BPoD

Faulty Assassins

Natural killer (NK) cells, like the one shown, live up to their name. During a viral infection, these specialised immune cells identify compromised host cells and deploy toxic granules (magenta) to obliterate them. In a rare but sometimes fatal autoinflammatory disorder called mevalonate kinase deficiency (MKD), however, NK cells fail to properly deliver the poison. As the viral infection rages on, these faulty NK cells call for back up – secreting the cytokine IFN-gamma to recruit other immune cells – which sends inflammation into overdrive. Even without infections, patients with MKD suffer regular inflammatory flare ups and traditional anti-inflammatories aren’t always effective. Recently, in light of the NK cell findings, an IFN-gamma inhibitor called baricitinib (used to treat other autoimmune disorders) was given to a severely ill infant with MKD. While the child ultimately succumbed to the illness, the drug did significantly reduce their inflammation, suggesting it might help other MKD patients.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image by James Cremasco, Garvan Institute, re work by Marcia A. Munoz, Iona S. Schuster & James Cremasco, and colleagues

Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Darlinghurst, NSW, Australia

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Research published in Immunity, May 2026

Remains in Light

3D deep tissue imaging reveals the remaining insulin-producing β cells in the whole pancreas of a deceased individual with the autoimmune disease late-onset type I diabetes

Read the published research article here

Still from a video from work by Joakim Lehrstrand and Max Hahn, and colleagues

Department of Medical and Translational Biology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, May 2026

Painting from Life

The cell nucleus is like a bustling capital city at night – thriving with lively traffic in complete darkness were it not for artificial light. Important decisions made inside can affect the life of the entire cell. Here researchers create maps of the organisation of the nucleus in human cells. They use an updated version of a technique called DNA-PAINT to label different nuclear molecules with tiny strands of DNA carrying different colours, blinking like street lights (although a million times smaller) when zapped with lasers from above. The yellow structures here are the chromatin protecting the genetic information, usually open and spread out so genes can be 'switched on' or transcribed to guide the cell. Here though, DNA-PAINT pictures the scene after transcription is blocked, watching as regions of the chromatin condense into spherical 'speckles'. Such details may help to explore nuclear life in health and disease.

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Abhinav Banerjee, and Micky Anand, and colleagues

Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Malleswaram, Bangalore, India

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, April 2026

Red Then Dead

B cells - major members of the immune system – can become cancerous (B-cell leukaemias or lymphomas) or malfunction (such as in autoimmune diseases like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis) and treatments can include targeting them for destruction by binding them with an antibody marker specific to them. Often not efficient, this B-cell removal approach has been improved by presenting the binding antibody on red blood cells (in green here) that mark the offending cells (fluorescing red here) with a loud and clear 'eat me' tag

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Jiaqi Liu, Fengju Wang and Lian Li

Key Laboratory of Drug-Targeting and Drug Delivery System of the Education Ministry, West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Sciences Advances, May 2026

Splitting Hairs

While auditory hair cells in our ears sway around in sound, wafting like arms in soft jazz, or violently back and forth like a headbanger’s rock horns, vestibular hair cells help us to find balance. Each movement helps to send information about speed, acceleration and gravity to the brain. Examining bundles of mice vestibular hair cells (highlighted here in green under a high-powered microscope), researchers find one cell in each bunch, the kinocilium (pink), behaves differently. Kinocillia contain some genes similar to motile hair cells – which generate their own force. Although the presence of force-generating cells among cells sensitive to movement is surprising – kinocilia with similar genes are found in many species, including humans. Researchers wonder if their presence helps to 'prime' our ears, keeping us alert and balanced in the outside world.

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Zhanhong Xu and Amirrasoul Tavakoli, and colleagues

Department of Biomedical Sciences, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, April 2026

Imaging in Depth

3D lab-grown assembled cell models like organoids and tumoroids are becoming ever more complex to better mimic real life, and ever more popular as a go-to system for convenience to scrutinise how cells interact and tissues develop. Here, a user-friendly package in Python called Tapenade has been developed to quantify spatial patterns of gene activity [gene expression] and record the shapes of cell nuclei in such 3D cell assemblies, revealing how local cell deformations and gene co-expression relate to tissue-scale organisation.

Read the published research article here

Video from work by Alice Gros, Jules Vanaret and Valentin Dunsing-Eichenauer, and colleagues

Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS IBDM (UMR 7288), Turing Centre for Living Systems, France

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, May 2026

Anti-cancer Neurons

Melanomas originate in the pigment-producing cells of the skin and are the deadliest type of skin cancer. As they grow, they often incorporate peripheral nerve cells (like the ones coloured green in this melanoma pictured) and the presence of neurons has been linked to the tumour’s metastatic potential – their ability to spread around the body. However, new research indicates this depends on the type of neuron. While pain neurons seem to have pro-cancer effects, sympathetic neurons, which control things like blood flow to the skin, have an anti-tumour effect. Indeed, local depletion of pain neurons inhibited melanoma growth in model mice, but depletion of sympathetic neurons accelerated it. This effect was found to be mediated by the hormone noradrenaline, released from the nerves, which directed local immune cells to keep the tumours in check. Harnessing this sympathetic neuron-driven process could thus lead to novel anti-tumour treatments.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image from work by Tingting Liu and colleagues

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA

Image originally published with no restrictions – hence published here with as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Research published in Neuron, May 2026

Setting Up Home

Focussing on cells in the lining (epithelial cells) of mouse intestine just as they begin to become cancerous has revealed how they're equipped to continue on their fateful path. Stress signals displayed by these early tumour cells triggers the cell bed – fibroblasts – on which they rest to sculpt a nutritious niche perfect for the cancer to thrive, and which is even sufficient to make normal epithelial cells become tumours

Read the published research article here

Image made using Leica Microsystems microscopy

Image from work by G. Skrupskelyte and J. E. Rojo Arias, and colleagues

Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Image contributed by the authors and originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature, March 2026

True Colours

Sea slugs or nudibranchs are often called the butterflies of the sea. Like butterflies, their striking colours result from are a combination of pigment-based chemicals, and structural colour – where light is separated into colours as it bends around tiny contours on their bodies. Stacks of tiny refractive crystals, a bit like pixels on a screen, allow this Chromodoris annae nudibranch to produce a bright silvery blue colour. But the vibrant hues are a warning – or aposematism – to the sea slug’s deadly trick. Nudibranchs are chemical thieves – wonderfully named 'kleptochemists' – reusing and modifying chemicals ripped from their prey for their own defences. In other research, human chemists find that some of these bioactive chemicals are toxic to cancer cells, suggesting nudibranchs could be living factories for future life-saving drugs.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Samuel Humphrey and colleagues; Cancer drug research by Servillera & Peña et al, in Marine Drugs, Aug 2025

Department of Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

Video contributed by the authors and originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), March 2026

Oscillating Insight

This study investigates what underlies the spontaneous, oscillating firing of neurons in the retina of a mouse model of the genetic sight-impairing disorder retinitis pigmentosa. By analysing genetically different mouse models of congenital night blindness, the team finds the mechanism for these sight-disrupting oscillations is shared with those in other different outer retinal diseases

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Sho Horie and colleagues

Graduate School of Pharmacy, Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu; Center for Systems Vision Science, Research Organization of Science and Technology, Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Japan

Image contributed by the authors and originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Journal of General Physiology, October 2025

Head Over Heart

The rhythmic beat of our heart is fine-tuned by an orchestra of electrical and chemical signals from surrounding nerve cells. But how these neural signals influence heart development and maintenance remains unclear. The human heart is complex (both biologically and emotionally!), so researchers have turned to a more simple comparator: the sea squirt, Ciona robusta. The C. robusta heart (pictured, with muscle architecture in pink) grows throughout adulthood and has a line of progenitor cells that act as a reserve for further growth. A team tracked these cells over time and found that neural inputs control not just heartbeat, but how many heart muscle cells are produced during development. Understanding the subtle signals that guide heart formation could shed light on the nervous system’s wider role in healthy organ growth and repair.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Hannah N. Gruner and C. J. Pickett, and colleagues

Department of Biology, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, USA

Image contributed by the authors and originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, April 2026

Muscles in Culture

A analysis of why muscle fibres being cultured for study in the lab deteriorate finds it's due to changes induced in the cell's inner scaffold or cytoskeleton and that keeping the cells in a fibrin-based hydrogel improves their viability

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Leander A. Vonk and Osman Esen, and colleagues

Department of Physiology, Amsterdam University Medical Center, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Image contributed by the authors and originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Journal of General Physiology, November 2025

Olfactory Atlas

These pretty swirls look almost botanical, but this is not a flower, it’s the organ used to smell one. The image is a cross section of the interior of a nose – specifically a mouse nose – with the neurons highlighted in green. By analysing the gene expression [which genes are 'on'] and distribution of several million of these nasal sensory cells from hundreds of mice, scientists have created a map of the nose. Each olfactory neuron displays a specific type of receptor that binds a specific odour molecule, and these neurons, it turns out, are not randomly distributed. Instead, they form horizontal stripes of receptor types from the top of the nose to the bottom. Furthermore, this nose map matches that of the olfactory bulb – a structure in the brain that processes odour information. Researchers are now investigating whether human noses are mapped out similarly – information that may guide research into cures for anosmia.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image from work by David H. Brann and colleagues

Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Image originally published with no restrictions – hence published here with as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Research published in Cell, April 2026

Prefabricated Home

Tumoroids – cancer cells grown in the lab as 3D assemblies – allow, for example, individuals' cancers to be studied and tested for response to treatments. However, such systems used in labs across the world vary in how they're cultivated (usually on a mouse cancer-derived matrix) and in their ease of scrutiny. Here, researchers have developed a standardised, high-throughput approach, creating tumoroids initiated in microengineered niches fabricated from polyethylene glycol-acrylate polymers that respond to mechanical forces of tumour growth

Read the published research article here

Video from work by Emna Ouni and colleagues

Tumor Cell Dynamics Unit, Inserm U1279 Gustave Roussy Institute, Université Paris-Saclay, Villejuif, France

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Published in Cell Biomaterials, September 2025

The Leading Edge

When there’s resistance to progress, sometimes you have to push a little harder. New research explores how cells drive their edges forward as they migrate, extending protrusions called lamellipodia. These are powered by branching networks of actin fibres, built by a protein machine called the Arp2/3 complex. Researchers watched cells under different physical conditions to ask what makes this actin network denser at the leading edge. They saw cells form strong, dense networks when they could grip a structured surface. Additionally, a similar effect appeared when the surrounding liquid was made more viscous, suggesting that mechanical resistance itself can boost the actin machinery that helps cells move (pictured, cells at 0 and 60 minutes in normal liquid, top, and extra-viscous liquid, bottom, with Arp2/3 in pink and cell outlines tracked over time, right). This advances our understanding of cell movement, fundamental to wound repair, immunity, and cancer.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Mitchell T. Butler and colleagues

UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in bioRxiv, March 2026 (not peer reviewed)

Organ-ising Cells

Transplanting cells rather than whole organs to restore vital function to patients suffering from organ failure is a promising less invasive and more widely available intervention. Here, to improve success of cell injection, researchers have combined human liver cells with hydrogel microspheres that are injected guided by ultrasound into a living mouse's liver where they assemble, are fed by new blood vessels and are functionally active

Read the published research article here

Video from work by Vardhman Kumar and colleagues

David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Cell Biomaterials, March 2026

Slow Start

There are lots of things newborn babies can’t quite do yet. One of those is to fight off certain types of infections that most adults brush aside with ease. Researchers examined how the neonatal mouse immune system handles cytomegalovirus infection – a virus that can cause serious harm in newborns. They tracked T cell numbers (immune cells, white) in the spleen (pictured at intervals from 0, left, to 28, right, days post birth),and found not only that newborns start life with very few of these cells, but also that the cells fail to mature into effective virus-killing fighters. Adding extra adult T cells didn’t help, unless those cells had already been trained by prior infection, showing that the newborn environment cannot properly prepare them for battle. New therapies could build on this, boosting the signals that help ready T cells for action, or providing a ready-primed supply to give newborns a helping hand.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Luís Fonseca Brito and colleagues

Institute of Immunology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, April 2026