A team of researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute of Neuroscience at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has discovered that tetanus toxin, which causes tetanus, could be extremely useful as a therapy against psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and anorexia, and to slow the progress of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease.

Fatigue could reduce skills and cause injuries and muscle weakness during sport because the brain does not consider the extra effort required for movement, Monash University researchers have found.

Professor Uwe Proske, from Monash's Department of Physiology, found when muscles were weakened from overuse or fatigue, limb control was affected, particularly if the person couldn't see their limbs.

In experiments with mice, researchers have found that nicotine triggers the same neural pathways that give opiates such as heroin their addictively rewarding properties--including associating an environment with the drug's reward. However, unlike opiates, nicotine does not directly activate the brain's opiate receptors, but activates the natural opioid reward pathway in the brain.

Brains are marvels of diversity: no two look the same -- not even those of otherwise identical twins. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies may have found one explanation for the puzzling variety in brain organization and function: mobile elements, pieces of DNA that can jump from one place in the genome to another, randomly changing the genetic information in single brain cells. If enough of these jumps occur, they could allow individual brains to develop in distinctly different ways.

Research carried out with the participation of the University of Navarra has shown how a determinate molecule helps an important pathogen, Brucella abortus, escape destruction within the cells charged with eliminating infectious agents (macrophages). This research has been published in Nature Immunology scientific magazine.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced it is awarding $88.9 million in grants to nine institutions over three years to establish a collaborative research network that will use high-tech screening methods to identify small molecules that can be used as research tools. Small molecules have great potential to help scientists in their efforts to learn more about key biological processes involved in human health and disease.

Gene Bridges and Covalys Biosciences AG today announced a collaboration to develop "Copy & Paste" DNA engineering kits to generate SNAP-tag fusion proteins based on Gene Bridges' Red/ET recombination technology. Gene Bridge's Red/ET cloning system does not require restriction enzymes and allows the engineering of large DNA sequences, such as BACs, (bacterial artificial chromosomes) with single-nucleotide precision. SNAP-tag is an intelligent self-labeling protein tag which covalently links chemical probes to proteins of interest without prior purification.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered the presence of stem cells in the cerebellum, a brain region where a deadly type of brain tumor originates. Their findings suggest that such tumors, called medulloblastomas, could arise from stem cells gone awry.