituent components (i.e., natural or synthetic biomaterials). This broad variability in both structural origin and material composition likely contributes to the persistent heterogeneity observed, which may, in turn, affect the robustness and certainty of the derived conclusions.The type of MSCs used significantly influences both heterogeneity and therapeutic efficacy. Our analysis highlights distinct performance patterns across different MSC sources—Umbilical Cord, Bone Marrow, and Adipose—over one-, two-, and three-week time frames. Umbilical Cord-derived MSCs demonstrated the highest therapeutic efficacy in the short term, with a SMD of 6.74 (95% CI: 4.88 to 8.60) at one week. This efficacy remained robust at two weeks (SMD = 6.30, 95% CI: 4.03 to 8.56) but declined slightly by three weeks (SMD = 3.29, 95% CI: 0.64 to 5.94). Similarly, Bone Marrow-derived MSCs exhibited strong therapeutic effects, with an SMD of 6.27 (95% CI: 4.74 to 7.81) at one week, 4.27 (95% CI: 1.73 to 6.81) at two weeks, and 4.42 (95% CI: 1.83 to 7.02) at three weeks. In contrast, Adipose-derived MSCs showed comparatively lower efficacy across all time frames: SMD = 4.16 (95% CI: 1.27 to 7.05) at one week, 1.56 (95% CI: 0.01 to 3.10) at two weeks, and 1.51 (95% CI: −0.28 to 3.30) at three weeks. Furthermore, the observed reduction in I2 suggests that the source of MSCs is a key factor contributing to the heterogeneity in our results. Regarding the source of MSCs, the results demonstrate that human-derived MSCs exhibit significantly higher therapeutic efficacy compared to animal-derived MSCs in the one- and two-week time frames. Specifically, human-derived MSCs showed an SMD of 6.66 (95% CI: 3.38—9.94) at one week and 3.86 (95% CI: 1.20 to 6.52) at two weeks. In contrast, animal-derived MSCs displayed lower efficacy, with an SMD of 3.60 (95% CI: 1.78 to 5.43) at one week and 2.52 (95% CI: 1.02 to 4.02) at two weeks. However, the results in the three-week time frame present a contrasting pattern. Here, animal-derived MSCs demonstrated higher therapeutic efficacy (SMD = 3.54, 95% CI: 0.91 to 6.17) compared to human-derived MSCs (SMD = 2.85, 95% CI: 1.62 to 4.07). Regarding MSC-derived secretomes, our results indicate that secretomes extracted from Adipose-derived MSCs exhibit higher therapeutic efficacy compared to those from Umbilical Cord-derived MSCs in the one- and two-week time frames. Specifically, Adipose-derived secretomes demonstrated an SMD of 3.67 (95% CI: 2.26 to 5.08) at one week and 4.83 (95% CI: − 2.26 to 12.16) at two weeks. In contrast, Umbilical Cord-derived secretomes showed lower efficacy, with an SMD of 2.78 (95% CI: 0.97 to 4.58) at one week and 4.10 (95% CI: 3.20 to 4.99) at two weeks. These findings suggest that Adipose-derived MSC secretomes may offer superior therapeutic benefits in the short to medium term. Furthermore, the results of our meta-regression analysis indicate that no dose–response relationship was observed regarding the number of MSCs administered and their therapeutic efficacy across the three specified time frames (Supplementary Data S2). Also, given the absence of a universally established criterion for classifying sample sizes in preclinical studies, we categorized sample sizes based on the ARRIVE guidelines and the distribution of sample sizes in the included studies [68]. Specifically, we classified sample sizes as small (n < 6, below the minimum recommended threshold), sufficient (n = 6–11), or large (n > 11). Our analysis revealed that, of the 27 included studies, 12 were classified as small, 13 as sufficient, and 2 as large. This distribution suggests that the overall sample sizes are sufficient to ensure the reliability of the meta-analytic results. Furthermore, subgroup analysis based on sample size across all three time frames demonstrated that the greatest therapeutic efficacy was observed in the adequate sample size group. Consequently, smaller sample sizes did not significantly influence the intervention outcomes and were not a determining factor in the strength of the evidence.
Secondary outcomes
Angiogenesis
Our analytical results demonstrate that the synergistic effect of MSCs and scaffolds significantly enhances the expression of CD31, a key marker of angiogenesis (SMD = 6.24, 95% CI: 3.90 to 8.58) (Fig. 5A). This finding underscores the potential of combining MSCs and scaffolds to promote vascularization, which is critical for effective tissue repair and regeneration. However, the I2 values exceeding 50% for both parameters indicate high heterogeneity among the studies included in the analysis.
Fig. 5
Forest plot demonstrating the therapeutic efficacy of MSC-scaffold combinations on: A angiogenesis, B collagen deposition, C inflammatory cytokines, D growth factors
Collagen
The findings from our analysis highlight that the synergistic interaction between and scaffolds significantly enhances collagen deposition at burn wound sites (SMD = 4.97, 95% CI: 2.22 to 7.73) (Fig. 5B). This suggests that the combined application of MSCs and scaffolds plays a pivotal role in promoting tissue regeneration and improving wound healing outcomes. However, the high heterogeneity observed, as indicated by I2 values exceeding 50%, points to substantial variability across the studies included in this analysis.
Inflammatory cytokines
Our analysis reveals that the combined use of MSCs and scaffolds exerts a powerful anti-inflammatory effect, significantly lowering the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Specifically, we observed notable reductions in TNF-α (SMD = − 4.06, 95% CI: − 1.72 to −6.4), IL-6 (SMD = − 6.24, 95% CI: − 2.23 to −10.26), and IL-1 (SMD = − 5.13, 95% CI: − 1.69 to −8.56) (Fig. 5C). These results suggest that the interaction between MSCs and scaffolds plays a critical role in dampening inflammatory pathways, which could have significant implications for therapeutic strategies in inflammatory diseases and tissue repair. However, the high heterogeneity reflected by I2 values exceeding 50% for all three cytokines indicates considerable variability across the studies analyzed.
Growth factors
The results of our analyses indicate that the synergistic effect of MSCs and scaffolds significantly enhances the expression of key growth factors, including TGF-β (SMD = 6.21, 95% CI: − 1.6 to 14.03) and VEGF (SMD = 7.30, 95% CI: 4.85 to 9.75) (Fig. 5D). The observed effect sizes suggest a substantial impact of this combination on promoting growth factor activity. However, the I2 values exceeding 50% for both parameters indicate high heterogeneity among the studies included in the analysis.
Publication bias
To assess publication bias, we employed three widely used methods: the trim and fill method, funnel plot analysis, and Egger’s and Begg’s tests. According to Table 6, for the primary outcome, the asymmetric distribution in the funnel plot and the addition of studies in the trim and fill method across all three time frames suggest the presence of significant publication bias. Furthermore, Egger’s and Begg’s tests yielded p-values < 0.05 at the 1-week and 2-week time points, further supporting the existence of notable publication bias. However, at the 3-week time point, the p-values from Egger’s and Begg’s tests exceeded 0.05, indicating no significant evidence of publication bias during this period. The evaluation of publication bias for secondary outcomes also revealed notable findings. For CD31 expression, inflammatory cytokines, and growth factors, the asymmetric distribution in the funnel plot, the addition of studies in the trim and fill method, and Egger’s test with p-values < 0.05 all indicate significant publication bias. However, Begg’s test yielded p-values of 0.11, 0.12, and 0.76, respectively. The asymmetric funnel plot, the addition of studies in the trim and fill method, and Begg’s test with a p-value < 0.05 suggest significant publication bias. In contrast, Egger’s test showed a p-value of 0.11 (all results are available in Supplementary Data S3).
Table 6 Summary of publication bias and sensitivity analysis resualts for outcomes
Sensitivity analysis
For sensitivity analysis, we employed the one-out remove method to assess the influence of individual studies on the SMD as the effect size metric. According to Table 6, for both the primary outcome and secondary outcomes, the one-out remove method revealed that no outlier studies were identified, indicating that no single study had a significant impact on the overall SMD. This suggests that the results are not disproportionately influenced by any individual study (all results are available in Supplementary Data S4).
A new study demonstrates that sarcopenia-related muscle decline associated with aging can be modeled within a relatively short period in space, paving the way to study potential treatments quicker and more effectively.
To understand the changes of muscle in microgravity, researchers at the University of Florida (US) engineered skeletal muscle microtissues from donor biopsies and launched them to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX CRS-25.
Their findings may inform therapies for sarcopenia, which is common with aging and affects up to 50% of people aged 80 and older, according to estimates.
“Using electrical pulses to trigger real-time muscle contractions in space, we can simulate exercise and observe how it helps protect against rapid muscle weakening in microgravity,” explains Siobhan Malany, one of the lead researchers.
“This technology advancement offers insight into how we might preserve muscle health during long-duration space missions and ultimately, how to combat age-related muscle loss here on Earth.”
Spaceflight-induced muscle weakness offers a rapid model for studying age-related sarcopenia, which typically develops over decades on Earth.Apart from lifestyle changes, there is no current clinical treatment for sarcopenia. It can lead to disability and injuries from falls and is associated with a lower quality of life and an increased mortality.
Muscles in space
Space flight comes with the absence of gravity and limited strain on muscles, which causes weakness, a prominent feature of sarcopenia, within a short period of time. This offers a “time lapse view” on age-related atrophy-associated changes in the muscle, highlight the researchers.
“This relatively short window of time in space provides a microgravity model for muscular aging and opens opportunities for studying sarcopenia, which normally takes decades to develop in patients on Earth,” notes the research team.
The microtissues were taken from young, active donors, and aged, sedentary donors and cultured in an automated mini lab. Besides regular feeding and monitoring of cultures, the lab also performed electrical stimulation to simulate exercise.
On Earth, the contraction strength of microtissues from young, active individuals was almost twice as much as the strength of tissues from older, sedentary individuals. After only two weeks in space, muscle strength tended to decline in the young tissues and was now more comparable to the strength of old tissues.
A similar trend was observed in muscle protein content, which was higher in young microtissues on Earth compared to old microtissues but decreased in microgravity to levels measured in old tissues. Further, space flight changed gene expression — particularly in the younger microtissues — and disturbed cellular processes related to normal muscle function.
Interestingly, the scientists found that electrical stimulation could mitigate these changes in gene expression “to some extent.”
Their findings were published in Stem Cell Reports.
In other aging-focused space research, David Beckham’s IM8 supplement brand, co-founded with Prenetics, sent specially designed 3D organoids — miniature, simplified versions of human tissues — into space to study accelerated aging. The researchers also leveraged microgravity’s unique environment that speeds up this process.
The Bullet Cluster, named for its distinctive shape, has long been considered a smoking gun for the existence of dark matter in space.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.)
But the James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership of NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts, has now traced that hidden material with unprecedented precision. In new images, such as the one displayed at the top of this story, scientists have obtained the most detailed information yet on the notorious cosmic collision between two massive groups of galaxies, 3.8 billion light-years away in the Carina constellation.
What makes this cluster famous isn’t the violence of it all. It’s that the crash stripped the visible matter, such as hot gas, from the dark matter, a mysterious-yet-abundant substance that doesn’t shine or interact with light. This unseen material stealthily shapes galaxies.
“Webb’s images dramatically improve what we can measure in this scene — including pinpointing the position of invisible particles known as dark matter,” said Kyle Finner, a Caltech scientist involved in the research, in a statement.
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Rubin Observatory’s first images flaunt millions of galaxies. Take a look.
With Webb, astronomers have discovered thousands of previously unknown faint and distant galaxies and used the data to map the region’s total weight.
Long ago when the two galaxy groups slammed into each other at ultra high speeds, the visible gas clouds slowed down and got dragged behind, while the dark matter kept going. This separation was partly captured in earlier images by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, but the latest Webb data reveals more subtle details.
Mashable Light Speed
In the new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers combined measurements of strong and weak “gravitational lensing” to create a high-resolution mass map.
When a massive object like a galaxy cluster sits in the foreground of a more distant galaxy, it bends and magnifies the background light in a process called gravitational lensing. NASA often uses the analogy of a bowling ball placed on a foam mattress or trampoline to illustrate how the fabric of spacetime bends: Light that would otherwise travel straight curves as it passes through the warped spacetime. The natural phenomenon creates a magnifying glass in the sky, allowing scientists to then see even more distant objects than would ordinarily be possible.
The new map doesn’t assume that light and mass must go hand in hand — a crucial consideration because dark matter doesn’t shine. It instead tracks how the background galaxies appear warped.
A new James Webb Space Telescope study of the Bullet Cluster has revealed unprecedented detail that could help scientists trace dark matter. Credit: NASA GSFC / CIL / Adriana Manrique Gutierrez illustration
To understand gravitational lensing and dark matter, James Jee, a professor at Yonsei University, says to think of a pond filled with clear water and pebbles. The water, in this case, is dark matter, and the pebbles are background galaxies.
“You cannot see the ‘water’ unless there is wind, which causes ripples,” he said. “Those ripples distort the shapes of the pebbles below, causing the water to act like a lens.”
The real surprise was seeing a faint trail of mass extending from the subcluster — a possible “bridge” of material that could tell a deeper story about the cluster’s past. In that trail, researchers also found what’s called intracluster light — stars that have been stripped from their home galaxies and now drift freely, bound only by the cluster’s gravity.
These stars seem to follow the dark matter closely. The researchers found the light and mass were aligned within just about 20,000 light-years. This means wandering stars could give scientists a new way to map invisible matter in future galaxy collisions.
The findings hint that the Bullet Cluster’s history may be messier than scientists thought. Rather than a simple two-object collision, the evidence points to a more complex chain of events, with other previous smashups. And even with all this new detail, researchers still haven’t captured the whole picture — Webb’s field of view only includes the “head of the giant,” as one scientist put it.
“Webb’s initial images allow us to extrapolate how heavy the whole ‘giant’ is,” Jee said, “but we’ll need future observations of the giant’s whole ‘body’ for precise measurements.”
