The defining feature of social insects is that societies contain queens, which specialise in laying eggs, as well as workers, which are mostly infertile but take care of the offspring and the nest. However, when the queen dies or is re-moved, workers begin laying eggs of their own. Previous observations have suggested that queens possess a specific pheromone which keeps the workers infer-tile, but the pheromone has never been identified except in the well-studied honeybee. Queen pheromones have a lot to tell us about how sociality evolved. For example, if the pheromone was found to be brain-washing the workers into doing something that was bad for them, this would suggest that sociality is rife with hidden conflicts. Alternatively, the pheromone might be more like an advertise-ment that demonstrates to the workers that the queen is doing a good job. Workers that can smell that their queen is laying lots of eggs are expected to remain infertile and let the queen do what she does best.

Adding nutrients to the sea could decrease viral infection rates among phytoplankton and enhance the efficiency of the biological pump, a means by which carbon is transferred from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, according to a new mathematical modelling study. The findings, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, have implications for ocean geo-engineering schemes proposed for tackling global warming.

Scientists have been surprised to learn that, despite thousands of changes that viruses like HIV undergo in rapid fashion to evade the body's immune system, the original version that caused the infection is still present in the body months later.

A team of researchers from Duke University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has found a central part in the machinery that turns plants green when they sense light.

Cell reprogramming calls The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to mind.

Predator scent enhanced the ability of pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) to form memory following training, whilst overcrowding and reduced calcium had a blocking effect.

The combination vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox (MMRV) is associated with double the risk of febrile seizures for 1- to 2-year-old children compared with same-day administration of the separate vaccine for MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and the varicella (V) vaccine for chicken pox, according to a Kaiser Permanente Division of Research study appearing online in the journal Pediatrics. A febrile seizure is a brief, fever-related convulsion but it does not lead to epilepsy or seizure disorders, researchers explained.

For people with hypertension, eating dark chocolate can significantly reduce blood pressure. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medicine combined the results of 15 studies into the effects of flavanols, the compounds in chocolate which cause dilation of blood vessels, on blood pressure.

NEW YORK, June 27, 2010 – Researchers funded by JDRF have discovered that the hormone, serotonin, may be involved in the increase of insulin-producing beta cells during pregnancy. The findings reveal one of the mechanisms underlying beta cell expansion during pregnancy, and are the latest advances underscoring the potential for regeneration as a key component of a possible cure for type 1 diabetes.

Imagine an exceedingly complex circuit board. Wires often split -- seemingly at random -- and connect in strange and unexpected ways.

New research led by the University of Leicester and published in a prestigious international scientific journal has revealed for the first time the mechanism by which memories are formed.

A unique collaboration among physician-scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has yielded the most comprehensive genomic analysis of prostate cancer to date. "Genomic studies in other cancer types have resulted in new drug targets and strategies to classify patients into clinically meaningful subgroups that improve treatment decisions," said senior study author Charles Sawyers, Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at MSKCC and a HHMI investigator. "This first -ever database of its type brings us one step closer to achieving that goal in prostate cancer."

International team of Italy-US scientists reports discovery of a new mechanism of avian influenza virus circulation and transmission in nature

Why are tropical forests so biologically rich? Smithsonian researchers have new evidence that the answer to one of life's great unsolved mysteries lies underground, according to a study published in the journal, Nature.

For someone with a severe, incurable lung disorder such as cystic fibrosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung transplant may be the only chance for survival. Unfortunately, it's often not a very good chance. Matching donor lungs are rare, and many would-be recipients die waiting for the transplants that could save their lives.

New research at the University of Leicester will use the latest genetic techniques to examine DNA from over 20,000 patients with heart disease.

EUREKA project E! 3371 Gene Transfer Agents has made great advances in the development of novel non-viral carriers able to introduce genetic material into the target cells. These new agents, derivatives of cationic amphiphilic 1,4-dihydropyridine (1,4-DHP), avoid the problems of the recipient's immune system reacting against a viral carrier. The project partners have developed methods to produce them in large amounts, which solves another of the problems with viral delivery. But the greatest advantage is that the new compounds are significantly more effective at delivering DNA into cell nuclei than other standard synthetic carriers; increasing the chance of the DNA successfully controlling the defective genes, and the disease.

For a plant, light is life. It drives everything from photosynthesis to growth and reproduction. Yet the chain of molecular events that enables light signals to control gene activity and ultimately a plant's architecture had remained in the dark. Now a team of researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Duke University have identified the courier that gives the signal to revamp the plant's gene expression pattern after photoreceptors have been activated by light.

Transposons, or "jumping genes," make up roughly half of the human genome. Geneticists previously estimated that they replicate and insert themselves into new locations roughly one in every 20 live births.

Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranks last overall compared to six other industrialized countries—Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—on measures of health system performance in five areas: quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. While there is room for improvement in every country, the U.S. stands out for not getting good value for its health care dollars, ranking last despite spending $7,290 per capita on health care in 2007 compared to the $3,837 spent per capita in the Netherlands, which ranked first overall.

"The objective was to evaluate the utility of cryo-preserved human amniotic membrane (HAM) as a support for repairing human articular cartilage injuries, which have a very limited capacity for self-healing", Francisco J. Blanco, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of La Coruña (INIBIC), tells SINC.

The evolution of bird bills is related to climate according to latest research by the University of Melbourne, Australia and Brock University, Canada.

Between 33 and 77 million people in Bangladesh have been exposed to arsenic in the drinking water—a catastrophe that the World Health Organization has called "the largest mass poisoning in history." A new study published in the current issue of the medical journal The Lancet provides the most complete and detailed picture to date of the high mortality rates associated with this exposure, which began with the widespread installation of tube wells throughout the country 30 years ago—a measure intended to control water-bourne diseases.

The central dogma of molecular biology, as proposed in 1970 by Francis Crick and James Watson, holds that genetic information is transferred from DNA to functional proteins by way of messenger RNA (mRNA). This suggests that mRNA has but a single role, that being to encode for proteins.

The results of the sequencing and analysis of the human body louse genome, which were published on June 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), offer new insights into the intriguing biology of this disease-vector insect. The project involved more than 70 international scientists led by Professor Evgeny Zdobnov at the University of Geneva Medical School and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, with Professor Barry Pittendrigh at the University of Illinois and Professor Ewen Kirkness at the J. Craig Venter Institute.

Researchers at Virginia Tech, New York University (NYU), and the University of Milan, Italy, have created a data mining algorithm they call GOALIE that can automatically reveal how biological processes are coordinated in time.

The UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is involved in a collaborative project that is helping to further the understanding of HIV viral protein structure which could lead to new molecular medicines.

Consumers shouldn't assume that, because a product is organic, it's also environmentally friendly.

Bands of chimpanzees violently kill individuals from neighboring groups in order to expand their own territory, according to a 10-year study of a chimp community in Uganda that provides the first definitive evidence for this long-suspected function of this behavior.

Researchers have developed an experimental cure for Type 1 diabetes, a disease that affects about one in every 400 to 600 children and adolescents. They will present their results in a mouse model of Type 1 diabetes on Sunday at The Endocrine Society's 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.

Russ Campbell, Guam's territorial entomologist and Aubrey Moore, UOG extension entomologist, welcomed New Zealand scientist, Trevor Jackson to Guam in early June. Jackson was invited to assist in the release of a virus into the rhino beetle (Oryctes rhinoceros) population. This virus only infects rhino beetles and it has been successful in controlling populations of the pest on other Pacific islands.

The completion of three pilot projects designed to determine how best to build an extremely detailed map of human genetic variation begins a new chapter in the international project called 1,000 Genomes (http://www.1000genomes.org/page.php?page=home), said the director of the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center (http://www.hgsc.bcm.tmc.edu/), which is a major contributor to the effort.

Meet "Lucy's" great-grandfather. Scientists from The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Kent State University, Case Western Reserve University, Addis Ababa University and Berkeley Geochronology Center were part of an international team that discovered and analyzed a 3.6 million-year-old partial skeleton found in Ethiopia. The early hominid is 400,000 years older than the famous "Lucy" skeleton. Research on this new specimen indicates that advanced human-like, upright walking occurred much earlier than previously thought. The discovery and results from this initial analysis will be published this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Showing movies in 3-D has produced a box-office bonanza in recent months. Could viewing cell behavior in three dimensions lead to important advances in cancer research? A new study led by Johns Hopkins University engineers indicates it may happen. Looking at cells in 3-D, the team members concluded, yields more accurate information that could help develop drugs to prevent cancer's spread.

Are stem cells ready for prime time?

Scientists at Johns Hopkins report using a laser beam to activate a protein that makes a cluster of fruit fly cells act like a school of fish turning in social unison, following the lead of the one stimulated with light.

Gene expression takes place in two stages: the transcription of DNA to RNA by an enzyme called RNA polymerase, , followed by the translation of this RNA into proteins, whose behaviour affects the characteristics of each individual.

Cold sensing neural circuits in newborn mice take around two weeks to become fully active, according to a new study.

Combining new, whole-genome sequencing technology with classic genetic approaches to understanding inherited diseases, Duke University Medical Center geneticists and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have discovered two gene mutations that cause metachondromatosis, a rare, heritable disorder that leads to bony growths, typically on hands and feet.

An international team of researchers led by scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech have sequenced the genome of an Amerindian strain of the gastric bug Helicobacter pylori, confirming the out-of-Africa migration of this bacterial stowaway to the New World. Experiments in animals have highlighted how specific genes in the bacterial strain may be crucial to the onset of inflammation and disease.