Québec Science magazine has published its list of 2025’s Top 10 breakthroughs by Quebec researchers. Four McGill research papers, including one from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, are listed.
Their topics range from prehistoric fossils to female fertility, highlighting the range of expertise at the University.
“Congratulations to the outstanding McGill researchers whose work has been recognized among Quebec Science’s Top 10 Discoveries of the Year,” said Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President, Research and Innovation. “This McGill-led research, which uncovered Canada’s first dinosaur-era dragonfly fossil, advanced breakthroughs in the science of pain and fertility, and shed new light on the impact of Canada’s methane emissions, strengthens Quebec’s leadership in science while contributing solutions that resonate worldwide.”
McGill is no stranger to the annual Top 10 list; a study on greenhouses gases was among the honourees for 2024, and three McGill studies were highlighted for 2023.
Communication between body muscle and the brain influences fertility
McGill researchers discovered that communication between body muscle and the pituitary gland may play an unexpected role in female infertility, which could lead to new treatment options.
“Until now, it was not known that these two organs talked to each other or how they did so,” said senior author Daniel Bernard, a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. “This discovery opens up a new chapter in our understanding of the body and its complex connections.”
Working with mice, researchers found that lowering myostatin – a protein produced in the muscles – delayed puberty and reduced fertility. Restoring it boosted the pituitary-made hormone that promotes the maturation of eggs in the ovaries, but whether it can restore fertility is still under investigation.
The breakthrough opens the door to exploring whether natural variations in myostatin levels could explain the timing of puberty, missed periods in female athletes and infertility where no cause is apparent. Learn more.
McGill team discovers Canada’s first dinosaur-era dragonfly fossil
In a first for Canadian paleontology, McGill researchers discovered a Cretaceous fossilized dragonfly wing in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. The find helps fill a major 30-million-year-old gap in the evolutionary history of dragonflies.
“This is the first ever dinosaur-aged dragonfly found in Canada,” said André Mueller, lead author of the study and a Master’s student in the Department of Biology. “Its wingspan was about the width of a human hand.”
The team named the new species Cordualadensa acorni, and because of its remarkable distinction and unique anatomy even created a new family, Cordualadensidae, to classify it. It was discovered during a vertebrate paleontology field course led by Prof. Hans Larsson.
When using music to alleviate pain, tempo matters
Research over the past decade has shown that whether we speak, sing, play an instrument or just tap along to music, we each have our own characteristic rhythm. Known as our spontaneous production rate, it is thought to be tied to our circadian rhythms.
A McGill research team discovered that music played at this rate has the best chance of providing pain relief, suggesting it may be possible to reduce a patient’s level of pain by taking a piece of music they like and adjusting the tempo to match.
“It is possible the neural oscillations that are responsible for driving our preferred tempo at a particular rate are more easily pulled along when a musical tempo is closer to our own natural tempo,” said Mathieu Roy, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill and co-senior author of the research paper, along with Professor Caroline Palmer. “As a result, they are pulled away from the neural frequencies associated with pain.” Learn more.
Methane leaks from dormant oil and gas wells in Canada are seven times worse than thought
There are more than 425,000 inactive oil and gas wells across Canada, mostly in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
A McGill team lead by Mary Kang, an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, directly measured methane emissions from 494 wells across five provinces using a chamber-based method and analyzed well-level data such as age, depth and plugging status. The national emissions estimate they arrived at – 230 kilotonnes per year – is sevenfold higher than the 34 kilotonnes reported in Canada’s National Inventory Report.
The findings spotlight a major gap in the country’s official greenhouse gas inventory and raise urgent questions about how methane leaks are monitored, reported and managed.
“Non-producing wells are one of the most uncertain sources of methane emissions in Canada,” said Kang. “If we don’t have accurate estimates of methane emissions, we can’t design effective climate policies.” Learn more.
Photo on the top row, left to right: Alexandre V. Demers-Potvin, André S. Mueller and Hans Larsson; Mary Kang. Bottom row, left to right: Caroline Palmer, Mathieu Roy and Wenbo Yi; Luisina Ongaro and Daniel Bernard (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics).
