Many living things, from fruit flies to people, naturally produce disease-fighting chemicals, called antimicrobial peptides, to kill harmful bacteria. In a counter move, some disease-causing bacteria have evolved antimicrobial detectors. The bacteria sense the presence of antimicrobial peptides as a warning signal. This alarm sets off a reaction inside the bacteria to avoid destruction.

Scientists have shown they can dramatically enhance radiation's cancer-killing effects by blocking a "master switch" in cancer cells that promotes cancer growth. Blocking a protein called HIF-1 after radiation therapy doubled the length of time it took for human cancers to begin growing again in mice, said the radiation biologists from the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center.

IBM today said it has begun deploying new customized data gathering software technologies as part of its contribution to the Genographic Project, a landmark five year study in partnership with the National Geographic Society, to gather and analyze the largest number of human DNA samples to map how the earth was populated.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has positively identified the pathogenic form of avian flu--H5N1--in samples taken from birds last week in Mongolia by field veterinarians from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It is the first instance of this viral strain occurring in wild migratory birds with no apparent contact to domestic poultry or waterfowl.

Applying math and computers to the drug-discovery process, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a method to predict protein separation behavior directly from protein structure. This new multi-scale protein modeling approach may reduce the time it takes to bring pharmaceuticals to market and may have significant implications for an array of biotechnology applications, including bioprocessing, drug discovery, and proteomics, the study of protein structure and function.

When it's dry, it's dry all over, according to a new analysis of more than 400 years of annual streamflow in the Upper Colorado and Salt and Verde river basins.

In the quest to discover new species, a team of international scientists leaves today on a month-long expedition to explore the undiscovered treasures in the Mountains of Southwest China, an extension of the great Himalayan mountain range.

Researchers at Oregon State University and Diversa Corporation have discovered that the smallest free-living cell known also has the smallest genome, or genetic structure, of any independent cell - and yet it dominates life in the oceans, thrives where most other cells would die, and plays a huge role in the cycling of carbon on Earth.

A key obstacle to early detection of type 1 diabetes - as well as to rapid assessment of the effectiveness of therapeutic intervention - has been the lack of direct, non-invasive technologies to visualize inflammation in the pancreas, an early manifestation of disease. Instead, clinicians have had to await overt symptoms before diagnosing an individual, by which time destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas has already progressed significantly.