The virus, called enterovirus 71, is closely related to poliovirus, and was first detected in California in the 1960s. Since then the virus has spread across Asia, affecting mostly children and some adults. Serious cases of the disease can include neurological disorders such as meningitis, paralysis and encephalitis.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a way to "cage" genetic off switches in such a way that they can be activated when exposed to UV light. Their technology gives scientists a more precise way to control and study gene function in localized areas of developing organisms.

Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.

High doses or prolonged use of glucosamine causes the death of pancreatic cells and could increase the risk of developing diabetes, according to a team of researchers at Université Laval's Faculty of Pharmacy. Details of this discovery were recently published on the website of the Journal of Endocrinology.

Small genetic differences between individuals help explain why some people have a higher risk than others for developing illnesses such as diabetes or cancer. Today in the journal Nature, the 1000 Genomes Project, an international public-private consortium, published the most comprehensive map of these genetic differences, called variations, estimated to contain approximately 95 percent of the genetic variation of any person on Earth.

People love to speculate about differences between the sexes, and neuroscience has brought a new technology to this pastime. Brain imaging studies are published at a great rate, and some report sex differences in brain structure or patterns of neural activity. But we should be skeptical about reports of brain differences between the sexes, writes psychological scientist Cordelia Fine in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The results from these studies may not necessarily withstand the tests of larger sample sizes or improved analysis techniques—and it's too soon to know for sure what such results, even if they prove to be reliable, might mean for differences in male and female minds.

Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that a certain class of RNA (known as long non-protein-coding RNA [lncRNA]) are involved in the host response to viral infection. These findings, published today in the online journal mBio®, could greatly change the way scientists look at the body's response to viral infection.

New research links three molecules to a critical tumor suppressor gene that is often turned off in multiple myeloma, a presently incurable cancer of the blood.

Increasing numbers of birds, mammals and amphibians have moved closer to extinction in the last several decades—but not as far as they would have if no conservation measures at all had been enacted, researchers report.

Dr. Jack Musick, emeritus professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has overseen a global study suggesting that 33 percent of shark, skate, and ray species are threatened with extinction.

An international team of primatologists have discovered a new species of monkey in Northern Myanmar (formerly Burma.) The research, published in the American Journal of Primatology, reveals how Rhinopithecus strykeri, a species of snub-nosed monkey, has an upturned nose which causes it to sneeze when it rains.

The most detailed magnetic resonance images ever obtained of a mammalian brain are now available to researchers in a free, online atlas of an ultra-high-resolution mouse brain, thanks to work at the Duke Center for In Vivo Microscopy.

Large-scale wind farm establishment may have a negative effect on Sweden's golden eagles. In a unique project in northern Sweden, scientists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) are trapping adult golden eagles and fitting them with satellite transmitters.

A new study reveals that two enzymes help immune cells deploy pathogen-killing traps by unraveling and using the chromatin (DNA and its associated proteins) contained in the cells' nuclei to form defensive webs. The study appears online on October 25 in The Journal of Cell Biology (www.jcb.org).

The Terminator. The Borg. The Six Million Dollar Man. Science fiction is ripe with biological beings armed with artificial capabilities. In reality, however, the clunky connections between living and non-living worlds often lack a clear channel for communication. Now, scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed an electrical link to living cells engineered to shuttle electrons across a cell's membrane to an external acceptor along a well-defined path. This direct channel could yield cells that can read and respond to electronic signals, electronics capable of self-replication and repair, or efficiently transfer sunlight into electricity.

Two strains of the type of mosquito responsible for the majority of malaria transmission in Africa have evolved such substantial genetic differences that they are becoming different species, according to researchers behind two new studies published today in the journal Science.

Ikerlan-IK4 and Mondragón Unibertsitatea are taking part in a project initiated by the Spanish National Research Council, CSIC, and which has developed a microchip capable of separating and extracting tumour cells in the blood stream by means of ultrasonic waves. The Foundation General Hospital of the University of Elche, together with researcher Alfredo Carrato, has also collaborated on this project.

Beating the flu is already tough, but it has become even harder in recent years – the influenza A virus has mutated so that two antiviral drugs don't slow it down anymore.

Our cells live ever on the verge of suicide, requiring the close attention of a team of molecules to prevent the cells from pulling the trigger. This self-destructive tendency can be a very good thing, as when dangerous precancerous cells are permitted to kill themselves, but it can also go horribly wrong, destroying brain cells that store memories, for instance. Rockefeller University scientists are parsing this perilous arrangement in ever finer detail in hopes that understanding the basic mechanisms of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, will enable them eventually to manipulate the process to kill the cells we want to kill and protect the ones we don't.

A common virus that can cause coughing and mild diarrhea appears to have a major redemptive quality: the ability to kill cancer. Harnessing that power, researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of Georgetown University Medical Center, are conducting a clinical trial to see if the virus can target and kill certain tumor types.

Mutually beneficial partnerships among species may play highly important but vastly underrecognized roles in keeping the Earth's ecosystems running, a group of evolutionary biologists suggests in a study.

Biologists at Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences have discovered that a change in membrane voltage in newly identified "instructor cells" can cause stem cells' descendants to trigger melanoma-like growth in pigment cells. The Tufts team also found that this metastatic transformation is due to changes in serotonin transport. The discovery could aid in the prevention and treatment of diseases like cancer and vitiligo as well as birth defects.

Lymphoma is a cancer of the immune system. White blood cells divide again and again, spreading abnormally throughout the body. Lymphomas can arise from two types of white blood cells, T cells or B cells, which divide uncontrollably when the molecular mechanisms that keep them in check go awry. A new study led by Robert Rickert, Ph.D., professor and director of the Inflammatory Diseases Program at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), explores the roles of two enzymes, called SHIP and PTEN, in B cell growth and proliferation. The results, published online on October 18 in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, show that SHIP and PTEN act cooperatively to suppress B cell lymphoma. This new information could impact several anti-lymphoma therapies currently in development.

A newly identified regulatory process affecting the biology of immune system T cells should give scientists new approaches to explore the causes of autoimmunity and immune deficiency diseases.

Think of it as Habitat for Penguinity. A University of Washington conservation biologist is behind the effort to build nests in the barren rocks of the Galápagos Islands in the hope of increasing the population of an endangered penguin species.

Our genetic material is often compared to a book. However, it is not so much like a novel to be read in one piece, but rather like a cookbook. The cell reads only those recipes which are to be cooked at the moment. The recipes are the genes; 'reading' in the book of the cell means creating RNA copies of individual genes, which will then be translated into proteins.

By examining the development of bones in the vertebral column, limbs, and ribcage, scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered how sloths evolved their unique neck skeleton.

The H1N1 pandemic influenza provided several important lessons that may help in preparing for future influenza outbreaks, write Drs. Donald Low and Allison McGeer in an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100900.pdf.

Alcohol is one of the most commonly abused substances, and men are up to twice as likely to develop alcoholism as women. Until now, the underlying biology contributing to this difference in vulnerability has remained unclear.

Even Darwin was a self-admitted orchid lover. Dictionaries describe orchids as exotic ornamentals. Indeed, these plants – more than 30000 different species are thought to exist – are exotic due their extraordinary and diverse flower morphology. However, they are also exotic from a point of view other than beauty: as crafty imposters in order to achieve reproduction and to make sure that their ovaries are pollinated. Orchids depend on the assistance of pollinators, and like many other flowering plants, attract insects.

While not an outright failure, a 2010 goal set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for staunching the loss of the world's species fell far short of expectations for "The International Year of Biodiversity."

Stem cells, the prodigious precursors of all the tissues in our body, can make almost anything, given the right circumstances. Including, unfortunately, cancer. Now research from Rockefeller University shows that having too many stem cells, or stem cells that live for too long, can increase the odds of developing cancer. By identifying a mechanism that regulates programmed cell death in precursor cells for blood, or hematopoietic stem cells, the work is the first to connect the death of such cells to a later susceptibility to tumors in mice. It also provides evidence of the potentially carcinogenic downside to stem cell treatments, and suggests that nature has sought to balance stem cells' regenerative power against their potentially lethal potency.

Crop specialists in Kenya and Uganda have laid the groundwork for confined field trials to commence later this year for new varieties of maize genetically modified to survive recurrent droughts that threaten over 300 million Africans for whom maize is life, according to a speech given today by the head of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) at the World Food Prize Symposium.

Many countries now acknowledge the need to obtain their energy supply from renewable sources such as biomass. Prof. Verstraete will explain how his team have developed a new anaerobic digestion reactor which can generate as much electricity as 25 wind turbines. These reactors use a consortium of methanogenic (methane-producing) bacteria to degrade waste and energy crops to produce biogas (a mixture of methane and carbon) which is then converted to electricity using a turbine.

Despite its primitive structure, the North American comb jellyfish can sneak up on its prey like a high-tech stealth submarine, making it a successful predator. Researchers, including one from the University of Gothenburg, have now been able to show how the jellyfish makes itself hydrodynamically 'invisible'.

Researchers looking at corals in the western tropical Pacific Ocean have found records linking a profound shift in the depth of the division between warm surface water and colder, deeper water traceable to recent global warming.

The genetic inherited material DNA was long viewed as the sole bearer of hereditary information. The function of its packaging proteins, the histones, was believed to be exclusively structural. Additional genetic information can be stored, however, and passed on to subsequent generations through chemical changes in the DNA or histones. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have succeeded in creating an experimental system for testing the function of such chemical histone modifications and their influence on the organism. Chemical modifications to the histones may constitute an "epigenetic histone code" that complements the genetic code and decides whether the information from certain regions of the DNA is used or suppressed. (EMBO reports, November 1, 2010, advance online publication)

A redesigned version of the CTC-Chip – a microchip-based device for capturing rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) – appears to be more effective and should be easier to manufacture than the original. Called the HB-(herringbone) Chip, the new device also may provide more comprehensive and easily accessible data from captured tumor cells. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers – including members of the team that developed the CTC-Chip – report the second-generation device in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper that has been released online.

Use of folic acid supplements appears to lower blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine—theorized to be a risk factor for heart and blood vessel disease—but does not appear to be associated with reduced rates of cardiovascular events, cancer or death over a five-year period, according to a meta-analysis of previously published studies in the October 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Much as an anthropologist can study populations of people to learn about their physical attributes, their environs and social structures, some marine microbiologists read the genome of microbes to glean information about the microbes themselves, their environments and lifestyles.