To better understand the DNA sequences that control this process, researchers in the laboratory of University of California San Diego Professor James T. Kadonaga focused on an important DNA element known as the “initiator.” The initiator marks the location where the information encoded in a gene begins to be converted, or expressed, into a functional product.

AI Decodes the Initiator Sequence

In the new study, led by graduate student researcher Torrey Rhyne-Carrigg, the team used high-throughput DNA sequencing to measure gene expression activity across approximately 500,000 different versions of the initiator.

The researchers then used those results to train a machine learning system, a form of artificial intelligence, to identify the characteristic DNA pattern associated with the initiator. Once the model had decoded that signature, the team searched human genes for the sequence and found that roughly 60% contain the initiator.

“These AI models were found to provide, for the first time, strong predictions of the presence or absence of the initiator in human genes, and were thus able to decode the DNA base sequence pattern of the initiator,” said Kadonaga, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Molecular Biology, School of Biological Sciences.

Predicting the Effects of DNA Mutations

The findings could help researchers anticipate how mutations affecting the initiator may alter gene activity and contribute to a range of disorders. The study’s data and AI models may also support the design of synthetic promoters, sequences that can switch genes on or off, with functions tailored for specific purposes.

More broadly, the research shows how laboratory experiments and artificial intelligence can be combined to uncover information encoded in human DNA.

“More globally, this work is a step forward in the combined use of laboratory experiments and AI to decipher the information that is embedded in the sequence of the DNA bases in humans,” said Kadonaga. “Ultimately, within the six billion bases of DNA in each of our cells, there is a gene expression code that specifies when, where and to what extent each of our genes should be turned on or off. If we had an AI model for the entire gene expression code, we would be able to predict the activity of each of the different variants of genes in different people. The new AI model for the initiator is a small but important part of this gene expression code, and I am optimistic that we will expand our AI models of the human gene expression code in the not-too-distant future.”

But these medications can also cause problems. Some patients experience nausea and other gastrointestinal side effects. Because GLP-1 drugs reduce appetite and food intake, they may also contribute to nutritional deficiencies and loss of muscle, potentially increasing the risk of frailty and other long-term health issues.

Researchers at UC Berkeley are now investigating a very different strategy for treating obesity and diabetes. Instead of reducing the amount of energy a person consumes, their approach is designed to increase the amount of energy the body uses by raising metabolic activity.

A Different Way to Target Weight Loss

In a study published August 21 in Science Advances, the team reports that a molecular compound called 5-tetradecyloxy-2-furoic acid (TOFA) can interfere with the production of lipids such as cholesterol and triglycerides. At the same time, it activates genes that encourage cells to use fat for fuel and produce more energy.

In experiments with mice, TOFA improved insulin sensitivity and glucose control, reduced triglyceride levels, and improved signs of fatty liver disease. Obese mice treated with the compound lost fat while showing no significant reduction in lean muscle mass.

“Body weight responds to two levers: taking in fewer calories, or spending more energy,” said Anders Näär, a professor of metabolic biology and nutrition at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study. “GLP-1s work almost entirely on the first, so we went after the second.”

Reviving a Compound First Discovered Decades Ago

TOFA was initially discovered in the 1970s and belongs to a group of compounds known as ACC inhibitors. These compounds reduce the body’s production of lipids.

Several ACC inhibitors have advanced into mid-stage clinical trials, but none has been approved to treat metabolic disease. One important obstacle is that many of these compounds can increase triglyceride levels, which may raise cardiovascular risk.

The UC Berkeley team found that TOFA behaves differently. In addition to acting as an ACC inhibitor, it activates PPARα and PPARδ, cellular receptors that switch on genes involved in taking up fat and burning it for energy.

In mice, this effect increased energy use by as much as 18% without causing the animals to become more physically active or increasing their body temperature. The researchers also found that TOFA did not produce the rise in triglycerides seen with some other ACC inhibitors, possibly because of its combined effects on lipid production and energy metabolism.

“TOFA appears to engage a coordinated metabolic response,” said study first author Justin Y. Lee, a postdoctoral student at UCSF who conducted the research as a Ph.D. student at Berkeley. “It is not simply blocking lipid synthesis. It is also activating energy expenditure pathways that may help the body handle excess lipid and glucose more effectively.”

One Compound Outperformed a Two-Drug Approach

The researchers also tested whether they could reproduce TOFA’s effects with two separate compounds. They gave mice one compound designed to suppress lipid production and another intended to increase energy expenditure.

That combination did not improve overall metabolic health as effectively as TOFA by itself, suggesting that TOFA’s particular combination of actions may be important to its effects.

The team then examined whether TOFA could be paired with existing GLP-1 medications. These included semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic or Wegovy, and tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound.

In mice, combining TOFA with these GLP-1 drugs produced larger improvements in body weight, glucose control, insulin levels, and triglycerides than either treatment produced on its own.

“In our combination experiments, TOFA worked additively or synergistically with the GLP-1 appetite-suppressing drugs, so we view it as complementary rather than as a replacement,” Näär said.

Human Testing Is Still Needed

Despite the promising results, the researchers emphasize that TOFA has so far been studied only in animals. Its safety and effectiveness in humans remain unknown and will need to be evaluated in future studies.

With support from Berkeley’s life sciences entrepreneurship ecosystem, including Nucleate and Berkeley SkyDeck, the researchers have created a company called ReRx Therapeutics to help move the research toward potential use in patients.

The research was funded through discretionary funds from UC Berkeley, with additional assistance from the UCSF Liver Center and the University of Michigan Animal Phenotyping Core.

Additional authors include Chi Zhu, Melissa A. Boldridge, Rachelle L. Stark, Lei Xu, Federico Gonzalez, Xin Tang, Kaitlyn T. Dang and Kook Son of Berkeley; Gracia Bonilla, Kashish Chetal and Ruslan I. Sadreyev of Massachusetts General Hospital; Kosuke Watari and Michael Karin of the University of California, San Diego; Christina Papa and Bilal N. Sheikh of the Helmholtz Center Munich; Prabha Ibrahim of ReRx Therapeutics.

KAIST (President Choongsik Bae) announced on August 23 that a joint team led by Professor Youngsuk Nam from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Professor Sung Gap Im from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering created the technology by carefully controlling the thickness and structure of an ultrathin polymer coating. The coating encourages more droplets to appear as water vapor condenses while also making it easier for those droplets to leave the surface.

Why Condensation Matters for Heat Transfer

Condensation occurs when water vapor changes into liquid water. A familiar example is the layer of droplets that appears on the outside of a cold drink. In industry, condensation plays an important role in converting steam back into water at power plants, producing fresh water from seawater, and carrying heat away from electronic equipment.

For these systems to work efficiently, condensed water must be removed from the surface quickly. On ordinary metal surfaces, small droplets often merge into a continuous film of water. That film acts as an additional barrier to heat flow, reducing heat transfer efficiency in much the same way that multiple layers of winter clothing slow the movement of heat away from the body.

A more efficient process occurs when water remains in individual droplets that repeatedly form and detach. This behavior is called dropwise condensation. Because the droplets leave instead of forming a continuous layer, fresh areas of the surface are repeatedly exposed, allowing heat to move through the surface more effectively.

The Trade-Off Between Droplet Formation and Removal

Previous surface designs have struggled with an important limitation. Rough surfaces provide more places for droplets to begin forming, but those same structures can trap the droplets and make them difficult to remove. Smoother surfaces allow droplets to slide or detach more easily, but they provide fewer sites where new droplets can form.

That creates a basic trade-off between nucleation, the initial formation of droplets, and droplet mobility.

The researchers addressed this problem by taking advantage of nanoscale polymer aggregates that had previously been treated as unwanted ‘defects’ in polymer coatings. They produced the coating using initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD), a technique that deposits gas-phase precursors onto a surface to form an extremely thin polymer layer.

When the researchers made the polymer film thinner, many small polymer aggregates appeared across the surface. Instead of removing these structures, the team used them as nucleation sites where water droplets could begin forming. Thin polymer films produced approximately three times as many droplets as thicker films.

Helping Droplets Form and Leave Faster

The team then introduced a heat treatment that weakened the force holding droplets to the coated surface. This allowed the droplets to detach more easily, often before they had time to grow very large.

The two adjustments addressed different parts of the condensation process. Reducing the polymer film thickness increased the number of locations where droplets could form, while thermal treatment made it easier for those droplets to leave the surface. By controlling these effects separately, the researchers were able to overcome the usual conflict between creating more droplets and removing them quickly.

Once a droplet leaves, another can form in the newly exposed space. The process is similar to a vacant seat being filled as soon as someone gets up. The more frequently droplets appear and depart, the more often the surface is refreshed, allowing heat to move through it more efficiently.

Heat Transfer Performance Increased Up to 5.5 Times

To test the technology under conditions closer to real-world applications, the researchers applied the polymer coating to copper tubes commonly used in condensers.

The maximum condensation heat transfer coefficient, which measures a surface’s ability to transfer heat, reached approximately 88 kW·m^-2·K^-1. That represented heat transfer performance up to approximately 5.5 times greater than a conventional copper surface covered by a water film.

The new coating also delivered more than 50% better performance than a conventional hydrophobic coating surface.

Rather than relying only on smooth or water-repelling surfaces, the researchers deliberately made use of small surface ‘defects.’ Their results showed that nanoscale particles once viewed as imperfections to be eliminated could instead provide useful sites for droplet formation. The finding led the team to a new strategy for designing condensation surfaces.

Potential Uses in Energy, Water, and Electronics

If the coating can be adopted in power plants or industrial heat exchangers, it could improve energy efficiency by allowing heat to move more effectively. The technology could also improve water collection in desalination and water-harvesting devices, while faster heat removal could provide better cooling for electronic equipment.

Professor Nam said, “This research is meaningful because it uses nanostructures previously regarded as defects as features that help droplets form. We have presented a new method for improving heat transfer efficiency by separately controlling droplet formation and removal.”

He added, “Because this technology can form extremely thin, uniform coatings even on surfaces with complex shapes, we expect it to be used in various energy and environmental applications, including industrial heat exchangers.”

Jun Soo Kim, a researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Minjeong Kang, a researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, co-authored the study as first authors. The results were published online in the international journal Nature Communications on July 16.

This research was supported by the Mid-Career Researcher Program (Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea), the SME Technology Innovation Development Program (Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea Technology and Information Promotion Agency for SMEs), and the Deep-Tech Startup Activation Support Program (Ministry of Science and ICT and Commercialization Promotion Agency for R&D Outcomes, COMPA).

Researchers at the University of Lancashire found that taking 100 microliters of peppermint oil twice a day for 20 days reduced systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) by an average of 8.5mmHg.

The findings, published in PLOS One, suggest peppermint oil could provide a simple, inexpensive, and well-tolerated option for people with slightly elevated blood pressure.

A Potential Low-Cost Approach to Blood Pressure

Lead author Dr. Jonnie Sinclair, Reader in Sport and Health Sciences, said: “High blood pressure is one of the biggest causes of heart disease and death worldwide, and it costs a huge amount of money to treat. Although medicines are commonly used to treat it, it’s not always clear how well they work in the long-term, and they can cause unwanted side effects.”

Peppermint naturally contains compounds including menthol and flavonoids. To investigate its possible effects, researchers enrolled 40 adults between the ages of 18 and 65 and randomly assigned them to two groups.

Participants with prehypertension or stage 1 hypertension in one group received a small daily amount of peppermint oil. The comparison group received a peppermint-flavored placebo without the active oil. Blood pressure improved in the peppermint oil group, while the placebo group showed no meaningful change.

Researchers Tracked More Than Blood Pressure

Although systolic blood pressure was the main focus, the researchers also examined several other measures. These included body measurements, blood test results, diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number in a blood pressure reading), heart rate, mental well-being and sleep quality.

Dr. Sinclair added: “Our findings were very positive and they have significant clinical implications, especially given arterial hypertension is the most common preventable risk factor for cardiometabolic disease and the greatest single risk factor for global mortality.

“Peppermint oil is low in calories and price so it’s proved to be a very simple and cost-effective solution to potentially treat millions of people around the world.”

Alongside counting calories or eating smaller portions, many people add exercise into the equation when trying to lose weight to help tip the balance. Yet research shows that exercise may only have modest effects on weight loss.

But before you ditch your workouts, it’s important to note that exercise still plays a really important role when it comes to health – perhaps especially in keeping the pounds off after reaching your goal weight.

There are several processes that help explain why exercise doesn’t always result in huge amounts of weight loss.

Exercise can stimulate appetite, leading to increased food intake. People may also subconsciously move less throughout the rest of the day after doing a workout, which means exercise may have less impact on their overall calorie deficit.

The body also becomes more efficient over time – burning fewer calories while doing the same activity. This process, sometimes called “metabolic adaptation”, reflects the body’s tendency to defend against weight loss.

From an evolutionary perspective, conserving energy during periods of intense physical activity probably protected our ancestors from starvation. But in today’s world, metabolic adaptation is one of many factors that can make weight loss difficult.

The importance of exercise

Although exercise may not be the main driver of weight loss, it seems it might play a role in maintaining weight loss.

In a study of over 1,100 people, physical activity was shown to have little effect on the amount of weight a person initially lost. However, doing higher levels of activity after losing weight was strongly linked to maintaining the weight loss.

It’s worth noting that exercise was also associated with measurable health improvements – including better cholesterol, lower inflammation, better blood sugar control and insulin sensitivity, all of which are associated with lower risk of health problems, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

These many health benefits show just how important it is to exercise both while losing weight and maintaining weight loss.

Evidence also suggests that combining exercise with weight loss drugs (such as Saxenda), may help people maintain their weight loss better than using the drug alone.

Why exercise works

It may seem confusing that exercise isn’t especially effective for losing weight but can help prevent regain. The reasons behind this paradox aren’t fully understood, but several mechanisms may offer an explanation.

The first has to do with our resting energy expenditure (the amount of calories our body burns when doing nothing).

When we lose weight, our resting energy expenditure decreases by more than you would expect for the amount of weight lost. This is thought to contribute to weight regain. But exercise raises total daily energy expenditure, which can help to partially offset this.

A second factor relates to muscle mass.

Weight loss usually results in the loss of both fat and muscle. Losing muscle lowers resting energy expenditure, which can contribute to weight regain.

But exercise, especially resistance training (such as Pilates or lifting weights), can help preserve or even rebuild muscle mass. This can boost our metabolism, which may aid in long-term weight maintenance.

Physical activity also helps our body to maintain its ability to burn fat. After losing weight, the body often becomes less efficient at using fat for energy.

But intense exercise can improve fat burning and metabolic flexibility – the ability to switch between burning carbohydrates and fat depending on what’s available. This helps the body continue burning fat even when calorie intake is low or weight is lost.

Exercise improves insulin sensitivity as well. This reduces the amount of insulin required to regulate blood sugar. This is beneficial as higher insulin levels can promote fat storage and reduce fat breakdown.

Exercise has many indirect effects on us that can aid in weight maintenance. For instance, exercise can improve sleep, mood and reduce stress levels. These all reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which could lower the amount of fat the body stores.

Regular activity can also help regulate appetite and blood glucose, which may help reduce cravings and limit overeating.

It’s important to acknowledge that everyone is different. This means we all respond differently to exercise in terms of how many calories we burn or whether a workout makes us feel hungrier later in the day.

Different types of workouts also confer their own benefits when it comes to health and weight maintenance.

Aerobic exercise (such as brisk walking, cycling or running) burns calories and, at higher intensities, may also enhance the body’s ability to burn fat for fuel.

Resistance training, on the other hand, helps build and preserve muscle mass. This supports a higher resting energy expenditure, aiding long-term weight maintenance.

Exercise may not be the most powerful tool for losing weight, but it could help sustain hard-earned weight loss. Perhaps most importantly, it offers many physical and mental health benefits that go far beyond the numbers on the scale.

The discovery, made by an international team that included Penn State researchers, adds to a growing challenge for theories about how the first galaxies formed and evolved. The findings were published in Nature Astronomy.

JWST Uncovers Faint Stars in Ancient Galaxies

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers examined nine massive, mature galaxies that stopped producing new stars billions of years ago. They combined JWST observations of the distant universe with earlier ground-based data from the Very Large Telescope.

For the first time, the team was able to reliably estimate the relative numbers of small, faint stars and much larger, brighter stars in galaxies at such great distances.

“These galaxies are different,” said Joel Leja, the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Mid-Career Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State and coauthor of the paper. “They’re different in the way that is really challenging to understand, because they are more massive than we expected — like a lot more massive, they have three or four times more mass than we expected.”

Astronomers made the measurements by separating each galaxy’s light into a spectrum. Small variations in color within that spectrum can reveal which kinds of stars are present.

The difficulty is that large, luminous stars dominate the light, while smaller stars are far dimmer and much harder to identify. Penn State researchers contributed expertise and guidance for modeling the light detected from the galaxy systems.

Bright Stars Can Hide Vast Stellar Populations

“If a galaxy were a city, the brightest stars would be the skyscrapers that immediately catch your eye from afar,” said lead author Chloe Cheng, a recent doctoral graduate of Leiden University. “Our models demonstrate that a far more numerous population of low-mass stars is concealed by those rare, bright stars, like houses hidden between skyscrapers. As a result, this galaxy turns out to be much more massive than previous estimates suggested.”

Traditionally, astronomers estimating the mass hidden in small, faint stars have assumed that stars formed in roughly similar proportions throughout the universe. The new findings challenge that long-standing assumption.

The researchers found that the most massive galaxies in the early universe appear to contain a much greater share of low-mass stars than smaller galaxies such as the Milky Way.

One galaxy stood out in particular, according to coauthor Martje Slob, a doctoral candidate at Leiden University. It likely formed less than one and a half billion years after the Big Bang and could be as much as four times more massive than previous calculations suggested.

“Until recently, measurements like these were simply impossible,” Slob said. “We needed not only a telescope capable of magnifying very distant galaxies, but also spectra of exceptional quality and new analysis techniques to reliably detect the subtle signatures of faint, low-mass stars hidden within these cosmic titans.”

An Even Bigger Early Universe Puzzle

The findings could have major consequences for scientists trying to understand how galaxies developed in the young universe.

Since JWST began observing the cosmos, astronomers have repeatedly identified unexpectedly massive and mature galaxies that existed relatively soon after the Big Bang. Those discoveries have already put pressure on existing models of galaxy formation.

“This discovery has crucial implications for our understanding of the early universe,” said Leja, who is also affiliated with The Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. “Since the launch of JWST, astronomers have found surprisingly massive and mature galaxies that already existed shortly after the Big Bang. These very early galaxies are thought to evolve into the type of galaxies studied in this work; adding up to four times more stars to these massive, early-forming galaxies sharpens these tensions further.”

If galaxies like these contained substantially more stars than researchers previously estimated, theories of galaxy formation must account for how such enormous numbers of small stars could have appeared so early in cosmic history.

Hidden Stars Could Also Mean More Early Planets

The implications may extend beyond galaxy formation.

“This result shows that much more mass than previously thought is hidden in low-mass stars,” said Mariska Kriek, who led the research and serves as professor of extragalactic astronomy at Leiden Observatory. “That has consequences for many areas of astronomy. For example, as many planets orbit low-mass stars, this could even indicate that more planets formed in the early universe than we had previously assumed.”

Over the next several years, the researchers plan to use the same technique to study galaxies from even earlier periods. Their goal is to push observations closer to the time when the universe’s first generations of stars and galaxies began to emerge.