GoKawiil
Tech News
Researchers studying the nuclear pore complex, the structure that controls molecular traffic in and out of a cell's nucleus, found that the disordered proteins forming its selective barrier move and behave like a liquid. This fluid-like motion appears to underlie how the pore filters which molecules can pass through it. The finding was published in Nature.
Nature's daily briefing describes how hobbyist codebreakers are using AI tools, including OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, to solve historical encrypted messages, such as WWII-era German military ciphers. One user reportedly used the model to find a key to an unsolved 1809 cipher in about six hours. Cryptography experts say the surge of interest is welcome but has also led to a flood of requests to verify AI-generated solutions, some of which turn out to be wrong.
Google's DeepMind published research describing a method to embed watermarks directly into AI-designed protein sequences without disrupting their biological function. The system, adapted from Google's SynthID technology used for digital media, aims to let trusted researchers' AI-generated proteins be verified while flagging unidentified sequences for further scrutiny.
Researchers analyzed proteins from two fossilized teeth—a fourth premolar and a second molar—recovered from Bianfu Cave in southwestern China's Yunnan Province, dated to roughly 140,000 years ago. The proteomic evidence confirms these remains belong to Denisovans, adding to the small but growing collection of physical evidence for this elusive archaic human population. The cave, one of the oldest Palaeolithic sites in western Yunnan, also yielded thousands of stone tools and animal fossils alongside four hominin teeth.
A week after its US approval for advanced pancreatic cancer, the drug daraxonrasib has shown early promise against non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease. In a small trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, tumors shrank in over 30% of patients whose cancers carried mutations in RAS family proteins and who had already failed other treatments. A larger randomized trial comparing daraxonrasib to standard chemotherapy is now underway.