A Johns Hopkins researcher, with colleagues in Sweden and at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, suggests that the traditional view of cancer as a group of diseases with markedly different biological properties arising from a series of alterations within a cell's nuclear DNA may have to give way to a more complicated view. In the January issue of Nature Reviews Genetics, available online Dec. 21, he and his colleagues suggest that cancers instead begin with "epigenetic" alterations to stem cells.

Marijuana--or more specifically its active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol--has a well-documented tendency to stimulate hunger. And while scientists have traced this property to cannabinoid receptors in the brain, they have had little understanding of the neural circuitry underlying this effect.

Human identical twins have different fingerprints and march to the beat of subtly different phenotypes, an indication of heterogeneity which led bioengineering researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to devised computer algorithms that identify the underlying sources of variation at the basic level of life: unscripted fluctuations within individual cells and variations between identical cells.

Using sophisticated detection methods, researchers at the Saint Louis University Institute for Molecular Virology (IMV) have demonstrated the molecular mechanism by which the HIV virus infects, or integrates, healthy cells. The discovery could lead to new drug treatments for HIV.

New research by scientists at UCSF sheds light on how the odor detecting system in mice sends signals that affect their social behavior.

Dance has long been recognized as a signal of courtship in many animal species, including humans. Better dancers presumably attract more mates, or a more desirable mate.

Somewhere between three and five million years ago, a massive swarm of locusts took off from the west coast of Africa and made an unlikely voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to colonize the New World, says an international team of researchers.

A wilting, water-starved houseplant and flood-covered crops have something in common. That knowledge, gleaned from spinach and researchers on two continents, potentially could open the gate to advances in both plant and human health.

From garden compost to forest greenery, the mold Aspergillus fumigatus lurks across much of the world. And so does its impact. The most common mold causing infection, A. fumigatus triggers allergic reactions, asthma attacks--and even deadly infections among people with weakened immune systems.