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Science journalist covering all things wild and wonderful for @NewsfromScience. Alum @Nature @NewScientist, 2025 KSJ Fellow. Signal: sara_reardon.59
Articles by Sara Reardon
Exclusive: New NIH research center on vaccine harms takes shape
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is preparing to launch a clinical research program to study people who believe they were harmed by vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines. In an internal meeting last week, officials at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) discussed plans for a new research center on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, that could start up in mid-October, Science has learned.
In autism advisory committee’s funding plan, critics see a veiled antivaccine focus
1.0x 00:00 7:54 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback A federal committee last week approved a controversial plan that could shape the direction of autism research, medical care, and public services for people with the condition through 2029 and recommended doubling investment in the condition.
For investigators in NIH’s autism initiative, funding comes with a ‘big spotlight’
1.0x 00:00 7:08 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback It’s unusual for a director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to give a great deal of attention to a single $50 million research project. But in recent weeks, Jay Bhattacharya has repeatedly touted his agency’s Autism Data Science Initiative (ADSI), which launched in September 2025 and funds roughly a dozen research projects that seek environmental causes of autism using large data sets.
Gut microbes may help wild horses evolve to survive harsh Canadian winters
On Canada’s Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, some 500 wild horses run together along the seashore—each racing to survive. Every summer on the windswept dunes, the shaggy animals eat however much they can of the island’s sparse grasses, fattening up in preparation for the cold and barren winter. Not all of them will make it to spring. In this harsh environment, any slight advantage may make the difference between life and death.
Tau protein can sneak into brain cells’ energy factories—and wreak havoc
Table of contents A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 393, Issue 6812.Download PDF 1.0x 00:00 5:19 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback The protein tau is best known for its potential to clog the brain. In neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, chains of the molecule twist into tangles inside neurons and choke out the cells.
New U.S. rules on risky pathogen research draw mixed reviews
Table of contents A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 393, Issue 6811.Download PDF 1.0x 00:00 6:56 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback A new U.S. policy that aims to reduce the risks arising from federally funded research with dangerous pathogens is drawing mixed reviews from scientists, with even some who support tighter regulation fearing its vague wording could complicate, not clarify, the rules on what kinds of studies the government will support.
FDA committee votes to make peptides more widely available
1.0x 00:00 6:57 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback Peptide enthusiasts—including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—might soon be able to buy the controversial products more easily from regulated sources.
NIH is again terminating grants that the Trump administration dislikes
1.0x 00:00 6:24 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which 1 year ago was slammed by a federal judge for illegally terminating more than 1700 grants funding research on health disparities and other politically sensitive issues, is again killing ongoing projects on those topics, Science has learned.
Prominent Salk Institute biologist to resign following sexual misconduct investigation
Table of contents A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 393, Issue 6809.Download PDF 1.0x 00:00 08:29 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback Satchidananda Panda, a prominent biologist known for his work on circadian rhythms, light sensing, and intermittent fasting, will resign next month after 22 years at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Prominent Salk Institute biologist to resign following sexual misconduct investigation
1.0x 00:00 08:29 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback Satchidananda Panda, a prominent biologist known for his work on circadian rhythms, light sensing, and intermittent fasting, will resign next month after 22 years at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. His planned departure, which has not been officially announced outside of Salk, comes after the institute contracted an employment law firm to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct by Panda.
A molecular quirk unique to octopuses makes them better at building proteins | Science
By Sara Reardon | Science July 09, 2026 Editor's note: This article features insights from Joshua Rosenthal, a marine biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Octopuses are among the strangest creatures on Earth—right down to their molecules. A new study has found that octopuses of a certain lineage have a mutation not seen in any other organism that makes their cellular machinery extremely accurate at creating proteins. As a result, their proteins are less likely to form toxic clumps.
A molecular quirk unique to octopuses makes them better at building proteins
1.0x 00:00 5:55 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback Octopuses are among the strangest creatures on Earth—right down to their molecules. A new study has found that octopuses of a certain lineage have a mutation not seen in any other organism that makes their cellular machinery extremely accurate at creating proteins. As a result, their proteins are less likely to form toxic clumps.
Disembodied human brains, immortal bits of sea cucumber, and fame in Galileo’s time
S. Reardon/Science 00:00 42:52 Full Transcript Download Follow Apple Spotify Overcast Pocket Casts Related Books et al. Galileo's Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century Science 28 May 2026 Related Research Article Natural tissue immortality: Indefinite survival of sea cucumber explants Science Advances 27 May 2026 First up on the podcast, a company is using whole brains—maintained with specialized life support—to study new drugs.
Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
Table of contents A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 392, Issue 6801.Download PDF Related podcast Disembodied human brains, immortal bits of sea cucumber, and fame in Galileo’s time Podcast 28 May 2026 1.0x 00:00 8:17 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT—Just a day ago, the brain was in a living person.
Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT—Just a day ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its owner died, it sits on a cart draped in tubes that quiver as they pump liters of blood substitute and other fluids through the organ, supplying oxygen and removing waste. With most of its key functions intact but its electrical activity quenched by anesthesia, the brain hovers between life and death.
The U.S. wants to phase out animal research. Are the alternatives ready?
1.0x Volume is at 50% 00:00 18:06 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback The small plastic chip etched with channels is a synthetic human organ—and one vision of future drug safety testing. Inside, layers of human liver, epithelial, and immune cells line the tiny conduits, which feed them with bloodlike fluid and remove waste.
Following court order, NIH ceases new terminations of politically sensitive grants
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has ceased terminating grants on politically sensitive topics after a federal judge ruled last week that the cancellations were illegal.
National rare disease effort among those upended by Trump’s freeze on Harvard grants
The Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) has been a flagship project for the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 12 years, but it may not survive President Donald Trump. The program has used genome sequencing and exhaustive testing to diagnose hundreds of people with unexplained illnesses, including 90 with rare diseases new to science.
‘Truly amazing’: Octopuses ‘taste’ harmful microbes with their suckers
Most people can tell whether meat has turned rotten—the smell gives it away. But octopuses don’t have noses. Now, a study published today in Cell reveals the animals can use a set of “taste” sensors on their sucker cups to avoid eating dangerous meals, just as humans reject an off-smelling dish. Specific molecules produced by bacteria in rotting food can activate these sucker sensors, causing octopuses to discard food or eggs that would make them or their offspring sick.
Exclusive: NIH documents reveal inconsistencies in grant terminations as agency reviews 3200 more
After already killing more than 1700 active grants related to politically charged topics, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has flagged another roughly 3200 grants for review and possible termination, Science has learned. Some newly flagged grants had already been cleared by previous reviews or have no obvious link to controversial issues. The new agency review comes as a federal judge is poised to consider the legality of such terminations in a 16 June hearing.
This brain implant lets a man who lost his speech to ALS produce natural-sounding sentences instantaneously
Casey Harrell, a 47-year-old climate activist, lost his voice to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) 5 years ago. The neurodegenerative disease weakened the connections between his brain’s motor cortex and the muscles that control his tongue, lips, and larynx, leaving him unable to form intelligible words.
NIH funding policy deals new blow to HIV-related trial networks
In 2019, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched an ambitious global study to assess whether preemptively taking a relatively new treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), called delamanid, could also prevent people from contracting the responsible mycobacterium from an infected person in their household. Known as the PHOENIx study, it has the potential to dramatically change TB treatment policies in the United States and across the world.
U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories
1.0x Volume is at 50% 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback Amid the grant terminations, program cuts, federal firings, disappearing databases, and myriad other disruptions U.S. science has seen during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration, researchers are facing an uncertain future.
AI predicted the next pope. Did it get it right?
Habemus papam! Minutes ago, the Vatican announced that U.S. Cardinal Robert Prevost would be the next pope. Artificial intelligence (AI) made its own prediction earlier this week—but Prevost was not on the shortlist. In a paper posted on the preprint site arXiv, a machine learning algorithm that analyzed the ideological positions of the 133 high-ranking Catholic Church officials who made this decision predicted that Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin would be the next head of the Catholic Church.
U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories
Amid the grant terminations, program cuts, federal firings, disappearing databases, and myriad other disruptions U.S. science has seen during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration, researchers are facing an uncertain future. Those studying hot-button topics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), vaccines, and transgender health are squarely in the crosshairs, but the turmoil extends much further.
NIH insiders: Trump is ‘dismantling and destroying everything’
1.0x 00:00 20:11 1.0x Audio is AI-generated. Report an issue|Give feedback On a cool, sunny, mid-April day, the cheerful redbuds and other flowering trees amid the sprawling labs on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) main campus belied the pervasive gloom.
New NIH office to reduce use of animals in research
In one of his first public moves as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya is creating a new office to coordinate efforts to reduce animal testing across the agency and the research that it funds.
NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women
In what may foreshadow billions in further research funding cuts, President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be killing much, if not all, of a historic initiative that was the first, and is still the largest, National Institutes of Health (NIH) effort centered on the health needs of women.
NIH freezes funds to Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them
After freezing all grants to Columbia University last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now stopping grant and contract payments to Harvard University and four other universities that President Donald Trump’s administration believes have not done enough to combat antisemitism on their campuses. The move will both block new funding and halt payments to investigators currently working on NIH projects.
NIH freezes all research grants to Columbia University
Weeks after President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pull $250 million in biomedical research grants to Columbia University, the agency is freezing all remaining grant money owed to the university until further notice, according to internal documents seen by Science.
Lawsuit aims to broadly overturn NIH’s grant terminations
A new lawsuit seeks to challenge the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) decisions to abruptly terminate hundreds of grants, totaling more than $2.4 billion, over the past month.
Trump administration purges U.S. health agency leaders
President Donald Trump’s administration has begun an expected—and sweeping—purge of senior officials at the nation’s federal health agencies. Since last night, the evening before National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya’s first day on the job, at least five directors of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers have been told they are being reassigned. Several center directors at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were also removed.
Are terminations of NIH grants wasting billions of taxpayer dollars?
Since 2022, sexual health researcher Jeremy Goldbach has spent about $2 million of the U.S. government’s money studying whether a peer-mentoring program could alleviate anxiety and depression among transgender and gender-minority teenagers. The 3-year project, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), had recruited some 200 students from 20 schools in the Los Angeles area and was scheduled to wrap up in September. But all that effort—and money—might now be for naught.
“Orchestrated assault”: New tsunami of NIH grant cuts hits South Africa hard
The threat hanging over South African HIV/AIDS researchers for the past week has become a reality: The Trump administration this afternoon began terminating or putting on hold their grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The cuts appear in part linked to an escalation of NIH efforts to terminate grants, at least some of which the government has decided have components of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Biomedical research takes hits in U.S. budget deal
Biomedical research was mostly spared in the spending bill enacted on 15 March that keeps federal agencies funded for the rest of this fiscal year at the same levels as 2024. But the bill will mean major cuts for high-profile neuroscience and genomic medicine initiatives at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a massive research grants program at the Department of Defense (DOD).
‘Pioneering’ study scans babies’ brains as they form memories
You may think you remember being a baby, but any memories you have from your first few years of life were probably just formed from stories or photos rather than your own observations. For many years, child psychologists believed babies’ brains were simply too immature to form lasting memories before the age of 3 or 4. But new research is questioning that assumption.
Fear spreads that NIH will terminate grants involving South Africa
Health researchers who work in South Africa are on red alert after hearing today that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) could terminate all grants that fund work in that country within days. The move would apparently be in response to a 7 February executive order by President Donald Trump that threatened to terminate U.S. aid to South Africa because of alleged discrimination against Afrikaners—white South Africans of Dutch descent.
NIH to ax grants on vaccine hesitancy, mRNA vaccines
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is abruptly terminating at least 33 research grants for projects studying why some people are hesitant to receive vaccines or evaluating strategies that could encourage vaccine uptake, Science has learned. An additional nine grants may be modified or cut back. Scientists who received these grants will receive termination letters this evening.
NIH to ax grants on vaccine hesitancy
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is abruptly terminating at least 33 research grants for projects studying why some people are hesitant to receive vaccines or evaluating strategies that could encourage vaccine uptake, Science has learned. An additional nine grants may be modified or cut back. Scientists who received these grants began to receive termination letters this evening.
New NIH grant terminations target transgender studies-even in mice
Researchers across the United States and beyond who study transgender health are learning that their National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants are being abruptly canceled.
Alzheimer: Kein Alzheimer trotz Disposition
Maschinelle Übersetzung Lesedauer ca. 3 Minuten Drucken Teilen Alzheimer: Kein Alzheimer trotz Disposition Ein Mann mit einer Genmutation, die Alzheimer vorprogrammiert, bleibt kognitiv fit. Was sein Gehirn anders macht, könnte auf neue Behandlungsmöglichkeiten hindeuten. Exklusive Übersetzung aus Dies ist eine maschinell erzeugte Übersetzung eines Artikels der internationalen Partner von Spektrum.de. Er wurde von uns überprüft, jedoch nicht redaktionell bearbeitet.
A man was destined for early Alzheimer’s ― these genes might explain his escape
A man who seemed genetically destined to develop Alzheimer’s disease while still young has reached his mid-70s without any cognitive decline ― in only the third recorded case of such resistance to the disease. The findings, published today in Nature Medicine1, raise questions about the role of the proteins that ravage the brain during the disease and the drugs that target them.
New Pneumonia Vaccine Guidelines Could Save More People from Deadly Disease
The respiratory bugs that surge every winter, from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to whooping cough, hit us with nasty coughs, fevers and chills—and they can also create the perfect opportunity for deadly pneumonia. Often misunderstood as a single sinister ailment (one your parents have ominously warned that you’d catch if you forgot your coat), pneumonia actually describes a lung infection that can be caused by any of about 30 different pathogens.
Gene behind orange fur in cats found at last
It would be pretty easy to guess that Garfield was a tomcat even if you didn’t know his name—or didn’t want to peek under his tail. Most orange cats are boys, a quirk of feline genetics that also explains why almost all calicos and tortoiseshells are girls. Scientists curious about those sex differences—or perhaps just cat lovers—have spent more than 60 years unsuccessfully seeking the gene that causes orange fur and the striking patchwork of colors in calicos and tortoiseshells.
This elephant learned to use a hose as a shower. Then her rival sought revenge
Elephants love showering to cool off, and most do so by sucking water into their trunks and spitting it over their bodies. But an elderly pachyderm named Mary has perfected the technique by using a hose as a showerhead, much in the way humans do. The behavior is a remarkable example of sophisticated tool use in the animal kingdom. But the story doesn’t end there.
How the elephant got its wrinkles
An elephant’s trunk is so much more than a nose. The pachyderms use their prehensile probosces to pick up food, spray water or sand across their backs to cool off, and trumpet warnings to other elephants. Baby elephants even employ their trunks to nurse, sucking up milk and then spraying it into their mouths. “It’s the most unbelievable grasping organ on the planet,” says computational neuroscientist Michael Brecht of the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Konnektom: Erste Karte eines Taufliegen-Gehirns ist komplett
Bericht Lesedauer ca. 4 Minuten Drucken Teilen Konnektom: Erste Karte eines Taufliegen-Gehirns ist komplett Gehirne sind beinahe unbeherrschbar komplex, selbst das eines derart winzigen Insekts wie Drosophila. Nun gelang es trotzdem, seinen Schaltplan zu entschlüsseln. Er soll auch das menschliche Denken erforschen helfen. Exklusive Übersetzung aus Eine Taufliege mag nicht das klügste Lebewesen sein, dennoch lässt sich von seinem Gehirn eine Menge lernen.
El mapa cerebral más grande jamás revelado revela las neuronas de la mosca de la fruta con exquisito detalle
El mapa cerebral más grande jamás revelado revela las neuronas de la mosca de la fruta con exquisito detalle El diagrama de cableado establece conexiones entre casi 140.000 neuronas y revela nuevos tipos de células nerviosas Puede que una mosca de la fruta no sea el organismo más inteligente, pero los científicos aún pueden aprender mucho de su cerebro.
Largest Brain Map Ever Reveals Fruit Fly’s Neurons in Exquisite Detail
A fruit fly might not be the smartest organism, but scientists can still learn a lot from its brain. Researchers are hoping to do that now that they have a new map — the most complete for any organism so far — of the brain of a single fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The wiring diagram, or ‘connectome’, includes nearly 140,000 neurons and captures more than 54.5 million synapses, which are the connections between nerve cells.
Largest brain map ever reveals fruit fly’s neurons in exquisite detail
A fruit fly might not be the smartest organism, but scientists can still learn a lot from its brain. Researchers are hoping to do that now that they have a new map — the most complete for any organism so far — of the brain of a single fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The wiring diagram, or ‘connectome’, includes nearly 140,000 neurons and captures more than 54.5 million synapses, which are the connections between nerve cells.
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