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An international research team, led by Professor Yi Guan and Dr Huachen Zhu of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases and School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia; and scientists from Mainland China, Australia and Egypt revealed that the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus has become enzootic in dromedary camels in Saudi Arabia and diverged into five distinct lineages.

SEATTLE - Evolutionary biologists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Washington and the University of Utah may have solved a century-old evolutionary riddle: How did two related fruit fly species arise from one?

For a long time it has been known that the protein TOR - Target of Rapamycin - controls cell growth and is involved in the development of diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Researchers at the University of Basel's Biozentrum together with scientists from ETH Zurich have now examined the structure of mammalian TOR complex 1 (mTORC1) in more detail. The scientists have revealed its unique architecture in their latest publication in "Science".

Researchers monitoring the unprecedented bloom of toxic algae along the west coast of North America in 2015 found record levels of the algal toxin domoic acid in samples from a wide range of marine organisms. The toxin was also detected for the first time in the muscle tissue or filet of several commercial fish species.

People often choose the unhealthy food because they think it is tastier. Aiming for solutions promoting healthy eating practices and ultimately combating obesity, this research shows that the presence of a mirror in a consumption setting can reduce the perceived tastiness of unhealthy food, which consequently reduces its consumption.

Cleveland . . . A college student working at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History was lead author on the first formal survey of praying mantises in Rwanda, which revealed a 155 percent increase in praying mantis species diversity for the African country. Riley Tedrow, a Case Western Reserve University graduate student pursuing field research for the Museum, participated in two surveys across four locations in Rwanda, including three national parks. The survey was published Oct. 1, 2015 in the journal Zootaxa.

A new analysis of the fossil record shows that a deep pattern in nature remained the same for 300 million years. Then, 6,000 years ago, the pattern was disrupted -- at about the same time that agriculture spread across North America.

"When early humans started farming and became dominant in the terrestrial landscape, we see this dramatic restructuring of plant and animal communities," said University of Vermont biologist Nicholas Gotelli, an expert on statistics and the senior author on the new study.

Clinical trials are crucial in determining the effectiveness of treatments and directly influence practical and policy decisions. However, their results could be even detrimental to real-life patients if data is fabricated or subject to errors.

For the last 30 years entomologists all over the world have been gathering together on a regular basis, led by their fascination with one of the three most captivating with their colours and numbers beetle families. The most cardinal of these gatherings is the Symposium on Leaf Beetles, nowadays organised every two years, which traditionally culminates into special issues to hold the quintessence from the findings, talks and debates and keep them safe for the future generations. For a fifth time in a row, the latest volume is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

Integrins help cells communicate with and adapt to their environment. Also cancer cells depend on their properties to survive and spread throughout the body. Now scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have successfully developed a small, highly active molecule that binds to a specific integrin that operates in many types of cancer. In the future it may allow patient-specific diagnoses and subsequent targeted treatment of tumor cells.

UW researchers working in collaboration with Kineta Inc. and the University of Texas at Galveston have shown that making a drug-like molecule to turn on innate immunity can induce genes to control infection in several -known viruses. The findings being published in the Journal of Virology Dec. 18 show promising evidence for creating a broad spectrum antiviral that can suppress a range of RNA viruses, including West Nile, dengue virus, hepatitis C, influenza A, respiratory syncytial, Nipah, Lassa and Ebola.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- You've probably never heard of 'sphingolipids' before. But these curiously named organic compounds play a vital role in one of humanity's most well-known diseases: cancer.

While the demand for ivory has put elephants under incredible pressure from poachers, their rich social networks have remained remarkably steady. That's according to evidence on the grouping patterns among adult female elephants living in northern Kenya over a 16-year period, which show that daughters often step up to take the place of their fallen mothers. The findings are reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 17.

A person's first infection with the influenza virus likely stimulates the production of key antibodies that then shape later immune responses to different seasonal influenza strains. In a study published December 17th in Cell Reports, Harvard researchers provide insights on how exposure to the flu impacts the immune system, which could be valuable for designing more effective and longer-lasting vaccines.

Research carried out at the University of Exeter has advanced understanding of how some damaging bacteria behave and may pave the way for new and more targeted antibiotics.

A study led by Dr. Nicholas Harmer, Senior Lecturer in Structural Biochemistry at the University of Exeter, published today in the journal Chemistry and Biology, provides new information about the way bacterial cells build up a defensive sugar coating and how that process can be interrupted.