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An international team of scientists led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa researcher Joanne Yew may have discovered a new and effective way to control insect pests that are a threat to agriculture and humans. Yew and her team identified a gene in vinegar flies responsible for the insect's waterproof coating, which provides them protection from microbes and environmental stress. They nicknamed the gene spidey and announced the findings in a recently published study in PLOS Genetics.

Scientists from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered that modifications to a protein called RUNX3 may promote cancer progression. The results of the study were published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in June 2016.

Peregrine Falcons, in their normal habitat on isolated cliffs, mate for life. But some 25 pairs now nest on Chicago skyscrapers and bridges, and city living has them in much closer quarters than they used before humans dominated the landscape. A group of Field Museum and University of Illinois, Chicago scientists investigated whether typical breeding patterns hold true for these new city-dwellers and, in a paper published in PLOS ONE, confirmed that even in the big city, the birds that prey together, stay together.

Like our brains, individual cells also have a kind of memory, which enables them to store information. To make this possible, the cells require positive feedback from their proteins. The research group led by Prof. Attila Becskei at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has now discovered that the proteins need to form pairs in these feedback loops to store information.

Cellular memory works only with protein pairs

Besides mushrooms such as truffles or morels, also many yeast and mould fungi, as well as other filamentous fungi belong to the Ascomycota phylum. They produce metabolic products which can act as natural antibiotics to combat bacteria and other pathogens. Penicillin, one of the oldest antibiotic agents, is probably the best known example. Since then, fungi have been regarded as a promising biological source of antibiotic compounds. Researchers expect that there is also remedy for resistant pathogens among these metabolites.

It depends on the stimulus

A new type of HIV drug currently being tested works in an unusual way, scientists in the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit, a collaboration between EMBL and Heidelberg University Hospital, have found. They also discovered that when the virus became resistant to early versions of these drugs, it did not do so by blocking or preventing their effects, but rather by circumventing them. The study, published online today in Science, presents the most detailed view yet of part of the immature form of HIV.

DARIEN, IL - A new study found a six-fold increase in the age-adjusted prevalence of any sleep disorder diagnosis over an 11-year period among U.S. veterans. The largest increases were identified in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), other mental disorders, or combat experience. Results also show that the prevalence of PTSD tripled during the study period.

Researchers and physicians have grappled with the role of "adjuvant," or post-surgery, chemotherapy for patients with early-stage colon cancer, even for cancers considered high risk. Now researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have found an association between the use of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage 2 colon cancer and improved survival -- regardless of a patient's age or risk, or even of the specific chemotherapy administered.

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.