Category: 7. Science

NAM is the flagship annual event of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society and sees scientists present the latest in cutting-edge space research.

It will connect diverse communities – from researchers and amateur astronomers to schools, artists, industry, and the public – fostering scientific collaboration and inspiring thousands of non-professional astronomers through both professional sessions and public outreach events.

Long history of astronomical research

Durham has a long history of astronomical research dating back to the appointment of Temple Chevallier as Professor of Astronomy in 1835.

Since then, our physicists, engineers and mathematicians have played an important role in furthering our understanding of the Universe. See just a few examples below.

Evolution of the Universe

Our centres for Advanced Instrumentation (CfAI) and Extragalactic Astronomy (CEA) helped develop and engineer the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The most powerful space telescope ever built, the JWST is giving researchers – including our astronomers – unprecedented new images and insights into the evolution of the Universe, its stars, galaxies and black holes.

The CfAI is also involved in the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Currently under construction, the ELT will have a mirror the size of four tennis courts allowing us to see even fainter objects in space.

Dark matter and dark energy

Our Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) and the CEA are leading the hunt for dark matter – the mysterious substance which binds galaxies together – through our involvement in major international projects like Euclid.

The ICC is also investigating dark energy – the equally mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe – through projects such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI).

And we host the COSMA supercomputer. COSMA allows our cosmologists to simulate the evolution of the Universe in precise detail which is then tested by astronomers’ observations of the real thing.

New research led by University of California, Riverside’s Professor Meng Chen shows that plants rely on multiple heat-sensing systems and that sugar — produced in sunlight — plays a central and previously unrecognized role in daytime temperature response.

“Our textbooks say that proteins like phytochrome B and early flowering 3 (ELF3) are the main thermosensors in plants,” Professor Chen said.

“But those models are based on nighttime data.”

“We wanted to know what’s happening during the day, when light and temperature are both high because these are the conditions most plants actually experience.”

To investigate, Professor Chen and colleagues used Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant favored in genetics labs.

They exposed seedlings to a range of temperatures, from 12 to 27 degrees Celsius, under different light conditions, and tracked the elongation of their seedling stems, known as hypocotyls — a classic indicator of growth response to warmth.

They found that phytochrome B, a light-sensing protein, could only detect heat under low light. In bright conditions that mimic midday sunlight, its temperature-sensing function was effectively shut off.

Yet, the plants still responded to heat, growing taller even when the thermosensing role of phytochrome B was greatly diminished.

“That pointed to the presence of other sensors,” Professor Chen said.

One clue came from studies of a phytochrome B mutant lacking its thermosensing function.

These mutant plants could respond to warmth only when grown in the light.

When grown in the dark, without photosynthesis, they lacked chloroplasts and did not grow taller in response to warmth.

But when the researchers supplemented the growing medium with sugar, the temperature response returned.

“That’s when we realized sugar wasn’t just fueling growth. It was acting like a signal, telling the plant that it’s warm,” Professor Chen said.

Further experiments showed that higher temperatures triggered the breakdown of starch stored in leaves, releasing sucrose.

This sugar in turn stabilized a protein known as PIF4, a master regulator of growth. Without sucrose, PIF4 degraded quickly. With it, the protein accumulated but only became active when another sensor, ELF3, also responded to the heat by stepping aside.

“PIF4 needs two things. Sugar to stick around, and freedom from repression. Temperature helps provide both,” Professor Chen said.

The study reveals a nuanced, multi-layered system. During the day, when light is used as the energy source to fix carbon dioxide into sugar, plants also evolved a sugar-based mechanism to sense environmental changes.

As temperatures rise, stored starch converts into sugar, which then enables key growth proteins to do their job.

The findings could have practical implications. As climate change drives temperature extremes, understanding how and when plants sense heat could help scientists breed crops that grow more predictably and more resiliently under stress.

“This changes how we think about thermosensing in plants,” Professor Chen said.

“It’s not just about proteins flipping on or off. It’s about energy, light, sugar, as well.”

“The findings also underscore, once again, the quiet sophistication of the plant world.”

“In the blur of photosynthesis and starch reserves, there’s a hidden intelligence.”

“One that knows, sweetly and precisely, when it’s time to stretch toward the sky.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

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D. Fan et al. 2025. A multisensor high-temperature signaling framework for triggering daytime thermomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis. Nat Commun 16, 5197; doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-60498-7

As humanity prepares for Mars, new research reveals that safeguarding astronaut mental health means targeting the gut, where the battle for resilience in space truly begins.

Review: Navigating mental health in space: gut–brain axis and microbiome dynamics. Image Credit: Frame Stock Footage / Shutterstock

In a recent review in the journal Experimental & Molecular Medicine, researchers collate and discuss more than 150 publications that draw parallels between human terrestrial gut-brain axis interactions and their equivalent in astronauts in space. The review emphasises that while changes in the astronaut gut microbiome are consistently observed, the magnitude, persistence, and individual-specific nature of these shifts remain areas of ongoing research. It elucidates the challenges and extreme environments to which astronauts are exposed, as well as the cascading impact on their gut–brain communication, cognition, mood, and immunity.

This review synthesizes astronaut-derived data and terrestrial stress studies examining the effects of radiation and circadian disruptions on microbial composition, immune function, and blood-brain barrier integrity. In a society eagerly reaching for Mars, it cautions us of the medical demands of long-duration space missions while providing recommendations (e.g., microbiome monitoring, personalized probiotic and prebiotic supplements) to support astronaut mental health on these extended missions. However, it also highlights that these recommendations are promising but require further validation before routine adoption.

Background

Space may present the final frontier, but it’s taking an unprecedented toll on our astronauts’ well-being. Astronauts routinely report anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, and cognitive deficits during missions, from 84-day Skylab stays to long-duration International Space Station (ISS) flights. These medical difficulties have sometimes resulted in missions being terminated early (e.g., Soyuz T14 mission), resulting in substantial economic losses.

Consequently, a growing body of research aims to unravel the underlying risk factors associated with the unique stressors of space travel (e.g., cosmic radiation, disruptions to the light-dark cycle) and their impact on astronaut mental health outcomes. Unfortunately, while the impacts of space stressors on astronauts’ physical well-being have been extensively researched, the consequences of these stressors on astronauts’ mental health remain poorly understood.

Simultaneously, laboratory studies on Earth demonstrate a robust association between gut microbes and the brain, known as the “gut-brain axis.” Gut microbiota produce metabolites (e.g., short-chain fatty acids, neurotransmitters, and immune modulators) that significantly influence mood, immunity, stress resilience, and even cognition. A similar understanding tailored to life in space would help inform future neurological care for this rare breed of humans. Importantly, the review notes that while these associations are well established terrestrially, causality and precise mechanisms in space remain to be determined.

About the review

The present review aims to leverage this terrestrial-derived data to inform astronaut care, simultaneously highlighting gaps in the literature, the unique challenges of space, and their extrapolated impacts on astronaut health, as well as how we can address potential gut microbial perturbations to ensure optimal neurological outcomes.

The narrative review integrates diverse data streams from more than 150 publications (n = 152) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) datasets, comprising astronaut health records, terrestrial analog studies, animal models, and microbiome sequencing. It focuses on: 1. Crew microbiome data (gut and saliva samples), 2. Crew psychological and neurological assessments (objective measurements), 3. Controlled studies (impact assessments of certain stressors on specific health outcomes), and 4. Molecular assays (biochemical investigations).

Patterns observed in terrestrial studies were juxtaposed onto similar space scenarios, allowing for correlation-based stress, microbial community changes, and depression estimations. For example, they used evidence from how actors like reduced microbial diversity, loss of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), increased gut permeability, and microglial activation correlate with mood and cognitive outcomes, and then evaluated the magnitude of those outcomes when faced with cosmic radiation, reduced gravity, and disrupted circadian rhythms. The review repeatedly notes that most links between microbiome shifts and neuropsychological outcomes, especially in astronauts, are correlational and not yet causally established.

Key findings

The review highlights several crucial points for space agencies and medical professionals:

1. Limited evidence suggests that astronaut gut microbial diversity often reduces mid-flight, with Bifidobacterium and Faecalibacterium bacteria especially affected. This, in turn, results in reduced anti-inflammatory metabolites and SFCA secretions, which may potentially contribute to suboptimal mood and neurological outcomes.
2. Animal models suggest that exposure to incident cosmic radiation and prolonged light exposure independently cause dysbiosis, increased gut permeability, systemic cytokine release, and disruption of markers of blood-brain barrier integrity. Carefully monitoring these parameters is essential to counter any potential imbalances before they exacerbate.
3. Gut microbiome estimations have revealed that gut microbial imbalances are correlated with elevated anxiety, sleep disturbances, and cognitive decline in astronauts. Notably, gut microbial dysbiosis has been found to disrupt immune signaling and weaken gut-brain barriers, allowing inflammatory molecules to influence neural circuits and mood. The review also discusses how some microbial and immune changes observed in astronauts are transient, reversing post-flight, while others may persist for months after return, underscoring both short- and long-term health implications.
4. Finally, some studies have demonstrated the beneficial and dysbiosis-reversing effects of pre- and probiotic supplementation on terrestrial and space-bound humans, a cause for relief and additional metabolomic and epidemiological research. Nutrition may also play a significant role in astronauts’ quality of life (QoL), as fiber-rich diets and fermented foods have been seen to maintain gut integrity in terrestrial clinical trials. However, the review cautions that more research is needed to confirm the efficacy and optimal protocols for these interventions in space.

Conclusions

The present review establishes a strong associative link between space travel, gut microbial alterations, and neuropsychological outcomes. It postulates a model in which space-related stressors lead to dysbiosis, which then triggers immune activation and subsequent biochemical changes in the brain, ultimately resulting in suboptimal mental health outcomes. Nevertheless, the authors emphasise that mechanistic details and direct causality remain incompletely understood.

While underscoring the job-associated hazards of an astronaut’s life, this review calls for the formal integration of microbiome monitoring and nutritional interventions (probiotics, prebiotics, and diet) to ensure optimal QoL outcomes, especially against the contextual backdrop of our potential collective resilience on Mars.

Further, they recommend integrating both noninvasive (microbiome and psychological assessments) and invasive (biomarker and hormone analysis) monitoring to enable early detection and management of neuropsychological risks.

China’s Tianwen 2 asteroid sampling spacecraft has been on its interplanetary itinerary for more than 33 days, orbiting at a distance of over 12 million kilometers from Earth, and it is in good working condition, the China National Space Administration said on Tuesday.

The robotic probe is currently traveling on a transfer trajectory toward its destination, a near-Earth asteroid called 2016 HO3, the space administration said in a news release.

The CNSA also released two images, showing Earth and the moon, captured by the spacecraft’s narrow-field-of-view navigation sensor when it was about 590,000 km away from Earth.

The Tianwen 2 mission, which is China’s first attempt to bring pristine asteroid samples back to Earth, was launched on May 29, when a Long March 3B rocket carrying the robotic probe blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.

The probe’s primary objective is to reach 2016 HO3, a small asteroid that is 40 to 100 meters wide, in the summer of 2026. It will study the celestial body up close using a suite of 11 instruments including cameras, spectrometers and radars, before deploying special devices to collect surface substances.

The asteroid, which is also known as 469219 Kamo’oalewa, orbits the sun and, therefore, is a constant companion of Earth. It is too distant to be considered a true satellite of Earth, but is the best and most stable example to date of a quasi-satellite.

After the asteroid samples are collected, the Tianwen 2 probe will fly back to Earth’s orbit and send a capsule containing the precious materials to the ground.

The samples will be distributed among scientists, who will examine their physical properties, chemical and mineralogical content and isotopic composition, contributing to studies on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system.

Delivering the samples to Earth will not be the end of the mission. The Tianwen 2 spacecraft will then enter the second phase of its journey, flying toward a main-belt comet called 311P to conduct a remote-sensing survey and transmit the data back to Earth for scientific research, according to the CNSA.

The whole mission is expected to yield groundbreaking discoveries and expand the understanding of Earth and small celestial bodies inside the solar system, scientists said.

Scientists are questioning whether a ‘regime shift’ to a new state of diminished Antarctic sea-ice coverage is underway, due to recent record lows.

If so, it will have impacts across climate, ecological and societal systems, according to new research published in PNAS Nexus.

These impacts include ocean warming, increased iceberg calving, habitat loss and sea-level rise, and effects on fisheries, Antarctic tourism, and even the mental health of the global human population.

Led by Australian Antarctic Program Partnership oceanographer Dr Edward Doddridge, the international team assessed the impacts of extreme summer sea-ice lows, and the challenges to predicting and mitigating change.

“Antarctic sea ice provides climate and ecosystem services of regional and global significance,” Doddridge said. “There are far reaching negative impacts caused by sea-ice loss.

“However, we do not sufficiently understand the baseline system to be able to predict how it will respond to the dramatic changes we are already observing.

“To predict future changes, and to potentially mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on Antarctica, we urgently need to improve our knowledge through new observations and modelling studies.”

While sea-ice loss affects many things, the research team identified three key impacts:

• Reduced summer sea-ice cover exposes more of the ocean to sunlight. This leads to surface water warming that promotes further sea-ice loss. Ocean warming increases melting under glacial ice shelves, which could lead to increased iceberg calving. Warmer water also affects the flow of deep-water currents that help move ocean heat around the globe, influencing the planet’s climate.

• Sea-ice loss exposes the ice shelves that fringe the Antarctic continent to damaging ocean swells and storms. These can weaken the ice shelves, leading to iceberg calving. As ice shelves slow the flow of ice from the interior of the Antarctic continent to the coast, iceberg calving allows this interior ice flow to speed up, contributing to sea-level rise.

• Sea ice provides breeding habitat for penguin and seal species, and a refuge for many marine species from predators. It is also an important nursery habitat and source of food (sea-ice algae) for Antarctic krill – an important prey species for many Southern Ocean inhabitants. Adverse sea-ice conditions that persist over several seasons could see population declines in these sea-ice dependent species.

The research team also identified socio-economic and wellbeing impacts, affecting fisheries, tourism, scientific research, ice-navigation, coastal operations, and the mental health (climate anxiety) of the global population.

For example, shorter sea-ice seasons will reduce the window for over-ice resupplies of Antarctic stations. There could also be increased shipping pressures on the continent, including from alien species incursions, fuel spills and an increase in the number and movement of tourist vessels to and from new locations.

Research co-author and sea-ice system expert, Dr Petra Heil, from the Australian Antarctic Division, said the paper highlighted the need for ongoing, year-round, field-based and satellite measurements of circumpolar sea-ice variables (especially thickness), and sub-surface ocean variables.

This would allow integrated analyses of the Southern Ocean processes contributing to the recent sea-ice deficits.

“As shown in climate simulations, continued greenhouse gas emissions, even at reduced rate, will further accelerate persistent deficits of sea ice, and with it a lack of the critical climate and ecosystem functions it provides,” Heil said.

“To conserve and preserve the physical environment and ecosystems of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean we must prioritize an immediate and sustained transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

“Ultimately our decision for immediate and deep action will provide the maximum future proofing we can have in terms of lifestyle and economic values.”

What new methods can be used to help predict glacier melt patterns as climate change continues to ravage the planet? This is what a recent study published in GIScience & Remote Sensing hopes to address as a pair of researchers from The Ohio State University investigated changing glacier heights that could provide insights into future melting patterns. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, and the public better understand the threat of glacier melting and the steps that can be taken to predict and mitigate them.

For the study, the researchers used a combination of satellite imagery and 3D elevation models to analyze glacier melting patterns for the La Perouse Glacier in North America, the Viedma Glacier in South America and the Skamri Glacier located in Central Asia between 2019 and 2023. The goal of the study was to ascertain differences between seasonal melting and melting caused by climate change. In the end, the researchers discovered that while the Viedma Glacier (Argentina) and the La Perouse Glacier (Alaska) exhibited regular intervals of melting, the Skamri Glacier (Pakistan) exhibited glacier ice increases.

“This is something that we’ve been thinking about for a long time, because existing glacier studies have such sparse seasonal observations since it’s difficult to get data out of remote areas,” said Dr. Rongjun Qin, who is an associate professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University and a co-author on the study. “What we wanted to do is to use medium-to-high resolution data to broaden those capabilities and improve the accuracy of the 3D models generated from that data.”

Going forward, the researchers note that improvements in their methodology, specifically modeling, will enable more accurate predictions and disaster preparedness.

What new methods for predicting glacier melting will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sources: GIScience & Remote Sensing, EurekAlert!

Ancient Romans were known for creating delicious sauces, including garum—a famous fish-based condiment. Scientists studying ancient DNA from a Roman-era salting plant in Spain have found that European sardines were the key ingredient.

Fish was an important part of the ancient Roman diet, and Romans processed their catch for long-term preservation in coastal fish-salting plants called cetariae. There, they crushed and fermented small fish into pastes and sauces such as the iconic umami-flavored garum. Today, fermented fish-based sauces remain popular, whether in the form of classic Worcestershire sauce or the many fish sauces produced in Southeast Asia.

Analyzing the fish used in Roman condiments could provide insight into the diets and culture of ancient people as well as information on fish populations of the time, but the intense processing that took place at the salting plants, among other things, makes it almost impossible to visually identify species from their remains.

To overcome this limitation, an international team of researchers tested a different approach: DNA analysis. Despite the fact that grinding and fermentation accelerate genetic degradation, they were able to sequence DNA from fish remains found in a fish-salting vat at a cetaria in northwest Spain. This achievement sheds light on Roman-era sardines and opens the door for future research on archaeological fish remains.

“The bottoms of fish-salting vats offer a myriad of remains, yet one of the biggest challenges to studying pelagic fish from these contexts is the small size of the bone material,” the researchers wrote in a study published today in Antiquity. “To our knowledge, genomic studies have yet to take advantage of the vast potential of this data source for elucidating past fish consumption and the population dynamics of commercially relevant fish species.”

To test the validity of genetic analysis within this context, the team successfully extracted and sequenced DNA from the small bone remains of previously identified European sardines discovered at an ancient Roman fish-salting plant in the Spanish archaeological site of Adro Vello. Co-author Paula Campos—a researcher at the University of Porto specializing in ancient DNA—and her colleagues then compared the ancient DNA sequences with genetic data from contemporary sardines. They concluded that ancient sardines were genetically similar to their modern-day counterparts in the same region. This is notable, given that the species is known for its dispersal capabilities.

“Here, the authors demonstrate that, despite being crushed and exposed to acidic conditions, usable DNA can be recovered from ichthyological [fish] residues at the bottom of fish-salting vats,” the researchers explained. “Analysis of these data has the potential to open a new research avenue into the subsistence economies, cultures, and diets of past human populations and provide information on fish populations that cannot be obtained from fishery catch data or modern specimens alone.”

Ultimately, the study highlights a successful way of accessing an overlooked archaeological resource. It also confirms that in ancient Rome, fish weren’t friends—they were very much food.

Impact craters exist on every continent on Earth. While many have eroded away or been buried by geologic activity, some remain visible from the ground and from above. This week, we revisit stories featuring some of our most captivating satellite images of impact sites around the planet. The images and text on this page were originally published on September 1, 2018.

About two billion years ago, an asteroid measuring at least 10 kilometers across hurtled toward Earth. The impact occurred southwest of what is now Johannesburg, South Africa, and temporarily made a 40-kilometer-deep and 100-kilometer-wide dent in the surface. Almost immediately after impact, the crater widened and shallowed as the rock below started to rebound and the walls collapsed. The world’s oldest and largest known impact structure was formed.

Scientists estimate that when the rebound and collapse ceased, Vredefort Crater measured somewhere between 180 and 300 kilometers wide. But more than 2 billion years of erosion has made the exact size hard to pin down.

“If you consider that the original impact crater was a shallow bowl like you would serve food in, and you were able to slice horizontally through the bowl progressively, you would see that the bowl’s diameter will decrease with each slice you take off,” said Roger Gibson of University of the Witwatersrand and an expert on impact processes. “For this reason, we are unable to categorically fix where the edge now lies.”

According to Gibson, the uplift at the center of the impact was so strong that a 25-kilometer section of Earth’s crust was turned on end. The various layers of upturned rock eroded at different rates and produced the concentric pattern still visible today. Vredefort Dome, which measures about 90 kilometers across, was observed on June 27, 2018, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

Notice that only part of the ring is visible. That’s because areas to the south have been paved over by rock formations that are less than 300 million years old. The young rock formations have begotten fertile soils that are intensely cultivated.

The darker ring in the center of this image, known as the Vredefort Mountainland, has shallow soils with steep terrain not suitable for farming, so the area remains naturally forested. Along the ridges in the Mountainland you can see white lines: these are the hardest layers of rock, such as quartzite, which resist erosion. The outer part of Mountainland has exposed rocks that are roughly 2.8 billion years old; this is the Central Rand Group, the source of more than one-third of all gold mined on Earth.

Visitors to the impact site today can witness geologic time by traversing just 50 kilometers from Potchefstroom toward Vredefort. The journey would take you from shallow crustal sedimentary rocks deposited between 2.5 and 2.1 billion years ago, ending with 3.1- to 3.5-billion-year-old granites and remnants of ocean crust that were once about 25 kilometers below Earth’s surface.

“Such exposed crustal sections are incredibly rare on Earth,” Gibson said. “The added bonus here is that the rocks preserve an almost continuous record spanning almost one-third of Earth’s history.”

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison drives innovation, saves lives, creates jobs, supports small businesses, and fuels the industries that keep America competitive and secure. It makes the U.S.-and Wisconsin-stronger. Federal funding for research is a high-return investment that’s worth fighting for. Learn more about the impact of UW-Madison’s federally funded research and how you can help.

Lingjun Li, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy and Department of Chemistry, has spent decades developing powerful new ways to measure and map the molecular machinery of life.

Recently, Li and her collaborators at UW-Madison and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute introduced a new imaging technology that has the power to reveal biomolecular detail in tissues like cancer tumors in their native environments and at unprecedented resolution. That technology, recently reported in Nature Methods, has been described as a potential game-changer for biomedical researchers.

Li’s track record for advancing mass spectrometry and other techniques earned her a spot on The Analytical Scientist’s 2024 Power List, and she recently received a Kellett Mid-Career Award from the UW-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. The award honors mid-career tenured faculty who have made key research contributions in their field.

Here, Li reflects on her lab’s interdisciplinary research, the importance of spatial molecular imaging, and how tools like AI and mass spectrometry are shaping the future of biomedical science.

Can you describe your research background and what brought you to UW-Madison?

I’m a bioanalytical chemist by training – my background is in analytical and biomolecular chemistry. I did a unique postdoc, spending a year at Pacific Northwest National Lab working on high-end mass spectrometry-based proteomics, and another year at Brandeis University in a neurobiology lab using crabs and lobsters as model organisms. I joined UW-Madison in December 2002 to combine mass spectrometry technology development with fundamental neuroscience research, always with the goal of improving human health.

How has your lab’s focus evolved since then?

Initially, we aimed to discover nervous system biomolecules called neuropeptides and understand their function. Over time, we’ve expanded to studying a wide variety of biomolecules – proteins, peptides, lipids, metabolites, glycans – and their spatial distributions in tissues. Mass spectrometry allows us to look at all of these molecules with high specificity. A major focus now is understanding how these molecules contribute to diseases like Alzheimer’s, work that we’re doing in collaboration with the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

What makes mass spectrometry a powerful tool for your work?

Mass spectrometry measures the mass of molecules and can provide structural information about them. For proteins, we can determine amino acid sequences and their modifications. For lipids and metabolites, we can distinguish structural isomers – molecules with the same mass but different chemical bonds. That structural detail can be crucial, for example, in distinguishing cancer cells from healthy cells.

What’s the significance of spatial context in molecular imaging?

Cells, even adjacent neurons, can use different chemical messengers. Without spatial information, you lose context about how molecules function in specific areas. In cancer, for instance, being able to see tumor heterogeneity at a fine level could influence treatment strategies. That’s why we’re focused on imaging techniques that retain spatial resolution.

Your lab recently helped develop a new mass spectrometry imaging technique that’s been described as a game-changer. What’s new about it?

We integrated tissue expansion microscopy with mass spectrometry imaging. Traditional imaging mass spectrometry lacks spatial resolution and loses the important context of how molecules behave in their natural environment within tissue. By physically expanding the tissue under mild conditions, we preserve its molecular composition and native structure while achieving higher resolution without needing fancy or expensive new hardware. That makes this approach, led by Hua Zhang in my lab, both powerful and accessible.

Why is making this new technique accessible important to you?

We want this to be open and available to biomedical researchers everywhere. Anyone with a commercial mass spectrometer can use the technique, and tissue expansion itself follows a straightforward protocol. What’s exciting is that you can achieve higher resolution without expensive new equipment or long acquisition times. That opens up mass spectrometry imaging to more biologists – helping them investigate molecular detail down to the single-cell level.

How do you see analytical science contributing to broader research and societal needs?

Analytical science is central to so many disciplines. It’s not just about supporting other research – it’s a science of measurement. Whether it’s environmental pollutants like PFAS or biomarkers in human disease, we need tools that are sensitive and precise. Mass spectrometry-based approaches are increasingly seen as foundational tools in biological discovery. Analytical science enables system-level investigations that not only uncover new biological mechanisms but also inspire the development of innovative hypotheses and transformative technologies.

How is your lab thinking about AI and machine learning in this space?

We’re generating huge volumes of data. Machine learning can help us translate these data into biological and clinical insights. We already use clustering and algorithmic tools for things like neuropeptide identification and single-cell analysis. Collaborating with statisticians and developing new software is key to managing this complexity. AI has great potential for biomarker discovery and predictive modeling in precision medicine.

What makes your lab environment unique?

We’re very interdisciplinary. My group includes students and postdocs from analytical chemistry, pharmaceutical sciences and biophysics. That diversity helps us tackle big, meaningful problems. And analytical science is very practical – it not only advances health-related research but also prepares our trainees for real-world careers in academia, industry and public health.

What motivates your continued focus on technology development?

Our goal is always to develop tools that can improve human health. We don’t build technology for its own sake – it’s always about enabling discovery. Whether it’s understanding disease mechanisms, identifying early biomarkers, or informing treatment strategies, analytical science has the potential to make a real difference.

The research that led to the new technology recently described in Nature Methods was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01AG078794, R01DK071801, R01AG052324, P01CA250972 and DP1DK113644) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2018-67001-28266).