Body

Cells have finger-like projections called filopodia that they use to feel their surroundings. They can detect the chemical environment and they can 'feel' their physical surroundings using ultrasensitive sensors. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute shows how the finger-like structures can extend themselves, contract and bend in dynamic movements.

On Christmas Eve, 2002, 2-year-old Bryce Faber was diagnosed with a deadly cancer called neuroblastoma. The toddler's treatment, in addition to surgery, included massive amounts of radiation followed by even more massive amounts of antibiotics, and it no doubt saved his life. But those mega-doses of antibiotics, while staving off infections in his immunosuppressed body, caused a permanent side effect: deafness.

Sensory hair cell loss is the major cause of hearing loss and balance disorders and the postnatal mammalian inner ear harbors progenitor cells which have the potential for hair cell regeneration - and hearing recovery - but the mechanisms that control their proliferation and hair cell regeneration are yet to be determined.

Famine, drug abuse and even stress can "silence" certain genes, causing health problems in generations to come. Scientists have been pursuing therapies that change gene expression in parents in order to help their children. A new study from scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) suggests this is possible. The research showed that the offspring of mice treated with a drug also had delayed onset and reduced symptoms of Huntington's disease, an inherited, degenerative disease that causes a loss of motor skills, cognitive impairment and death.

Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have created a statistical model that measures the proportion of cancer incidence, across many tissue types, caused mainly by random mutations that occur when stem cells divide. By their measure, two-thirds of adult cancer incidence across tissues can be explained primarily by "bad luck," when these random mutations occur in genes that can drive cancer growth, while the remaining third are due to environmental factors and inherited genes.

A healthy and robust immune response may depend greatly upon what lies beneath. In a new paper published in Science, researchers report the surprising discovery that fat cells below the skin help protect us from bacteria - and thus skin infections,

The human body's defense against microbial infection is complex, multi-tiered and involves numerous cell types, culminating in the arrival of neutrophils and monocytes - specialized cells that literally devour targeted pathogens.

By targeting telomeres with a small molecule called 6-thiodG, that takes advantage of the cell's 'biological clock' to kill cancer cells and shrink tumor growth, researchers may have a new therapy.

A MERTK gene defect responsible for a recently identified form of progressive retinal atrophy in Swedish vallhund dogs has been discovered. This discovery opens the door to the development of therapies for diseases that cause blindness both in dogs and humans.(10.1371/journal.pone.0111941)

The first patient was dosed in a Phase 1b clinical trial of SYN-004, an investigational oral beta-lactamase enzyme for the prevention of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infection, antibiotic-associated diarrhea and secondary antibiotic-resistant infections in patients receiving intravenous (IV) beta-lactam antibiotic therapy.

The American Cancer Society's annual cancer statistics report finds that a 22% drop in cancer mortality over two decades led to the avoidance of more than 1.5 million cancer deaths that would have occurred if peak rates had persisted.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne parasitic disease that kills approximately 600,000 people every year. Several different parasite species cause malaria and in some settings, such as Papua New Guinea, two species, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, are responsible for the majority of malaria infections. However, the two species respond differently to currently available anti-malarial drugs.

Nature and nurture have found a new companion -- historical context.

A new study has produced the best evidence yet that the role of genetics in complex traits, including obesity, varies over time. Both the era in which scientific research is conducted and the era in which subjects were born may have an impact on the degree to which genetic factors are present in scientific data.

The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease occurring in West Africa may have originated from contact between humans and virus-infected bats, suggests a study led by researchers from the Robert Koch-Institute in Berlin, Germany. The report, published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, identifies insectivorous free-tailed bats as plausible reservoirs and expands the range of possible Ebola virus sources to this type of bats. The results also reveal that larger wildlife are not the source of infection.

Mice that are already infected with the pathogen that causes Lyme disease also appear to facilitate the spread of a lesser-known but emerging disease, babesiosis, into new areas. according to research led by the Yale School of Public Health and published in PLOS ONE.

A new study describes a never-before-seen mechanism by which a bacterial toxin leads to severe inflammation in asthma and other acute and chronic pulmonary diseases. The researchers say the discovery could result in development of therapeutic strategies that improve health in individuals who suffer from airway diseases.