Body

The colonization of Madagascar remains one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world. Situated off the East African coast, and many thousands of kilometers from Southeast Asia, Madagascar is nonetheless home to people who speak a language that is closely related to those spoken in the Pacific Area. While genetic research has confirmed that the inhabitants of Madagascar do indeed share close ancestry with Malaysians and Polynesians, archaeologists have struggled for decades to find any evidence for their early presence on the island.

A pinch of poison is good for a body, at least if it's heme.

In minuscule amounts, it works in cells as an essential catalyst called a cofactor and as a signaling molecule to trigger other processes. Now, for the first known time, researchers have tracked those activities inside of cells.

An assessment of genomic diversity in the United States of America clarifies the role of pre-Civil War admixture and early 20th century transit routes in shaping the migration history and genomic diversity among African-Americans communities. The new study, by Simon Gravel of McGill University and colleagues, will publish on May 27, 2016 in PLOS Genetics.

Zika virus can infect and replicate in immune cells from the placenta, without killing them, scientists have discovered. The finding may explain how the virus can pass through the placenta of a pregnant woman, on its way to infect developing brain cells in her fetus.

The results are scheduled for publication on May 27 in Cell Host & Microbe.

One of Zika's mysteries is how the virus passes from an infected mother, through the placenta, to a developing fetus. The route may not be direct either -- transmission via multiple cell types may be necessary. A study appearing May 27, 2016 in Cell Host & Microbe supports the possibility that placental immune cells called Hofbauer cells, which have direct access to fetal blood vessels, are one cell type involved.

New research presented at this year's Euroanaesthesia congress (London, May 27-30) addresses the importance of discussing potential pregnancy and providing pregnancy testing for women of reproductive age before they undergo surgery, so that harm to mother and baby can be avoided.

A U of T Engineering team has designed a simpler way to keep therapeutic proteins where they are needed for long periods of time. The discovery is a potential game-changer for the treatment of chronic illnesses or injuries that often require multiple injections or daily pills.

National Science Foundation, Environmental Research and Education Foundation, American Coal Ash Association

DURHAM, N.C. -- A study of the content of rare earth elements in U.S. coal ashes shows that coal mined from the Appalachian Mountains could be the proverbial golden goose for hard-to-find materials critical to clean energy and other emerging technologies.

Information flow in cells relies on calcium as a key agent in several signalling pathways. Calcium dependent signalling is crucial in nearly every aspect of life - muscle movement, immune reactions, nerve function, light sensing and many such processes. In fact, one could consider any cellular function, and calcium signalling is probably involved in it in some way. Now, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore have discovered a new player in calcium signalling pathways - a protein named Septin 7 that functions as a 'molecular brake' to Orai activation.

Testing cancers for 'addiction' to a gene that boosts cell growth can pick out patients who may respond to a targeted drug under development, a major new study reports.

By measuring the number of copies of just one gene from cancer DNA circulating in the bloodstream, scientists were able to identify the patients with stomach cancer who were most likely to respond to treatment.

T cell receptors are an important part of the human immune system. They are able to switch their conformation from an inactive to an active state spontaneously without any antigens present. Cholesterol binds and stabilizes inactive receptors, giving it a decisive role in the activation of a T cell. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schamel and Dr. Susana Minguet, immunologists from the University of Freiburg, and their team of researchers were able to demonstrate this in a study that has been recently published in the journal Immunity.

DARIEN, IL - A new study found that military service members who reported insomnia symptoms or short sleep durations were less resilient than members who reported healthy sleep hygiene. Several physical and mental variables were evaluated as indices of resilience. These variables were, self-rated general health, lost workdays, deployment, completion of service term, and health care utilization.

Long sleep duration was less predicative of resilience outcomes.

May 27, 2016 - Simultaneous transplantation of a "composite" skull and scalp flap plus a kidney and pancreas--all from the same donor--provided excellent outcomes for a patient with a non-healing scalp defect and declining organ kidney and pancreas function, according to a report in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

RICHLAND, Wash. - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are playing a central role as the nation devotes more than $500 million to understand communities of microorganisms and their role in climate science, food production and human health.

Scientists Janet Jansson and Ljiljana Paša-Toli are part of a core group of scientists advising the White House on issues related to research around the microbiome, a term that describes a community of microbes in a given environment.

Finding new, more effective and personalised treatments for cancer is the challenge of many researchers. A challenge that has been successfully met by a team from Inserm led by Stéphane Rocchi (Inserm Unit 1065, "Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine"), which has just synthesised and developed new drugs for melanoma. One of them, known as HA15, reduces the viability of melanoma cells without being toxic for normal cells. This work has just been published in the journal Cancer Cell.