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| 5 November 2026 | | Today’s Logbook from Science Managing News Editor John Travis goes behind the scenes of his latest story on vexing vaults. But first, catch up on the latest science news, including a gassy Mars and a hidden threat to birds. | |
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| Health Engineering | Science ADvances | | A very electric toothbrush | You might use an electric toothbrush to help combat sensitive gums or hard-to-reach plaque. But what about a toothbrush that emits electricity?
To better combat oral hygiene, researchers wanted to target mouth-dwelling bacteria, which are a major component of plaque. They designed a toothbrush with bristles made of material that generates electric charges when put under pressure. So, as someone uses the toothbrush, its bristles bend and produce electricity; this then triggers chemical reactions that produce molecules that can damage bacterial membranes.
In the lab, the toothbrush killed pathogens including up to 78% of Porphyromonas gingivalis, which causes periodontitis, and 53% of Streptococcus mutans, which causes cavities. Regular toothbrushes only killed around 8% of each. And in a test with over 100 volunteers, genetic sequencing of participants’ oral microbiomes revealed a decrease in multiple oral pathogens among those assigned the special electric toothbrush. Their plaque build-up, gum inflammation, and bleeding were also down by 40%, compared with 15% for the normal toothbrush control group.
“The concept is great,” oral microbiologist Nicholas Jakubovics told New Scientist. “Anything that even slightly improves the way dental care works could have a benefit, because oral disease is just so widespread.” | | |
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| Conservation genomics | Science | | A quiet threat to songbirds |  | | The genetic diversity of dozens of songbirds in China’s Gaoligong Mountains—including this blue-winged minla—has declined sharply in recent decades. Jiao Sun (ååØ) via INATURALIST | CC BY | Everyone knows that a silent forest isn’t healthy; the loss of songbirds is a clear sign of ecological erosion. But there are other threats to ecological health that continued twittering can actually cloak.
Before a species disappears entirely, it can lose genetic diversity, which may set it up for future failure. Without a variety of genes, populations lack the genomic resources the need to respond to changes in the environment, and to lower risks from the negative effects of inbreeding; their survival can end up at the mercy of chance. Because of this, genetic diversity can reveal a lot about how a species is truly faring—even when population numbers seem strong.
Case and point: In China’s Gaoligong Mountains, researchers have found that 62 songbird species—all of which are considered of “least concern” by the IUCN Red List of threatened species—have lost an average of 43% to 49% of their genetic diversity over roughly the last 50 years. “Notably, some of the most common species showed the greatest decline,” wrote Science Editor Sacha Vignieri in her summary of the work. Indeed, the authors noted that the diversity declines in species not considered under threat represents “a blind spot in extinction risk monitoring,” and they “call for genomic metrics to be rapidly integrated into global conservation frameworks.” | | |
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| Astronomy | Science Advances | | A gassy Mars hints at ongoing volcanism | Sulfur dioxide has a distinctive, burnt-match odor, a smell commonly found close to a volcanic eruption. But it’s not the only gas that volcanic systems produce: Stinky hydrogen chloride (HCl), which also escapes into the atmosphere when one burps, has just been detected on Mars.
The observation came from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a U.S.-Russia collaboration that measures atmospheric changes on the Red Planet. The orbiting spacecraft detected the gas above newly formed cracks on the surface of a giant volcano called Alba Mons. Researchers think the gas may have seeped out from magma chambers underground, which would mean that the planet is still volcanically active. While discoveries of “Marsquakes” signaled that the planet wasn’t dead inside, it’s been tough to say for sure. Volcanic activity played a large role in shaping the structure and evolution of our red neighbor in the past.
If Mars remains volcanically active today, pockets of heat could be trapped just under the surface—conditions not unlike hydrothermal vents, where life may have arisen on Earth. “Such active hydrothermal systems may provide the energy sources and favorable conditions needed to support microbial life,” author Alexander Trokhimovskiy told Reuters. “This makes warm subsurface environments one of the most promising targets in the search for life on Mars.” | | |
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 | | | Be Part of What's Next in Plant and Animal Genomics and Beyond! | | Join leaders across agriculture and the life sciences at the 2027 AGBT Agriculture Meeting, Ap. 4–7, in Miami, exploring advances in plant and animal genomics. Registration, abstract submissions, and Next Gen Leadership Award applications are now open! Click the button below to register, submit an abstract, or apply for a NGL Award. | |
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| | | Logbook |  | | Vaultlike structures made from the viral protein L05 (left) incorporate 96 copies of the molecule, whereas human vaults (right) assemble from 78 copies of our version of the protein. Anthropic | | Anthropic’s AI takes on mystery of the vault | | John Travis, Managing News Editor, Science | A few weeks ago, I emailed biologist Leonard Rome about our favorite topic: vaults, those strange barrel-shaped particles in our cells that have no known function. Rome is known as the Vault Guy—he and a colleague discovered the objects in rodent cells in the 1980s and he’s been puzzling over them ever since. Had he, I asked, talked to any AI companies about studying vaults. “You must be psychic,” he quickly replied.
Rome had just heard from Anthropic, one of the big AI companies. Biologists at its new “wet” lab had, with the help of the company’s main AI model Claude, been studying vaults and wanted his feedback on their data. Yesterday, Anthropic released those findings, showing that simple bacteria and even viruses appear able to make vaults from previously unidentified versions of the Major Vault Protein (MVP).
Other biologists had shown that noneukaryotes likely made these proteins, but they had not confirmed they assembled into vaults. Anthropic has done that now, and analyzed in detail a vault made from a bacteria-infecting virus known as a phage. The vault is shorter and fatter than the human vaults, and its shell is composed of 96 proteins instead of 78, but the structure is unmistakable. The findings don’t reveal what vaults do, but Rome is excited. “It’s not the vault function, but oh boy, it’s cool,” he told me.
Anthropic is promoting the work as evidence Claude can speed science in myriad ways. It helped the biology team hone a vault purification process so it took 90 minutes instead of 3 days, for example. Other scientists say that claimed acceleration is hard to verify from what’s been reported so far, in a blog post and preprint, but most find the vault results credible and provocative. Claude did misdirect the Anthropic team a few times, wasting two weeks of its time in one case, the company says. But even that stumble was a learning experience it hopes will improve Claude for scientists. Amusingly, at one point, Anthropic’s scientists had to tell their AI to stop improvising and stick to suggesting proven lab protocols unless they didn’t work. | | Read more about THE VAULT GUY | |
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| This is AI on your brain | | In a yearlong investigation, Science reviewed dozens of consumer neurotech privacy policies and spoke to neurotech experts, companies, and users to understand how consumers’ brain data are being used around the world. The investigation revealed a largely unregulated global ecosystem in which tens of millions of hours of EEG data have already been collected by consumer neurotech companies. Multiple firms are using these data in the race to build a comprehensive AI model of the brain. | | Read more at News from Science | |
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| Averting the ‘archaeoapocalypse’ | | Next week, the Senate is expected to begin considering legislation that could substantially narrow rules that require developers to conduct archaeological reviews of projects funded or permitted by the federal government. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s administration is putting the finishing touches on a similar regulatory proposal that would also place new limits on archaeological reviews and the public’s ability to comment on projects that could damage or destroy cultural resources. A coalition of more than 1000 organizations has come together to fight both efforts. “Once an archaeological site is destroyed without being studied, part of America’s story disappears forever,” the coalition warned in a recent open letter to Congress. | | Read more at ScienceInsider | |
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| The Goths were right | | A century and a half after the Goths joined other tribes to bring down the mighty Roman empire, a Gothic historian claimed the group originally came from Scandinavia. It’s a tale most modern historians have disbelieved immediately—except, now genetics back the claim. “What the genotyping is showing is what the ancient sources report, and what late 20th century historiography has been working very hard to deny,” said one historian. “We have to … admit the sources knew more than we thought they did.” | | Nature Paper | Read more at News from Science | |
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| We will hold this administration accountable for the damage they have done to the American scientific enterprise.
—Representative Zoe Lofgren (D–CA) | | ScienceInsider | 4 November 2026 | Jeffrey Mervis | | The U.S. midterm elections have given Democrats firm control of both chambers in the new Congress that will convene in January 2027. Many in the research community are hoping the pending power shift means a more sympathetic audience for their criticisms of President Donald Trump’s policies as well as the opportunity to blunt his efforts to slash research budgets, impose political control over grantmaking, and shrink the size of the federal government. | |
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