It has a funny name - coxsackievirus - but there's nothing funny about how this tiny germ and its close relatives sicken their hosts.
Colorado State University researchers led by Olve Peersen, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, have designed a genetic modification to one type of coxsackievirus that strips its ability to replicate, mutate and cause illness. They hope their work could lead to a vaccine for this and other viruses like it.
HOUSTON - (July 15, 2016) - Sooner is always better when it comes to diagnosing an illness and this is especially true when it comes to lung disease in premature infants, since it can have an impact on a child's health in the long-term. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine who focus on bronchopulmonary dysplasia and pulmonary hypertension, a common lung disease in premature infants, have shown that echocardiography can be used to detect the pulmonary hypertension in neonatal mice at an earlier time point than previously thought.
LSU researchers Jeremy M. Brown and Eric N. Rittmeyer, in collaboration with colleagues at Florida State University, are shedding light on how often and where species hybridize through time, thanks to the rediscovery of 40-year-old tissue samples preserved at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, or LSUMNS. In a recent study published in Ecology and Evolution, they show that two species of chorus frogs now form hybrids across a much wider area of Louisiana and Mississippi than they did just 30-40 years earlier.
Scientists have captured new images of a calcium-shuttling molecule that has been linked to aggressive cancers. The three-dimensional structure could help researchers develop novel therapies and diagnostic tools for diseases that are caused by a malfunction in calcium adsorption.
DENVER, Colo. - July 14, 2016 - It is common knowledge that the modern turtle shell is largely used for protection. No other living vertebrate has so drastically altered its body to form such an impenetrable protective structure as the turtle. However, a new study by an international group of paleontologists suggests that the broad ribbed proto shell on the earliest partially shelled fossil turtles was initially an adaptation, for burrowing underground, not for protection.
A type of immunotherapy that has shown promising results against cancer could also be used against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
In a study published July 11 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Virology, researchers from the UCLA AIDS Institute and Center for AIDS Research found that recently discovered potent antibodies can be used to generate a specific type of cell called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, that can be used to kill cells infected with HIV-1.
The fates of various cells in our bodies--whether they become skin or another type of tissue, for example--are controlled by genetic switches. In a new study, Caltech scientists investigate the switch for T cells, which are immune cells produced in the thymus that destroy virus-infected cells and cancers. The researchers wanted to know how cells make the choice to become T cells.
The transition from hunter-gatherer to sedentary farming 10,000 years ago occurred in multiple neighbouring but genetically distinct populations according to research by an international team including UCL.
"It had been widely assumed that these first farmers were from a single, genetically homogeneous population. However, we've found that there were deep genetic differences in these early farming populations, indicating very distinct ancestries," said corresponding author Dr Garrett Hellenthal, UCL Genetics.
La Jolla, Calif., July 14, 2016 (embargoed until 2:00 P.M. EST) -- Dietary restriction, or limited food intake without malnutrition, has beneficial effects on longevity in many species, including humans. A new study from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), published today in PLoS Genetics, represents a major advance in understanding how dietary restriction leads to these advantages.
(New York, NY - July, 14, 2016 2:00 pm ET) Despite recent achievements in the development of cancer immunotherapies, only a small group of patients typically respond to them. Predictive markers of disease course and response to immunotherapy are urgently needed. To address this need, researchers at The Tisch Cancer Institute (TCI) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a new method of analyzing multiple tissue markers using only one slide of a tumor section to better understand immune response occurring locally.
Several hunter-gatherer populations independently adopted farming in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period, then went on to sow the seeds of farming far and wide, a new analysis suggests. The results contribute to the debate about whether a single source population in farming's cradle spread the culture and genes associated with the hunter-gatherer to farmer transition, or whether multiple different farmer groups, potentially with multiple, localized domestications, played a role in spreading the technology.
Species "intactness" has dropped below what one research group considers the safe limit across about 58% of Earth's terrestrial surface, a new study reports. The results, part of perhaps the most comprehensive quantification of global biodiversity change to date, provide key insights into the current extent of biodiversity losses, which have been lacking to date. The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) captures changes in species abundance.
In this Policy Forum, Neil Ferguson et al. use results from a model of virus transmission to analyze the current Zika epidemic in Latin America, suggesting that it may have already peaked. Evidence increasingly suggests a causal link between Zika infection and microcephaly, as well as other serious congenital anomalies, prompting the World Health Organization to declare the Zika epidemic an international health concern in February 2016.
When doctors hurl toxic death at cancer cells, often a few will survive and come back. A family of enzymes called KDM5 histone demethylases is emerging as important for this resilience, and drugs that inhibit KDM5 enzymes could be active in treating several types of cancer.