Body

Bacteria and other prokaryotes have been around for billions of years because they managed to develop successful evolutionary strategies for survival. For instance, they possess defense mechanisms that allow them to discriminate between self and non-self DNA in the event of a virus infection. These defense mechanisms are called restriction-modification systems and are based on the balance between the two enzymes M (methyltransferase) and R (restriction endonuclease).

Black Death, mid-fourteenth century plague, is undoubtedly the most famous historical pandemic. Within only five years it killed 30-50% of the European population. Unfortunately it didn't stop there. Plague resurged throughout Europe leading to continued high mortality and social unrest over the next three centuries.

The immune system exercises constant vigilance to protect the body from external threats--including what we eat and drink. A careful balancing act plays out as digested food travels through the intestine. Immune cells must remain alert to protect against harmful pathogens like Salmonella, but their activity also needs to be tempered since an overreaction can lead to too much inflammation and permanent tissue damage.

Since the 1960s, computer chips have been built using a process called photolithography. But in the past five years, chip features have gotten smaller than the wavelength of light, which has required some ingenious modifications of photolithographic processes. Keeping up the rate of circuit miniaturization that we've come to expect -- as predicted by Moore's Law -- will eventually require new manufacturing techniques.

When Charles Darwin visited the Azores islands in the 19th Century, the birds he observed were familiar to him. However, if he had travelled there 500 years before, he would have found an ornithofauna as particular as that of the Galápagos. The recent discovery in these islands and in Madeira of five extinct species of rail, which lost the ability to fly due to having evolved on islands, confirms how fragile they are in the face of changes to their habitat like the ones that must have occurred after the first visits by humans over 500 years ago.

Human stem cells that are capable of becoming any other kind of cell in the body have previously only been acquired and cultivated with difficulty. Scientists at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in the Helmholtz Association have now presented details of a method to detect such pluripotent cells in a cell culture and preserve them in the laboratory.

Fertility experts in Southampton and the Netherlands have identified a specific genetic pattern in the womb that could predict whether or not IVF treatment is likely to be successful.

Study co-lead Professor Nick Macklon, chair in obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Southampton, said the discovery would help clinicians understand why IVF fails repeatedly in some women.

Cancer is caused by the growth of an abnormal cell which harbours DNA mutations, "copy errors" occurring during the DNA replication process. If these errors do take place quite regularly without having any damaging effect on the organism, some of them affect a specific part of the genome and cause the proliferation of the mutant cell, which then invades the organism. A few years ago, scientists have identified an important mutagen which lies in our own cells: APOBEC, a protein that usually functions as protecting agent against viral infection.

MIAMI, JANUARY 22, 2016 -- Researchers from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (Sylvester) today published a study showing that African-American pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma patients have inferior overall survival to their white and Hispanic peers. The findings, published in the journal Pediatric Blood & Cancer, are the largest study yet on racial and ethnic disparity in the pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma population.

Researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) have identified how two proteins control the growth of the heart and its adaptation to high blood pressure (hypertension). Lead investigator Dr. Guadalupe Sabio explains that the results, described in Nature Communications, not only increase our understanding of the mechanisms used by cardiac cells to grow and adapt, but could also help in the design of new strategies to treat heart failure caused by excessive growth of the heart. The study, carried out by Dr.

It's a risky business being a reed warbler. Not only do these tiny birds embark on an annual migration of some 5,000 km from their West African winter quarters to breeding grounds in the north, but they are also 'hosts' to the cuckoo, a species that lays its eggs in other birds' nests and takes no further part in raising its offspring. When the cuckoo chick hatches, it pushes the reed warbler eggs and young out of the nest. As sole occupant, it tricks its warbler 'parents' into supplying its voracious appetite until it fledges.

Leaders of the Syrian-American Medical Society describe their efforts in bolstering what remains of the Syrian healthcare system and the health care context in which those efforts take place in their article, "War is the Enemy of Health: Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine in War-torn Syria." The article is published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

BOWEL cancer is more likely to be diagnosed at the earliest stage if it is picked up by screening, according to new figures* released by Cancer Research UK and Public Health England's National Cancer Intelligence Network today (Friday).

For the first time, data shows the stage (one to four) at which cancer is detected by the different routes to diagnosis - through screening, by a GP referral**, or as an emergency.

Washington, DC (January 21, 2016) -- The health of blood cells' energy-producing mitochondria may predict a person's risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings could lead to improvements in the prevention and treatment of CKD.

Rattlesnake, zebra and peacock plants have a new wild relative, discovered by Rodolfo Flores, Panamanian botanist and intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Helen Kennedy, herbarium research associate at the University of California at Riverside, and Flores named the species Calathea galdamesiana in honor of STRI's herbarium assistant, Carmen Galdames.

"Carmen has been the direct or indirect teacher for many botanists in Panama," Flores said. "She's extremely dedicated and is an example for us to follow."