A convenient, easy to use, and rapid alternative to blood-based HIV testing may become the new standard for field testing according to a new MUHC study. The study shows that the oral fluid-based OraQuick HIV1/2 test is 100 per cent accurate and patients’ preferred choice.

Studies of human tumor cells implanted in mice have shown that the abnormal activation of four genes drives the spread of breast cancer to the lungs. The new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers reveal that the aberrant genes work together to promote the growth of primary breast tumors. Cooperation among the four genes also enables cancerous cells to escape into the bloodstream and penetrate through blood vessels into lung tissues.

Scientists have reported what is thought to be one of the world’s greatest mass death of corals ever recorded as a result of the earthquake in Aceh, Indonesia on 28 March 2005.

Genetic research has revealed that commercially available medicinal leeches used around the world in biomedical research and postoperative care have been misclassified for centuries. Until now, the leeches were assumed to be the species Hirudo medicinalis, but new research reveals they are actually a closely related but genetically distinct species, Hirudo verbana.

Some mature brain cells can grow new extensions when the amount of three particular proteins on their surface increases, a new study shows.

Neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that lithium, long the standard treatment for bipolar disorder, increases the amount of gray matter in the brains of patients with the illness.

Biologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) have identified a set of genes expressed in human breast cancer cells that work together to remodel the network of blood vessels at the site of the primary tumor. These genes were also found to promote the spread of breast cancer to the lungs. The study, conducted in mice and reported in this week's Nature, helps to explain how cancer metastasis can occur and highlights targets for therapeutic treatment.

In 2005, Professor Rob Dunbar and his colleagues collected core samples from a large coral colony near Easter Island. That colony is about the same size as the coral reef that was the focus of Dunbar's Kenya study. Credit: Rob Dunbar, Stanford University Coral reefs, like tree rings, are natural archives of climate change. But oceanic corals also provide a faithful account of how people make use of land through history, says Robert B. Dunbar of Stanford University.