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The newest issue of the Journal of Social Sciences and Philosophy has just been published by the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. Articles in this issue (Vol. 37, No. 1, Special Issue on EU-East Asia: A Relational Perspective) include

Traditional optical microscopy struggles with nanoscale structures due to the diffraction limit. A research team led by Dr. Bi-Chang Chen at the Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, demonstrated an innovative approach for nanoscale super-resolution imaging of large biological samples using potassium (poly)acrylate-based expansion microscopy (KA-ExM) and a Bessel lightsheet microscope (ΔBLX).

Bacteria deploy a diverse arsenal of toxic effectors to antagonize competitors, profoundly influencing the composition of microbial communities. Previous studies have identified an interbacterial toxin predicted to exhibit proteolytic activity that is broadly distributed among Gram-negative bacteria. However, the precise mechanism of intoxication remains unresolved. Here, we demonstrate that one such protease toxin from Escherichia coli, Cpe1, disrupts DNA replication and chromosome segregation by cleaving conserved sequences within the ATPase domain of type II DNA topoisomerases GyrB and ParE. This cleavage effectively inhibits topoisomerase-mediated relaxation of supercoiled DNA, resulting in impaired bacterial growth. Cpe1 belongs to the papain-like cysteine protease family and is associated with toxin delivery pathways, including the type VI secretion system and contact-dependent growth inhibition. The structure of Cpe1 in complex with its immunity protein reveals a neutralization mechanism involving competitive substrate binding rather than active site occlusion, distinguishing it from previously characterized effector-immunity pairs. Our findings unveil a unique mode of interbacterial intoxication and provide insights into how bacteria protect themselves from self-poisoning by protease toxins. This study was published on May 27, 2025, in the journal PLOS Biology.

The issue contains 3 articles and 1 book review

Room-temperature nanolasers are crucial for advancing optical communication and photonic quantum technologies due to their capability to generate coherent light at a subwavelength scale. However, their development is constrained by challenges such as insufficient gain, material instability, and high lasing thresholds. A research team led by Dr. Yu-Jung Lu at the Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, and Dr. Chu-Chen Chueh from National Taiwan University, demonstrated a stable, wavelength-tunable, single-mode room-temperature plasmonic lasing by integrating quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) perovskites with high-Q plasmonic nanostructures. The research findings provide a scalable, low-cost, and energy-efficient platform for nanolasing, with potential applications in next-generation photonic technologies, including LiDAR, sensing, optical communication, and computation. The research has been published on May 7, 2025 in Science Advances, and was featured on the journal’s homepage as a highlighted article. The first author is Yen-Yu Wang, a Ph.D. student of TIGP-Nano program at Academia Sinica. Xing-Hao Lee is listed as a co-first author and is currently affiliated with TSMC. The research was supported by Academia Sinica, the National Science and Technology Council, and NTU-AS Innovative Joint Program.

The research team led by Dr. Jun-An Chen’s group at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, has achieved a significant breakthrough in studying Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease.

A study led by Dr. Jun-An Chen’s group at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, has revealed a previously unrecognized micropeptide embedded within a misannotated long noncoding RNA (lncRNA). Motor neuron diversity in the spinal cord is crucial for coordinated movement, driven by a complex mix of internal programs and external cues. Dr. Jun-An Chen’s team, known for pioneering work on noncoding RNAs, has now uncovered a surprising discovery—a misannotated long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) that actually encodes a micropeptide named Sertm2. Highly expressed in embryonic spinal motor neurons, Sertm2 had remained unnoticed until now. Using a combination of embryonic stem cell and animal models, the team showed that deleting Sertm2 did not affect the generic motor neurons but selectively impaired certain subtypes, leading to motor coordination defects in mice. The culprit? Disrupted signaling of GDNF, a key neurotrophic factor essential for motor neuron health and a target in neurodegenerative disease research. Strikingly, reintroducing only Sertm2 micropeptide using lentiviral vectors restored normal motor neuron subtype production in the entire lncRNA genome locus, highlighting its critical role in neuronal development. The peptide’s function was also validated in human iPSC-derived motor neurons, confirming its evolutionary conservation. This study not only redefines how we view so-called “noncoding” RNAs but also positions micropeptides like Sertm2 as promising therapeutic tools and biomarkers in neurological disease and regenerative medicine. The study has been published in EMBO Reports (IF 7.7, 2025) on March 19, 2025. The study’s primary author, Fang-Yu Hsu, is a Ph.D. student in the Genome and Systems Biology Program at Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University. The research team also included Dr. Ya-Ping Yen, Hung-Chi Fan, and Mien Chang. This work was supported by Academia Sinica, the National Science and Technology Council, and the National Health Research Institutes of Taiwan.

We are pleased to announce the new publication of issue 26.2 of Language and Linguistics.

The newest issue of Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica has just been published by the Institute of History and Philology.

A research team led by Dr. Yi-Chung Tung at the Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, has uncovered the critical role of oxygen tension in early brain development, particularly its influence on neurogenesis before the brain’s vascular system is fully established. Using human brain organoids as a model, the team applied fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) combined with oxygen-sensing microbeads to monitor real-time changes in oxygen tension within the organoids. Through single-cell RNA sequencing and metabolomic analysis, they investigated how oxygen tension affects developmental progression. The results showed that between weeks 4 and 6 of development, oxygen tension within the organoids significantly increased, promoting energy metabolism regulation and neuronal generation. Further experiments revealed that lowering oxygen tension or inhibiting neuroglobin expression suppressed this increase in oxygen levels, thereby affecting organoid development and reducing neuronal production. This study is the first to demonstrate the pivotal influence of oxygen tension variation during specific developmental stages on brain development. It provides new insights into the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and potential therapeutic strategies.

Agroinfiltration is a widely used technique in plant gene research, where bacteria are used to temporarily introduce foreign genes into plant leaves, enabling rapid functional analysis. Traditionally, Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been the bacterium of choice. Through a systematic screen, our recent study shows that a strain of Rhizobium rhizogenes, a relative of A. tumefaciens, delivers genes even more effectively. This discovery offers a more efficient and versatile tool for gene function studies, especially in solanaceous crops like tomato and pepper, which are often challenging for transient expression. It holds promise for accelerating crop research and advancing sustainable agriculture. This research was published on April 9, 2025, in Plant Biotechnology Journal. It was supported by the Grand Challenge Program of Academia Sinica and was a collaborative effort by the labs of Dr. Chih-Hang Wu, Dr. Erh-Min Lai, and Dr. Chih-Hong Kuo at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology. Co-first authors are TIGP students Juan Carlos Lopez-Agudelo and Foong-Jing Goh.

“Sng” or “Sng-pain” is a Taiwanese term that denotes an acid-like discomfort, one of the most common complaints in pain clinics. Although the cost of medical care spent on sng or sng-pain is the highest among all diseases all over the world, current analgesics are not very effective for many types of intractable sng or sng-pain (e.g., fibromyalgia). To solve the unmet medical needs of intractable sng-pain, the research team have found sng and pain are two different somatosensory functions, with proprioceptors are the sngceptors to sense tissue acidosis and to trigger the acid-induced priming and “pain” chronicity in moused models of fibromyalgia. This study was conducted by Dr. Chih-Cheng Chen, a distinguished research fellow and his research team at Academia Sinica, with supported from the National Science and Technology Council’s Brain Technology Project and the Investigator Award of Academia Sinica. These findings were published in the prestigious international journal Science Advancesin January 31, 2025.