Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed what they call a "Smart Petri Dish" that could be used to rapidly screen new drugs for toxic interactions or identify cells in the early stages of cancer circulating through a patient's blood.

Chile is currently the world's largest producer of farmed salmon and has a burgeoning mussel culture industry that is supplying a growing world market. However, the country's marine aquaculture sector is vulnerable to Harmful Algal Blooms, which occur when some algae species producing poisons bloom rapidly in water, causing physical or biochemical damage to fish and shellfish.

Researchers at New York University have made chemical modifications to nanometer sized virus particles--a process that has the potential to improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. Their results are reported in the latest issue of Nano Letters.

Researchers studying mutually beneficial interactions between members of our vast community of friendly gut microorganisms have shown that two common organisms collude and collaborate to increase the amount of calories harvested from a class of carbohydrates found in food sweeteners.

Nations are preparing to stockpile vaccines against H5N1, the strain of influenza virus that experts fear could cause the next flu pandemic. But will these vaccines remain effective as the virus mutates? Researchers present good news in the July 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online.

Certain variants of a simple sugar ameliorate Alzheimer's-like disease in mice, according to a new study by Canadian researchers. Although the new studies are still in the early stages, the findings could lead to new therapies that prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Laotian Rock RatThe first images of a live specimen of a small, furry animal once believed to have gone extinct more than 11 million years ago have been captured during a Southeast Asian expedition led by a retired Florida State University researcher.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, the New York Structural Biology Center, and SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have determined the atomic crystal structure and functional mechanism of an enzyme essential for eliminating unwanted, non-nutritional compounds such as drugs, industrial chemicals, and toxic compounds from the body. The detailed mechanism of action will help scientists understand how these compounds are eliminated and what goes wrong in cases where normal metabolism fails. The research will be published online the week of June 12, 2006, by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A pediatric research team has used commercially available gene chips to scrutinize all of a patient's chromosomes to identify small defects that cause genetic diseases. Because currently used genetic tests usually cannot detect these abnormalities, the new research may lead to more accurate diagnosis of congenital diseases, including puzzling disorders that lead to mental retardation.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered part of the reason why cold sores, caused by a herpes virus, come back again and again. The new study, published online last month in Nature, points to a small RNA molecule, called a microRNA (miRNA) as the culprit that keeps the latent virus-infected cell alive. These findings could one day lead to a new way to fight the virus and offers the first target for intervention in the latent infection.

Back when he was 20 years old in 1965, rock star Pete Townshend wrote the line "I hope I die before I get old" into a song, "My Generation" that launched his band, the Who, onto the rock 'n' roll scene.

Leptin, the hormone secreted by fat cells that plays an important role in food intake, has been described for the first time in a cold-blooded vertebrate, the South African clawed frog Xenopus.

Wings, spines, saber-like teeth---nature and the fossil record abound with examples of structures so useful they've evolved independently in a variety of animals. But scientists have debated whether examples of so-called adaptive, parallel evolution also can be found at the level of genes and proteins.

Although scientists have known for nearly 90 years that cancer cells commonly display altered sugar metabolism, the molecular significance of this phenomenon is not completely understood. Now, a new study published in the June issue of Cancer Cell reveals a functional connection between carbohydrate-driven energy production and tumor maintenance. Importantly, the results suggest that inhibition of a specific aspect of glucose metabolism may represent an attractive and potentially well-tolerated approach to interfering with tumor growth.