Evidence emerges for dark-matter free galaxies

An international team of astronomers led by researchers from the Netherlands has found no trace of dark matter in the galaxy AGC 114905, despite taking detailed measurements over a course of forty hours with state-of-the-art telescopes. They will present their findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

When Pavel Mancera Piña (University of Groningen and ASTRON, the Netherlands) and his colleagues discovered six galaxies with little to no dark matter, they were told "measure again, you'll see that there will be dark matter around your galaxy." However, after fourty hours of detailed observations using the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico (United States), the evidence for a dark matter-free galaxy only became stronger.

The galaxy in question, AGC 114905, is about 250 million light-years away. It is classified as an ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxy, with the name 'dwarf galaxy' referring to its luminosity and not to its size. The galaxy is about the size of our own Milky Way but contains a thousand times fewer stars. The prevailing idea is that all galaxies, and certainly ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxies, can only exist if they are held together by dark matter.

The researchers collected data on the rotation of gas in AGC 114905 for 40 hours between July and October 2020 using the VLA telescope. Subsequently, they made a graph showing the distance of the gas from the centre of the galaxy on the x-axis and the rotation speed of the gas on the y-axis. This is a standard way to reveal the presence of dark matter. The graph shows that the motions of the gas in AGC 114905 can be completely explained by just normal matter.

"This is, of course, what we thought and hoped for because it confirms our previous measurements," says Pavel Mancera Piña. "But now the problem remains that the theory predicts that there must be dark matter in AGC 114905, but our observations say there isn't. In fact, the difference between theory and observation is only getting bigger."

In their scientific publication, the researchers list the possible explanations for the lack of dark matter one by one. For example, AGC 114905 could have been stripped of dark matter by large nearby galaxies. Mancera Piña: "But there are none. And in the most reputed galaxy formation framework, the so called cold dark matter model, we would have to introduce extreme parameter values that are far beyond the usual range. Also with modified Newtonian dynamics, an alternative theory to cold dark matter, we cannot reproduce the motions of the gas within the galaxy."

According to the researchers, there is one more assumption that could change their conclusions. That is the estimated angle at which they think they are observing the galaxy. "But that angle has to deviate very much from our estimate before there is room for dark matter again," says co-author Tom Oosterloo (ASTRON).

Meanwhile, the researchers are examining a second ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxy in detail. If again observe no trace of dark matter in that galaxy, it will make the case for dark matter poor galaxies even stronger.

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Male spiders are attracted by a female like planets orbiting a star

The tiny male golden orb-weaving spider faces a considerable challenge when searching for a mate. He is a fraction of the size of the massive female, but must carefully enter her web and approach her without being noticed, because the cannibalistic female will kill and eat him if he makes one wrong move on her web. Add to this gamble the competition he faces from other males also on the delicate arena of the web, and you have a complex optimization problem that even human analysts would find daunting. Yet these little spiders barely have what we would recognize as a brain. How then do they manage? This is a question that has captivated Alex Jordan and members of his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior for over a decade. Now, teaming up with researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, they are closer to an answer.

The solution appears to lie in animal magnetism, or more correctly, in the effective physical forces that males and females experience on the elastic surface of the spider web. "Our initial concept was to explore the idea that these spiders moving on the web behave like electrons orbiting a nucleus, or planets orbiting a star," says Jordan, who leads the Integrative Behavioral Ecology Lab at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and is co-senior author on the study. From this initial idea, a research program was born, leading the two teams to develop a physical model and perform experiments in the Panamanian rainforest.

Competitive web arena

While the details of the precise physics ultimately diverged from both atomic and cosmic levels, the concept proved useful. "Imagine electrons orbiting a nucleus, or a massive star in space, so large that it generates its own gravitational field pulling in objects around it -- the giant, cannibalistic female can be thought of in the same way," says Jordan. "Now imagine smaller planets, satellites, or comets coming near this attractive force -- these are our tiny, brave males." Approach the star (or female) too rapidly, or at the wrong angle, and you risk getting caught up in her attractive pull. On a cosmic scale, this will result in a cosmic collision that vaporizes the planet. For the intrepid male, an incorrect approach means falling into a fatal attraction and ending up as prey.

"Working in the rainforests of Panama, I've seen over-zealous males fall victim to the cannibalistic females many times, especially when they take the wrong path, or approach the female too fast," says Sylvia Garza, co-author of the study, who spent months in Panama as a Master's student recording the behavior of male and female spiders, then using machine-learning approaches to track their every movement.

Vibratory cues

Just as the smaller planets have their own gravitational pull, the males also attract one another -- initially approaching the perceived rival. The males also start to repel each other as they get closer and closer, in this way behaving much more like electrons around a nucleus.

"The motion of these males resembles interactions between particles that attract or repel one another depending on the distance between them," says Amir Haluts, a physicist by training and lead author of the study from the Weizmann Institute of Science. Co-senior author Nir Gov, also from the Weizmann, says: "We use models to map the effective physical forces that males experience, allowing us to explain their motion on the web, as well as contest dynamics of males of different sizes." As the males orbit one another, they will eventually come too close together, crashing into each other in open fighting. All this is played out on the surface of the web, which acts as the conduit for the vibrations males use to communicate, but which can also alert the female to their presence and lead to a fatal attack.

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Gene discoveries give new hope to people who stutter

More than 2.5 million Americans have a chronic condition arising in early childhood that can negatively impact their education, job performance and employability well into adulthood.

There is no known cure, and existing treatments are often minimally effective. Yet for those with persistent, developmental stuttering, there is new hope, thanks to groundbreaking research led by scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

In two papers published this week, Jennifer "Piper" Below, PhD, and Shelly Jo Kraft, PhD, describe a "genetic architecture" for developmental stuttering and report the discovery of new genetic variations associated with the condition.

The researchers said that these findings, which were published in The American Journal of Human Genetics and Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, and studies like them have the potential to identify therapeutic directions that could improve outcomes for people who stutter.

"It's clear that in populations, stuttering is polygenic, meaning that there are multiple different genetic factors contributing to and protecting people from risk," said Below, associate professor of Medicine at VUMC. "That was something that had not been clearly shown before these studies."

The new revelations will have a huge impact on people who stutter and on the parents of children affected by the condition, predicted Kraft, associate professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders and director of the Behavior, Speech & Genetics Lab at Wayne State University.

"It's a piece of themselves that they can then understand," she said, "instead of living a lifetime of experiencing this difference in their speech and never knowing why."

With the help of colleagues in Ireland, England, Israel, Sweden, Australia and throughout the United States, Kraft has collected blood and saliva samples for genetic studies from more than 1,800 people who stutter, including more than 250 families with three generations of stuttering.

But while that effort, called the International Stuttering Project, identified new genetic variations, or variants, associated with developmental stuttering, it was not sufficiently "powered" to reveal the complexity of the condition. There simply were not enough people in the studies.

That's where Below comes in. She utilized a key VUMC resource, BioVU, one of the world's largest repositories of human DNA linked to searchable, electronic health information. BioVU has enabled researchers to conduct GWAS, or genome-wide association studies to probe the genetic underpinnings of a wide range of diseases.

Stuttering, however, is a condition that is rarely mentioned or given a diagnostic code in the medical record. People aren't hospitalized for stuttering. "We had to come up with some clever new ways to try to capture that missing code," Below said.

From confirmed cases of developmental stuttering, the researchers constructed a "constellation" of diagnostic codes for other conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autoimmune reactions to infections that co-occur with stuttering more frequently than would be expected by chance.

Then, using machine learning techniques, they created an artificial intelligence tool that used the presence of these "phenotypes" recorded in the electronic health record to predict those who were likely to stutter, "even in the absence of having a direct note about their stuttering in their medical record," Below said.

Supported by $3.5 million, five-year grant awarded in 2018 by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, the researchers demonstrated that their stuttering prediction model positively predicted the presence of stuttering more than 80% of the time.

The research also turned up a stuttering-related gene implicated in autism-spectrum disorder, as well as genetic variants that affect the regulation of sex hormones. The latter finding may help explain why boys are more likely to stutter, and why women who stutter are more likely to recover.

Some correlations between traits may be spurious, Below noted. But if the researchers establish genetic connections between stuttering and other traits such as ADHD, those findings could open up avenues for treating both conditions at the same time, Kraft said.

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Long-range four-stranded DNA structures found to play a role in rare aging disease

A special form of four-stranded DNA, recently seen in human cells, has been found to interact with a gene that causes Cockayne Syndrome when faulty.

As well as the classic double-helix, researchers have recently discovered a whole host of other DNA strand configurations, including quadruple-helix DNA, which forms knot-like structures called G-quadruplexes.

While many of these new DNA configurations have only been observed in cells in dishes, G-quadruplexes have recently been observed in living human cells. However, their possible functions in cells have not been discovered.

Now, researchers from the Molecular Science Research Hub at Imperial College London have observed a protein called Cockayne Syndrome B (CSB) preferentially interacting with one specific type of G-quadruplex. These special G-quadruplexes arise when distant parts of DNA interact, something that researchers thought was impossible to form within cells.

Normally functioning CSB proteins do not cause any ill effects, but mutations of the gene that produce CSB protein can cause the fatal premature ageing disorder Cockayne Syndrome, which kills many sufferers before adulthood.

The team found that CSB proteins with mutations that cause Cockayne Syndrome are no longer able to interact with the long-range G-quadruplexes. While we don't yet know why this might be, the team's results, published today in theJournal of the American Chemical Society, suggest that these long-range DNA G-quadruplexes are specifically linked with the functional role of CSB.

Lead researcher Dr Marco Di Antonio, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: "Our genomic DNA is more than two metres long, but is compressed into a space only a few microns in diameter. It shouldn't therefore be a surprise that there are ways the long-range looped structures are leveraged to compress DNA in more complex interactions than we imagined.

"There is still so much we don't know about DNA, but our results show that how and where G-quadruplex structures form affects their function, making them more important biologically than previously thought."

DNA strands are incredibly long and are wound in tight structures to fit inside our cells. Previously, researchers had assumed that G-quadruplexes form only from regions of DNA that sit next to each other. However, the team discovered G-quadruplexes that are formed from parts of the DNA strand that are spatially distant one from the other.

It's these G-quadruplexes that specifically interact with the CSB protein. The team shows that CSB could potentially use the G-quadruplexes to link together distant portions of the DNA.

Exactly what the interaction results in is yet to be determined, but previous independent research found that cells without CSB have difficulty processing the DNA around sequences with the potential to form G-quadruplexes.

The Imperial team have now found that the mutated form of CSB that causes Cockayne Syndrome is specifically attracted to G-quadruplexes that link distant DNA portions. This could mean further study of the mutated CSB gene might reveal the specific biological function of these long-range DNA structures.

Next, the researchers want to image the G-quadruplexes and the functional CSB gene bound together to determine exactly what the relationship does: whether the CSB helps the G-quadruplex hold the two distant regions of the DNA together, or whether CSB actually initiates the break-up of G-quadruplexes once they have completed their function, or a combination of both.

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Migratory birds have lighter-colored feathers

Migratory birds are specially adapted to find their way over extreme distances that represent remarkable tests of endurance. Now, researchers reporting December 6 in the journal Current Biology have discovered an unexpected way that migratory birds keep their cool during such arduous journeys: lighter-colored feathers.

"We found across nearly all species of birds, migratory species tend to be lighter colored than non-migratory species," said Kaspar Delhey of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany. "We think that lighter plumage coloration is selected in migratory species because it reduces the risk of overheating when exposed to sunshine. Lighter surfaces absorb less heat than darker ones, as anybody wearing dark clothes on a sunny day can attest! This would be particularly important for long-distance migrants that undertake extensive flights during which they cannot stop to rest in the shade."

Delhey and colleagues had been studying the effects of climate on bird coloration. Their earlier studies showed that, in general, lighter colored birds are found where temperatures are high and there is little shade. Presumably that's at least in part because the birds' lighter plumage helps to keep them cooler in the hot sun. Around that same time, the researchers came across studies by others showing that some birds fly at much higher altitudes during the day compared to at night.

"Because flying at high altitude is likely costly, these changes required an explanation," Delhey says. "One possibility was that flying higher, where it is colder, would offset the heat absorbed by the plumage when the sun was shining."

If so, they realized, another way to reduce the risk of overheating would be to absorb less solar radiation in the first place. It raised a question: have migratory species evolved lighter feathers?

To find out, they quantified overall plumage lightness (from 0 = black to 100 = white) for all bird species, using bird images from the Handbook of the Birds of the World. Next, they compared the data on coloration with the species' migratory behavior, while controlling for other factors known to effect plumage color.

Overall, the findings show that bird species get increasingly lighter as they migrate more. So, resident birds tend to be darker than short-distance migrants. Short-distance migrants are darker than bird species that travel farther. Delhey said that the one of the biggest surprises was how consistent the effect was across different types of birds. They saw the same pattern in birds large and small. The same held true in waterbirds and land-dwelling birds, too.

The findings are another reminder of the important role of temperature and climate factors more broadly in shaping the evolution of animal coloration. They also have clear implications for understanding the impacts of global warming and potential adaptive evolutionary responses, the researchers say.

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Big gaps in quest to sequence genomes of all animals

Efforts to sequence the genomes of the world's animals tend to focus on those that most resemble humans with the work conducted almost entirely in the Global North, according to an analysis led by Washington State University.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, researchers from WSU and Brigham Young University warn that current efforts are overlooking huge swathes of diversity and opportunity.

The analysis found that nearly 3,300 animal species have had their genomes sequenced and assembled, a process that gives organizational context to an organism's DNA. While the rate is picking up, the number is small in comparison to the world's 1.66 million animal species, and vertebrates make up the lion's share of current sequences. They account for 54% of all the assemblies, despite representing only 3.9% of animal species. In contrast, the invertebrates of the Arthropoda phylum, which includes insects and spiders, comprise only 34% of current datasets while representing 78.5% of all species.

"With genome assemblies accumulating rapidly, we want to think about where we are putting our efforts. It's not being spread evenly across the animal tree of life," said lead author Scott Hotaling, a WSU post-doctoral researcher. "Invertebrates are still very underrepresented, which makes sense given that people seem to care more about vertebrates, the so-called 'charismatic megafauna.'"

The family Hominidae, which includes great apes and humans, had the most contiguous genome data assembled, but the human genome is not the longest: that title goes to the Australian lungfish. Of all the genomic data, only five arthropod groups were well represented: bees, butterflies, mosquitoes, fruit flies and ants -- all notable for the utility, or problems, they pose to humans.

"We are interested in ourselves, and that's not necessarily a bad thing," said Paul Frandsen, a corresponding author on the paper and a BYU assistant professor. "But to begin to understand entire ecosystems, we have to start sampling more of the variety of life to gain a clearer picture. Vertebrates are important components of ecosystems, but arguably insects and many other small creatures probably play an even more important role because they're down at the base of the food web."

The authors, Hotaling, Frandsen and WSU associate professor Joanna Kelley, also noted that the vast majority of genetic sequencing work is happening in developed countries often called the Global North because most are located in the Northern Hemisphere. Three countries, the United States, China and Switzerland produce the most. There were even certain proclivities for different regions with North America doing the most sequencing of mammals and insects, Europe of fish and Asia of birds.

In recent years, several large genome sequencing efforts have been announced, including the Earth BioGenome Initiative, which set an ambitious goal to sequence all of eukaryotic life, which includes animals, bacteria and one-celled organisms, within the next 10 years.

The current number of about 3,300 animal genome assemblies as of June 2021 is a big jump in 25 years from when the first animal genome sequence was produced, the Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm in 1998. But the authors calculated that at the current rate of about four genome assemblies per day, the goal of sequencing all eukaryotic life would not be reached until the year 3130.

The researchers propose that one way to help spur more work in this area would be to develop infrastructure and involve more researchers from countries in the Global South, particularly in tropical regions where there also happens to be a lot of animal diversity.

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Trees are biggest methane ‘vents’ in wetland areas – even when they’re dry

Most of the methane gas emitted from Amazon wetlands regions is vented into the atmosphere via tree root systems -- with significant emissions occurring even when the ground is not flooded, say researchers at the University of Birmingham.

In a study published in the Royal Society journal, Philosophical Transactions A, the researchers have found evidence that far more methane is emitted by trees growing on floodplains in the Amazon basin than by soil or surface water and this occurs in both wet and dry conditions.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas and much of our atmospheric methane comes from wetlands. A great deal of research is being carried on into exactly how much methane is emitted via this route, but models typically assume that the gas is only produced when the ground is completely flooded and underwater.

In wetland areas where there are no trees, methane would typically be consumed by the soil on its way to the surface, but in forested wetland areas, the researchers say the tree roots could be acting as a transport system for the gas, up to the surface where it vents into the atmosphere from the tree trunks.

Methane is able to escape via this route even when it is produced in soil and water that is several meters below ground level.

This would mean that existing models could be significantly underestimating the likely extent of methane emissions in wetland areas such as the Amazon basin.

To test the theory, the team carried out measurements across three plots on the floodplains of three major rivers in the central Amazon basin. The same trees were monitored at each plot at four time points over the year to capture their response changing water levels associated with the annual flood. Methane emissions were measured using a portable greenhouse gas analyser and then calculations were done to scale the findings up across the Amazon basin.

Overall, the team estimate that nearly half of global tropical wetland methane emissions are funnelled out by trees, with the unexpected result that trees are also important for emissions at times when the floodplain water table sits below the surface of the soil.

Lead author, Professor Vincent Gauci, in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham (and the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research), says: "Our results show that current global emissions estimates are missing a crucial piece of the picture. We now need to develop models and methods that take into account the significant role played by trees in wetland methane emission."

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Discovering new drugs with help from Darwinian principles

Our body must constantly defend itself against bacteria and viruses. It generates millions of different antibodies, which are selected to recognise the enemy and trigger the best possible immune response. Scientists use these antibodies to for therapeutic purposes to target proteins and disrupt their harmful. However, identifying the small molecules that will form the basis of the drug is a long and tedious process. Chemists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have developed a technique inspired by the theory of Darwinian evolution: amplifying the best combinations and generating diversity allows biology to find solutions to new problems. They have created a new methodology that rapidly generates millions of combinations of small molecules through programmed assembly using DNA-pairing processes, finding the best possible combination to counter a target protein within two weeks. These results, published in the journal Nature Chemistry, will open up a new and untapped space for drug development.

The way drugs work is based on the molecular recognition of a target protein involved in the disease, in order to disarm it. To do this, scientists use high-throughput screening to identify which molecule could become a drug, specifically targeting the protein of interest. Over the last ten years, the technique has been improved by encoding small molecules with DNA tags that simplify their identification, as DNA is easy to decode.

Drawing inspiration from Darwinian evolutionary forces to find efficient assemblies

Today, chemists at the UNIGE have gone one step further, drawing inspiration from Darwin's theories: "Biology always finds a solution to a problem, explains Nicolas Winssinger, professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Science, UNIGE, and the corresponding author of the study. This is the principle of natural evolution, which consists of amplifying the best individuals, while generating diversity to adapt and survive changing conditions. That's what we've set up for small molecules." Indeed, the scientists have developed a technology that generates diversity by creating more than 100 million assemblies of molecules via their DNA, which they then select to best match a particular protein.

"We were inspired by the characteristics of antibodies that recognise target proteins and sought to mimic them in the form of simpler molecules to allow them to be assembled in different combinations, directed by DNA sequences," explains Nicolas Winssinger. These combinations are then selected and amplified several times to find the best possible match with the protein to be targeted, all in one to two weeks, compared with months or even a year for traditional high-throughput screening.

A proven, easily reproducible and inexpensive technique

To validate the effectiveness of this methodology, the Geneva team focused on the PD-L1 protein, which protects cancer cells by diverting the immune system. "Thanks to our methodology, we quickly identified an assembly that specifically targets PD-L1, confirming that it works effectively," says Nicolas Winssinger.

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Spaceflight wreaks havoc on liver metabolism

The latest findings of a series of studies on mice that examined harmful effects caused by spending time in space show that gene expression related to liver metabolism is altered in response to the space environment. The benefit of these findings is that it may be possible to offset these changes with dietary supplementation during spaceflight.

Like other inhabitants of this planet, humans have evolved for life on Earth, not life in space or elsewhere. During spaceflight, the human body is exposed to a harmful environment, characterized by null or microgravity and high radiation levels. The liver is affected by spaceflight more than any other organ -- its crucial role in neutralizing harmful substances in the body means that spaceflight places incredible demands on the organ.

"Environmental stressors, such as high radiation and microgravity, induce a state of oxidative stress," explains Professor Iwao Ohtsu. "To deal with reactive oxygen and nitrogen compounds, the liver uses its limited resources, that is, antioxidant sulfur-containing compounds." The research team conducted novel experiments to compare liver gene expression levels between mice exposed to microgravity, mice exposed to simulated gravity on the International Space Station, and mice at ground level on Earth.

Mice that traveled to space and back had a lower antioxidant capacity because they had lower levels of the sulfur-containing compounds (e.g., ergothioneine, cysteine, and glutathione) that play a role in protecting cells by reducing reactive oxygen compounds, which limits free-radical damage. Overall, many indicators of oxidative stress were evident in the livers of these mice. In addition, there was greater expression of genes related to oxidative stress and sulfur metabolism pathways (which deplete levels of sulfur-containing antioxidant compounds) in mice that had been exposed to space.

Some effects, however, only occurred in mice exposed to microgravity. "Consequently, we were able to identify that some aspects of altered liver metabolism are counteracted by exposure to artificial gravity, whereas those caused by other environmental effects could be treated with alternative solutions, such as the addition of dietary supplements to astronauts' diets," says Professor Ohtsu.

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Giant planets could reach 'maturity' much earlier than previously thought, study reveals

An international team of scientists, in which researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) participate together with other institutions from Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, UK, and Mexico, has been able to measure the masses of the giant planets of the V1298 Tau system, just 20 million year old. Masses for such young giant planets had not been obtained previously, and this is the first evidence that these objects have already reached their final size at very early stages of their evolution. For this study they have used radial velocity measurements from the HARPS-N spectrographs, at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM), and CARMENES, at the Calar Alto Observatory. The results are published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The study, led by the IAC researcher Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, reports the measurement of the masses of two giant planets that orbit the young solar-type star V1298 Tau. They were discovered in 2019 by a team lead by Trevor David (JPL) using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, which allowed the measurement of their sizes, slightly smaller than Jupiter, and of their orbital periods, 24 and 40 days for V1298 Tau b and e, respectively.

"The characterization of very young planets is extraordinarily difficult," says Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, first author of the publication. The parent stars have very high levels of activity and until very recently it was unthinkable to even try ." And he adds: "Only thanks to the combination of detections made with space telescopes, combined with intense radial velocity campaigns from Earth-based observatories and the use of the most advanced analysis techniques, it was possible to begin to see what is happening in such early stages of the evolution of planetary systems ." In fact, for the new measurements of the planetary masses, it was necessary to separate the signals generated by these planets from the signal generated by the star's activity, almost ten times larger.

The study shows that the masses and radii of the planets V1298 Tau b and c are surprisingly similar to those of the giant planets of the Solar System or in other old extra-solar systems. These measurements, which are the first to be obtained of such young giant planets, allow us to test current ideas about the formation of planetary systems. "For many years, theoretical models have indicated that giant planets begin their evolution as bodies with a larger size, and later they contract over hundreds millions or even billions of years '', explains Víctor J. Sánchez Béjar, researcher at the IAC and co-author of the work. "We now know that they can actually reach a size similar to that of the planets in the Solar System in a very short time," he notes.

The study of young systems gives researchers clues about what happened during the infancy of our solar system. "We still do not know if V1298 Tau is a normal case and its evolution is similar to that of most planets or if we are facing an exceptional case; if this were the normal scenario, it would mean that the evolution of planets like Jupiter and Saturn could have been very different from what we think ," comments Nicolas Lodieu, a researcher at the IAC and also a co-author of the work. The results of this work thus help to build a more solid idea of the early evolution of planetary systems like ours.

To achieve the measurement of these masses, the study has required a significant observational effort and the collaboration of multiple observatories and institutions from different countries. It has been necessary to combine radial velocity measurements from various instruments such as the high-resolution HARPS-N ultrastable spectrograph, installed at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory's Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG); the CARMENES high resolution spectrograph, installed at the Calar Alto observatory; the HERMES spectrograph, installed on the Mercator telescope, also at the ORM; and the SES spectrograph, installed in the STELLA telescope at the Teide Observatory. Observations taken from the Las Cumbres Observatory, a network of telescopes located around the world, have been used to continuously monitor the variations of the star's activity.

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