Researchers have discovered that neurons can use two different neurotransmitters that target the same receptor on a receiving neuron to shape the transmission of a nerve impulse. Although the researchers’ experiments identified the “co-release” of the two neurotransmitters only in specific types of neurons in the brain’s auditory center, their finding may apply more broadly in the brain, they said. Thus, the finding may represent a new way in which the brain precisely modulates the nerve impulses that travel from neuron to neuron in its circuitry.

Bacteria that cause the bubonic plague avoid death in our bodies by injecting our cells with immune evasion proteins. Scientists have discovered a new way bacteria build and hold the syringes, according to research published in the journal Microbiology.

Some of the oldest tales and wisest mythology allude to the snake as a mischievous seducer, dangerous foe or powerful iconoclast; however, the legend surrounding this proverbial predator may not be based solely on fantasy. As scientists from the University of Virginia recently discovered, the common fear of snakes is most likely intrinsic.

MIT graduate student and synthetic biologist Timothy Lu is passionate about tackling problems that pose threats to human health. His current mission: to destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

A gene crucial for embryonic development can quickly become a potent cancer promoter in adult mice after a genetic misalignment, according to researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center, causing white blood cells to become cancerous spontaneously.

An ability to avoid the plant equivalent of vapor lock and a favorable evolutionary history may explain the unusual drought resistance of junipers, some varieties of which are now spreading rapidly in water-starved regions of the western United States, a Duke University study has found.

Horizontal (left) and vertical (right) slices of brain show increased blood flow (red region) in brainstem (VTA or ventral tegmental area) in measurements made by functional magnetic resonance imaging. A team of scientists from Princeton University has devised a new experimental technique that produces some of the best functional images ever taken of the human brainstem, the most primitive area of the brain.

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have developed a new two-punch strategy against HIV and they have already successfully tested aspects of it in the laboratory.

The first global malaria risk map to be developed in forty years has highlighted the 2.37 billion people at risk from one of the world's deadliest diseases. The findings of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), funded by the Wellcome Trust, also offer hope that eliminating the malaria risk for almost one billion of these people should be achievable.

__IMAGE_2 Using artificial cell-like particles, Yale biomedical engineers have devised a rapid and efficient way to produce a 45-fold enhancement of T cell activation and expansion, an immune response important for a patient’s ability to fight cancer and infectious diseases, according to an advance on line report in Molecular Therapy.

MIT biologists have provoked soil-dwelling bacteria into producing a new type of antibiotic by pitting them against another strain of bacteria in a battle for survival.