ACA Awards

Every time we think we’re close to fully understanding the human body, something fresh and unexpected shows up. Recently, a team of researchers stumbled upon strange entities, or obelisks, living inside of human bodies that had escaped notice until now. Their surprising presence challenges assumptions and raises pressing questions about what else might be lurking unseen inside us. These new visitors appear smaller than the viruses most people learn about in basic biology classes. Rather than behaving like familiar microbes, they introduce themselves as something different. Their discovery came about when researchers began analyzing massive genetic libraries, searching for patterns that did not match any known organisms. Obelisks inside humans These obelisks do not resemble typical life forms, and their name comes from their distinctive shape. “It’s insane,” says Mark Peifer, a cell and developmental biologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). “The more we look,...

A new study published in Communications Psychology suggests that artificial intelligence systems can be more effective than humans at establishing emotional closeness during deep conversations, provided the human participant believes the AI is a real person. The findings indicate that while individuals can form social bonds with AI, knowing the partner is a machine reduces the feeling of connection. The rapid development of large language models has fundamentally altered the landscape of human-computer interaction. Previous observations have indicated that these programs can generate content that appears empathetic and similar to human speech. Despite these advancements, it remained unclear whether humans could form relationships with AI that are as strong as those formed with other people. This is particularly relevant during the initial stages of getting to know a stranger. Scientists aimed to fill this gap by investigating how relationship building differs between human partners and...

Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a runaway asteroid passing through our Solar System from somewhere far beyond. It was moving at around 68 kilometres per second, just over double Earth’s speed around the Sun. Imagine if it had been something much bigger and faster: a black hole travelling at more like 3,000km per second. We wouldn’t see it coming until its intense gravitational forces started knocking around the orbits of the outer planets. This may sound a bit ridiculous – but in the past year several lines of evidence have come together to show such a visitor is not impossible. Astronomers have seen clear signs of runaway supermassive black holes tearing through other galaxies, and have uncovered evidence that smaller, undetectable runaways are probably out there too. Runaway black holes: the theory The story begins in the 1960s, when New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution of Einstein’s general relativity equations that described spinning black holes. This led ...

  Computational analysis suggests that the anomeric effect arises from a combination of factors and is not limited to just hyperconjugation. Researchers say that this ‘curiosity-driven’ work reminds chemists that attributing the effect to one dominant cause oversimplifies a ‘fundamentally complex phenomenon’. The anomeric effect helps chemists rationalise why substituents next to a heteroatom in a ring preferentially adopt an axial configuration, rather than the less sterically hindered equatorial orientation. Hyperconjugation of a heteroatom’s lone pair of electrons into the anti-bonding orbital of an adjacent substituent is a common explanation for this effect. However, previous studies suggest that other factors such as stereoelectronics and solvent interactions also play a part.1 Researchers at Florida State University in the US have now tried to quantify the influence of such factors.2 To do this, the team computationally analysed 49 monosubstituted tetrahydropyrans – rings wi...

Thirty-eight researchers from around the world are urging caution over mirror life – a hypothetical form of biology built from mirror-image molecules that could behave unpredictably in natural systems. In response, a major biomedical research institute in Paris is convening an international summit to examine the risks and consider early boundaries before the science moves closer to reality. Why the summit matters In 1847, while working at the Pasteur Institute, Louis Pasteur described chirality – molecules existing in two mirror forms. That same institute has spent generations tracking microbes and immunity, giving credibility when it flags new dangers. In 2025, a public symposium on mirror life streamed from Paris. Organized with the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund, it opened the discussion to scientists, policymakers, and the public. A risk worth naming In 2024, authors warned that mirror bacteria – bacteria made from reversed biomolecules – should not be created, even if such work re...

  Cells experience many different types of stress, such as starvation or stress caused by too much salt or too high a temperature. Insulin signals respond to such stress signals by sending the protein DAF-16 into the cell nucleus where it activates the stress-specific genes to protect the worm from stress. AMOLF researchers have discovered a mysterious interplay of insulin signals in the worm C. elegans. The insulin-driven protein DAF-16 does not only move in and out of the cell nucleus in a complex rhythm, it does so at exactly the same moment in all cells of the body. Because of the many similarities between C. elegans and humans, the research may contribute to a better understanding of diseases such as diabetes, cancer and of aging. Morse code But how does DAF-16 know for which type of stress it should activate the genes? By coincidence, the researchers from Jeroen van Zon's Quantitative Developmental Biology group found the answer to this question. Guest researcher Maria Olmedo...