The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has discovered a new form of intellectual disability involving mental retardation (MR) along with the eye defect retinitis pigmentosa (RP). CAMH also discovered the previously unidentified gene that causes this disorder, CC2D2A. This scientific advance will help understand the developmental and biological processes involved in brain development, and may help identify ways to diagnose and treat intellectual disabilities.

The risk of suffering depression increases 41% in smokers, in comparison with non-smokers. This was the conclusion of a study undertaken with 8,556 participants by scientists of the University of Navarra, in collaboration with the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Harvard School of Public Health (USA), and which demonstrates in a pioneering way the direct relationship between tobacco use and this disease.

By restoring two small molecules that are often lost in chronic leukemia, researchers were able to block tumor growth in an animal model.

Two genes that help insulin regulate mosquitoes’ growth have been identified as key contributors to how the insects enter a dormant state to survive winter’s cold.

Just as fire engines arrive quickly at the scene to save people and property, the cells that fight viruses have to reach the site of an infection promptly to mount a protective response.

When the eye tracks a bird’s flight across the sky, the visual experience is normally smooth, without interruption. But underlying this behavior is a complex coordination of neurons that has remained mysterious to scientists. Now, UCSF researchers have broken ground in understanding how the brain generates this tracking motion, a finding that offers a window, they say, into how neurons orchestrate all of the body’s movements.

Cotton fields in Parker Valley, Ariz. Biologists call for making available more detailed maps of the locations of biotech crops.

Putting more meat on the theory that dinosaurs’ closest living relatives are modern-day birds, molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein – along with that of 21 modern species – confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.