A female killifish (Rivulus hartii). The direct effect predators have on their prey is to kill them. The evolutionary changes that can result from this direct effect include prey that are younger at maturity and that produce more offspring.

Special HIV peptide interacts with a cell membrane to open a hole in the cell, offering scientists a new pathway for delivering materials to a cell. Two theoretical physicists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have uncovered what they believe is the long-sought-after pathway that an HIV peptide takes to enter healthy cells. The theorists analyzed two years of biocomputation and simulation to uncover a surprisingly simple mechanism describing how this protein fragment penetrates the cell membrane. The discovery could help scientists treat other human illnesses by exploiting the same molecules that make HIV so deadly proficient.

A new strategy to hunt for human viruses described in this week’s issue of the journal Science by the husband-and-wife team who found the cause of Kaposi’s sarcoma has revealed a previously unknown virus strongly associated with another rare but deadly skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma. In the paper, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers, Huichen Feng, Ph.D., Masahiro Shuda, Ph.D., Yuan Chang, M.D., and Patrick Moore, M.D., M.P.H., explain a nearly decade-long effort to harness the sequencing technology to identify the virus, which they call Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV). While the research team emphasizes that their work does not prove MCV to be the cause of Merkel cell carcinoma, if the findings are confirmed, they may lead to new cancer treatment and prevention options.

University of California, Irvine researchers have identified a gene that is specifically responsible for generating the cerebral cortex, a finding that could lead to stem cell therapies to treat brain injuries and diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer’s.

Genome-wide scans of families affected by autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have revealed new evidence that previously unknown chromosomal abnormalities have a substantial role in the prevalent developmental disorder, according to a report published online Jan. 17th in the American Journal of Human Genetics, a publication of Cell Press. Structural variants in the chromosomes were found to influence ASD with sufficiently high frequency to suggest that genomic analyses be considered in routine clinical workup, according to the researchers.

Short male babies run more than double the risk of a violent suicide attempt as an adult, suggests a study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Men with susceptibility for prostate cancer will soon be identifiable through a simple DNA test. So hope scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, who have shown that men carrying a combination of known risk genes run a four to five times higher risk of developing prostate cancer.