Researchers at Queen's University have made a significant breakthrough that may benefit patients with bowel cancer.
Dr Sandra van Schaeybroeck and her team have discovered how two genes cause bowel cancer cells to become resistant to treatments used against the disease. The research, which was funded by Cancer Research UK, was published this month in the prestigious international journal Cell Reports.
Despite a deluge of new information about the diversity and distribution of plants and animals around the globe, "big data" has yet to make a mark on conservation efforts to preserve the planet's biodiversity. But that may soon change.
A new model developed by University of California, Berkeley, biologist Brent Mishler and his colleagues in Australia leverages this growing mass of data – much of it from newly digitized museum collections – to help pinpoint the best areas to set aside as preserves and to help biologists understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
A new approach to measuring biodiversity has uncovered some biologically important but currently unprotected areas in Western Australia, while confirming the significance of the world heritage listed Wet Tropics rainforests in the country's north-east.
In a paper published yesterday (Friday 18 July) in Nature Communications, scientists from CSIRO, University of California, University of Canberra, the Australian Tropical Herbarium at James Cook University and University of New South Wales applied the new method to Australia's iconic Acacia.
The spreading of a cancerous tumour from one part of the body to another may occur through pure chance instead of key genetic mutations, a new study has shown.
Physicists from the University of Dundee and Arizona State University have used a statistical model to show that the formation of a new secondary tumour—commonly known as a metastasis—could just as likely derive from "common" cancer cells that circulate in the bloodstream, as from "specialist" cancer cells.
HIV-positive adults in high income countries face a substantially reduced risk of death from AIDS-related causes, cardiovascular disease, and liver disease compared with a decade ago, according to a large international study published in The Lancet.
Older adults are at a greater danger of falling when walking for utilitarian purposes such as shopping and appointments than when walking for recreation, according to a study from UMass Medical School.
Bottom Line: Vision loss is associated with a higher likelihood of not working.
Author: Cheryl E. Sherrod, M.D., M.P.H., of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, and colleagues.
Background: People who do not work have poorer physical and mental health, are less socially integrated and have lower self-confidence.
How the Study Was Conducted: The authors analyzed employment rates by vision impairment in a nationally representative sample of working-age Americans.
Not unlike looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, a team of Michigan State University researchers have found a gene that could be key to the development of stem cells – cells that can potentially save millions of lives by morphing into practically any cell in the body.
The gene, known as ASF1A, was not discovered by the team. However, it is at least one of the genes responsible for the mechanism of cellular reprogramming, a phenomenon that can turn one cell type into another, which is key to the making of stem cells.
Go ahead and call Rachel Dutton's research cheesy if you must. As far as she's concerned, it's anything but an insult.
A Bauer Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Center for Systems Biology, Dutton and her lab study cheese – or more precisely – the bacteria and fungi that live on cheese, in an effort to better understand how microbial communities form.
The genetic blueprint is an invaluable resource to plant science researchers and breeders. For the first time, they have at their disposal a set of tools enabling them to rapidly locate specific genes on individual wheat chromosomes throughout the genome. Jorge Dubcovsky, Professor at the University of California Davis, USA, says that these results "have been a fantastic resource for our laboratory. The development of genome specific primers, which used to take several weeks of work, can now be done in hours.
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (July 18, 2014) Feeding a growing human population without increasing stresses on Earth's strained land and water resources may seem like an impossible challenge. But according to a new report by researchers at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, focusing efforts to improve food systems on a few specific regions, crops and actions could make it possible to both meet the basic needs of 3 billion more people and decrease agriculture's environmental footprint.
A cross-disciplinary team is calling for public discussion about a potential new way to solve longstanding global ecological problems by using an emerging technology called "gene drives." The advance could potentially lead to powerful new ways of combating malaria and other insect-borne diseases, controlling invasive species and promoting sustainable agriculture.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Closely related organisms share most of their genes, but these similarities belie major differences in behavior, intelligence, and physical appearance. For example, we share nearly 99% of our genes with chimps, our closest relatives on the great "tree of life." Still, the differences between the two species are unmistakable. If not just genes, what else accounts for the disparities?
Viral relics show cancer’s ‘footprint’ on our evolution Cancer has left its ‘footprint’ on our evolution, according to a study which examined how the relics of ancient viruses are preserved in the genomes of 38 mammal species.