Researchers have discovered three previously unknown species of a bacterium by scanning a publicly available data bank, reveals a study published today in the journal Genome Biology. The finding highlights the value of making unanalysed data from large-scale genome sequencing projects openly available online.

Steven Salzberg from The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland and colleagues identified three new species of the bacterium Wolbachia from the genome sequences of the fruit fly Drosophila that are stored in the Trace Archive.

Tastes and smells are evocative and play a crucial role in finding food for many animals. A new study of smell perception in honeybees published in the freely-available online journal PLoS Biology now explains how bees react to a suite of scents, and reveals an olfactory map that shows remarkable correspondence to brain activity.

Leaping tall buildings in a single bound may be out of the question, but the genetically engineered "supermice" in Ormond MacDougald's laboratory at the University of Michigan Medical School are definitely stronger than average. With bone mass up to four times greater than ordinary mice, these research animals could hold the secret to new drugs for preventing or treating osteoporosis and other human diseases.

The secret appears to be a secreted signaling protein called Wnt10b. Known to inhibit the development of adipose tissue in mice, Wnt10b also stimulates the growth of bone cells, according to a new study that will be published February 21 in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at the University of Bath have won a £261,000 grant to use the latest software to produce a blueprint of a designer drug that could stop influenza and some other diseases from replicating in humans.

The announcement of the grant comes at a time when fears are rising that an influenza outbreak developing from Asian chickens could kill thousands of people.

Professor Ian Williams, of the Department of Chemistry, will begin work in April on a project that could help pharmaceutical companies develop a better drug that could be taken by people coming down with flu to stop the disease developing.

The destruction of habitat by human activity and the extinction of species around the world is more than a looming environmental catastrophe, warns a Canadian zoologist. This ecological damage also endangers human health by turning parasites into "evolutionary land mines."

Dr. Daniel (Dan) Brooks, a parasitologist at the University of Toronto, says the decline of global biodiversity is linked to the emergence of new human and wildlife diseases such as West Nile Virus and avian flu.

In the battle against insect pests, new research indicates that it may all come down to the sense of smell. A group of Rockefeller University scientists who had previously identified a key gene essential for the sense of smell in fruit flies now shows that this gene's function appears to be evolutionarily conserved across very different insect species.

All recent Ebola virus outbreaks in humans in forests between Gabon and the Republic of Congo were the result of handling infected wild animal carcasses, according to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its regional partners. Appearing in the February edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the study found that many animal carcasses tested for Ebola between 2001 and 2003 produced positive results, and found direct links between the deadly disease in animal populations and humans.

Food of animal origin, contaminated with E.coli, can lead to urinary tract infections in women, according to a team of bacteriologists.

“We found out that UTIs may be caused by ingesting food contaminated with E. coli,” said Chobi DebRoy, director of Penn State’s Gastroenteric Disease Center. Previously, this link was not established, she noted.

Senior author, Dr. Lee W. Riley, University of California-Berkeley, found that E.coli strains isolated from patients with UTIs were genetically related to E.coli strains from cows that were in the collection of strains at the Gastroenteric Disease Center. Riley and DebRoy reported their findings in a recent issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

A widely-used class of drugs that keep the HIV-virus infection from progressing to AIDS may cause serious and potentially lethal heart rhythm disturbances in some patients. The finding of a Mayo Clinic-led investigation appears in the current edition of The Lancet.

In collaboration with colleagues from the HIV Program of Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis; the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and University of Wisconsin, Madison, the Mayo Clinic researchers made the discovery about a class of prescription drugs known as "HIV protease inhibitors." Drugs in this class go by the generic names of lopinavir, nelfinavir, indinavir, ritonavir and saquinavir. Brand names include Kaletra, Viracept, Crixivan, Norvir and Fortovase.