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Molecular & Cell Biology

Mayo Clinic researchers have uncovered a new cellular secret that may explain how certain cancers move and spread -- a feature of cancers that makes treatment especially difficult. If the mechanism that drives cancer movement -- also called metastasis -- can be understood well enough to manipulate it, new and better treatments can be developed for patients with metastatic cancers.

Biology

Think twice before you blithely swat, stomp, curse or ignore insects, says Cornell University entomologist John Losey, who co-authored a study that shows the dollar value of some of those insect services is more than $57 billion in the United States annually. The research appears in the journal BioScience today (April 1).

Microbiology

Scientists in the UK have found that a type of amoeba acts as an incubator for MRSA bacteria. As amoebae are often found in healthcare environments this discovery has implications for the infection control strategies adopted by hospitals.

Microbiology

New research shows that a protein made by a cancer-causing virus that was thought to be unimportant for its replication is in fact critically needed by the virus to initiate an infection and to reproduce.