Body

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have provided the first crystal clear molecular blueprint of Globomycin - an antibacterial candidate with promise in stemming the onrushing post-antibiotic tide.

Crucially, their blueprint may aid the design of better globomycin analogues and the exploration of thousands of other potential new antibiotic solutions to common but devastating infections.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), have created the first comprehensive, cross-species genomic comparison of all 20 known species of Leptospira, a bacterial genus that can cause disease and death in livestock and other domesticated mammals, wildlife and humans.

Researchers have harvested a robust collection of antibodies from a survivor of the recent Ebola outbreak, and one subset of antibodies was found to be particularly potent for neutralizing the virus in mice. This group of antibodies, which target the stalk of a particular protein in the virus's membrane, could lead to new therapies to fight Ebola. Plasma harvested from one survivor of the 2014 Zaire outbreak demonstrated a particularly strong immune response to the virus three months after infection, and so Zachary Bornholdt et al. analyzed this donor's immune system in greater detail.

Science is publishing an Erratum to the Report "Ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture throughout the African continent" published online on 8 October 2015. The results of this study were affected by a bioinformatics error on the part of the authors. Their conclusion of a migration into East Africa from Western Eurasia, and more precisely from a source genetically close to the early Neolithic farmers, is not affected.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (February 18, 2016) - When it comes to selecting for B cells that produce antibodies to hostile viruses and bacteria, the immune system hedges its bets. Within the germinal centers that form in the body's lymph nodes during an immune response are B cells that produce antibodies with a range of affinities to an invading pathogen. Darwinian-like cycles of mutation and selection of the fittest lead to an increase in the average affinity across the B cell population.

PRINCETON, N.J.--As world leaders grapple with containing the Zika virus, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa provides valuable lessons for how to respond to infectious disease epidemics, according to a policy report published by researchers at Princeton University and the Wellcome Trust.

Rebuilding local health care infrastructures, improving capacity to respond more quickly to outbreaks as well as considering multiple perspectives across disciplines during decision-making processes are among the key recommendations the authors propose.

RICHLAND, Wash. - Nature's figured it out already, how to best break down food into fuel. Now scientists have caught up, showing that fungi found in the guts of goats, horses and sheep could help fill up your gas tank too.

The researchers report in the journal Science on Feb. 18 that these anaerobic gut fungi perform as well as the best fungi engineered by industry in their ability to convert plant material into sugars that are easily transformed into fuel and other products.

Tyrosinase is a multifunctional copper-containing enzyme widely distributed in microorganisms as well as plants and animals which has a primordial role in melanin biosynthesis thus impacting on skin color and pigmentation. This particular enzyme has the ability to catalyze the hydroxylation of L-tyrosine toL-DOPA and further oxidize L-DOPA to dopaquinones which are considered as boosters of melanogenesis.

The mitochondrion isn't the bacterium it was in its prime, say two billion years ago. Since getting consumed by our common single-celled ancestor the "energy powerhouse" organelle has lost most of its 2,000+ genes, likely to the nucleus. There are still a handful left--depending on the organism--but the question is why. One explanation, say a mathematician and biologist who analyzed gene loss in mitochondria over evolutionary time, is that mitochondrial DNA is too important to encode inside the nucleus and has thus evolved to resist the damaging environment inside of the mitochondrion.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Engineered gene drives, which have the potential to spread desirable genes throughout wild populations or to suppress harmful species, have received a lot of recent attention because of their potential to control organisms, such as mosquitoes that carry diseases such as Zika virus, malaria and dengue fever.

For women with the most common type of breast cancer, a new way to analyze magnetic resonance images (MRI) data appears to reliably distinguish between patients who would need only hormonal treatment and those who also need chemotherapy, researchers from Case Western Reserve University report.

The analysis may provide women diagnosed with estrogen positive-receptor (ER-positive) breast cancer answers far faster than current tests and, due to its expected low cost, open the door to this kind of testing worldwide.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study scheduled for Feb. 18, 2016 online publication in the journal Cell Reports models Early T-Cell Precursor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ETP-ALL), discovering inactivation of the gene EZH2 as a driver and inroad to a potential therapeutic target in the disease.

Mouse fathers under psychological stress were more likely to have offspring with high blood sugar compared to their unstressed counterparts. In a study appearing February 18 in Cell Metabolism, researchers link this difference to an epigenetic change in the stressed dad's sperm--a change that they could prevent by blocking the father's stress hormones. The study adds to growing evidence that a male's life experience can be passed down through more than his genetic code alone.

Researchers have spent decades trying to replace the insulin-producing pancreatic cells, called beta cells, that are lost in diabetes. Now a team of researchers, reporting Feb. 18, 2016 in Cell Stem Cell, have discovered that tissue from the lower stomach has the greatest potential to be reprogrammed into a beta-cell state. The researchers took samples of this tissue from mice and grew them into "mini-organs" that produced insulin when transplanted back into the animals.

Gut microbial species transferred from healthy children to mice can counter the detrimental effects caused by microbes from undernourished children. The study showing this goes on to identify certain species of microbe that offset malnutrition's negative effects, suggesting the possible role of the microbiota as a therapeutic intervention for malnutrition. For millions of children worldwide who experience the condition, one that can result in stunted growth, and that has been very hard to treat, these findings hold important implications.