GALVESTON, Texas - In collaboration with colleagues from Mexico, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers were the first to directly connect the Aedes aegypti mosquito with Zika transmission in the Americas, during an outbreak in southern Mexico. The findings are available in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The findings will help scientists to better target efforts for controlling the population of mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.
The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite traveled above tropical storm Estelle and found heavy rainfall occurring on its eastern side. That heavy area of rainfall was later found west of center.
Heavy rainfall within a tropical cyclone can shift as the storm continues to change. Such was the case with Estelle.
Using genomic data from three lizard species, City College of New York-led researchers gleaned insights not available before on the impact of climate change on the distribution of animal populations in South American forests. The findings improve ways of modeling the distribution of biodiversity in the past and future.
Baby songbirds in the nest face naturally tough odds. Unable to fly, they are easy prey for cats, snakes, and even other birds. But the perils don't end when the young birds venture out from the nest. Now, new research from the University of Missouri shows that the risks baby migratory songbirds face in the nest are not necessarily the same out of the nest. The findings may have important implications for migratory songbird conservation.
Chapel Hill, NC - A better understanding of HIV latency is the key to eradicating the virus researchers at the University of North Carolina and partner institutions write in a perspective in the journal Science. Worldwide, 37 million people are living with HIV. A cure has proved elusive due to viral latency - a period when the virus remains alive, but dormant in body thereby eluding the immune system.
Using novel computational and biochemical approaches, scientists have accurately designed and built from scratch 10 large protein icosahedra--polyhedra with 20 faces--similar to viral capsids that carry viral DNA. The designed structures are made of two different engineered proteins, present in 60 copies each, which self-assemble into icosahedra. They have a wide variety of potential applications, from targeted drug delivery to the development of more effective vaccines, the researchers say.
Like people, animals have personalities. And their personalities differ, sometimes hugely, on traits like shyness and aggressiveness. Among the big questions are where those differences come from, why they exist, and how they are maintained. Now researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have uncovered an unexpected benefit of these personalities: to protect societies from extreme temperature changes.
In the late 1970s, a new drug held the promise of wiping out a disease that currently affects more than 250 million people. Nearly 40 years later, the drug, praziquantel, has yet to make a dent in the global burden of schistosomiasis, an infestation of parasitic flatworms that can cause liver failure, bladder cancer and lasting cognitive impairment. A new Stanford-led analysis of national health interventions over the past century shows that controlling the snail populations through ecological interventions keeps the disease in check more effectively than drugs alone.
DALLAS - July 21 2016 - Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a new way that tuberculosis bacteria get into the body, revealing a potential therapeutic angle to explore.
For all the anxiety today about the bacteria in our gut being under constant assault by antibiotics, stress and bad diets, it turns out that a lot of the bacteria in our intestines have been with us for at least 15 million years, since we were pre-human apes.
A new comparison of the gut microbiomes of humans, chimps (our closest ancestor), bonobos and gorillas shows that the evolution of two of the major families of bacteria in these apes' guts exactly parallels the evolution of their hosts.
Approximately 25 to 50 percent of a living tree is made up of water, depending on the species and time of year. The water stored in trees has previously been considered just a minor part of the water cycle, but a new study by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists shows otherwise.
A University of Toronto scientist has developed a new method for identifying the raw ingredients necessary to build 'biologics', a powerful class of medications that has revolutionized treatment of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and some cancers.
It has remained frustratingly difficult to develop a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, in part because the virus, once in our bodies, rapidly reproduces and evolves to escape being killed by the immune system.
"The viruses are constantly producing mutants that evade detection," said Joshua Plotkin, a professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Biology in the School of Arts & Sciences. "A single person with HIV may have millions of strains of the virus circulating in the body."
DALLAS - July 21, 2016 -- UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have identified a protein termed ASCL1 that is essential to the development of small cell lung cancer and that, when deleted in the lungs of mice, prevents the cancer from forming.
The new findings identify ASCL1 as an important therapeutic target for small cell lung cancer, for which there have been few changes in treatment for the past 30 years.
Over a century of research has shined light on the once-murky innards of our cells, from the genes that serve as our "blueprints" to the proteins and other molecules that are our cellular taskmasters.