Early detection of disease is often critical to how successful treatment can be. Therefore, the development of new methods of diagnosis is a hot research field, where every small step is of great importance. In an article in the latest issue of Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, Uppsala University researchers describe a technique that the journal regards as especially interesting.

They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and the same could be said for female chimpanzees. Researchers studying wild chimps in West Africa have discovered that males pinch desirable fruits from local farms and orchards as a means of attracting female mates. The study is published in the September 12 issue of the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE.

The discovery of the first anatomically modern ear in a group of 260 million-year-old fossil reptiles significantly pushes back the date of the origin of an advanced sense of hearing, and suggests the first known adaptations to living in the dark.

A biochemistry research team led by Dr. Andrew H.-J. Wang and Dr. Ting-Fang Wang at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica(IBCAS), has discovered that the RecA family recombinases function as a new type of rotary motor proteins to repair DNA damages.

A new study by York University biologists Amro Zayed and Laurence Packer has shown that a lone insect can initiate a biological invasion.

For the first time in history, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species includes ocean corals in its annual report of wildlife going extinct.