Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned why changes in a single gene, ROP18, contribute substantially to dangerous forms of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The answer has likely moved science a step closer to new ways to beat Toxoplasma and many other parasites.

Studying how bacteria incorporate foreign DNA from invading viruses into their own regulatory processes, Thomas Wood, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is uncovering the secrets of one of nature's most primitive immune systems.

Just as raging hormones are part of the process of a child's maturation through the teen years to adulthood, juvenile hormones, a group of insect isoprenoids, play an important role as butterflies, fruit flies and mosquitoes transform their body structures as they molt from larva to pupa and then adults.

In a collaborative effort involving 74 researchers from 38 research institutes, scientists have produced the full genome of a wild strawberry plant. The research appeared today in Nature Genetics. Drs. Asaph Aharoni and Avital Adato of the Weizmann Institute's Plant Sciences Department were the sole Israeli scientists participating in the project, but they made a major contribution in mapping the genes and gene families responsible for the strawberry's flavor and aroma.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered how AMPK, a metabolic master switch that springs into gear when cells run low on energy, revs up a cellular recycling program to free up essential molecular building blocks in times of need.

Melanoma is one of the least common types of skin cancer, but it is also the most deadly. Melanocytes (pigment-producing skin cells) lose the genetic regulatory mechanisms that normally limit their number, allowing them to divide and proliferate out of control. One such regulator, called MITF, controls an array of genes that influence melanocyte development, function and survival. Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) and their collaborators recently used a melanoma mouse model, cell cultures and human tissue samples to unravel the relationship between MITF and ATF2, a transcription factor (or protein that controls gene expression) that is more active in melanomas. The study, published December 23 in PLoS Genetics, demonstrates that the MITF is subject to negative regulation by ATF2, and such regulation is a key determinant in melanoma development. This work also reveals that the ratio of ATF2 to MITF in the nucleus of melanoma cells can predict survival in melanoma patients – relatively high amounts of ATF2 and correspondingly low MITF levels were associated with a poor prognosis.

New research from The University of Western Ontario leads investigators to believe that woolly mammoths living north of the Arctic Circle during the Pleistocene Epoch (approx. 150,000 to 40,000 years ago) began weaning infants up to three years later than modern day African elephants due to prolonged hours of darkness.

Honeybees can learn to avoid nectar containing natural plant toxins but will eat it when there is no alternative, scientists at Newcastle University have found.

Contrary to the belief of many scientists (as well as many members of the public), new research confirms that Africa has two—not one—species of elephant. Scientists from Harvard Medical School, the University of Illinois, and the University of York in the United Kingdom used genetic analysis to prove that the African savanna elephant and the smaller African forest elephant have been largely separated for several million years.

"When I first picked up the cub, she was biting my hand," explains wildlife biologist Bruce Marcot. He was trying to calm the squirming cub while its sedated mother slept nearby.

A virus previously thought to be associated with chronic fatigue syndrome is not the cause of the disease, a detailed study has shown. The research shows that cell samples used in previous research were contaminated with the virus identified as XMRV and that XMRV is present in the mouse genome.

Scientists from Imperial College London are developing technology that could ultimately sequence a person's genome in mere minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current commercial techniques.

Researchers have reported some of the first evidence that chimpanzee youngsters in the wild may tend to play differently depending on their sex, just as human children around the world do. Although both young male and female chimpanzees play with sticks, females do so more often, and they occasionally treat them like mother chimpanzees caring for their infants, according to a study in the December 21st issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

23andMe has launched a project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which is aimed at validating 23andMe's highly-scalable platform for pharmacogenomics research. The company received $190,000 in stimulus funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for "Web-based Phenotyping for Genome-Wide Association Studies of Drug Response" from NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute.

A new study provides fascinating insight into the underlying pathology associated with the autoimmune disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The research, published by Cell Press in the December issue of the journal Immunity, reveals an unexpected role for a key type of immune cell and provides a potential new therapeutic strategy for SLE and, potentially, other autoimmune diseases.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have deciphered the genetic code for medulloblastoma, the most common pediatric brain cancer and a leading killer of children with cancer. The genetic "map" is believed to be the first reported of a pediatric cancer genome and is published online in the December 16 issue of Science Express.

New genes that have evolved in species as little as one million years ago – a virtual blink in evolutionary history – can be just as essential for life as ancient genes, startling new research has discovered.

The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling.

In studies conducted on the fruit fly, researchers at IRB Barcelona headed by ICREA Professor Marco Milán have revealed that organs have the molecular mechanisms to control their proportions. In this process the protein p53 plays a crucial role. The study is published today in the prestigious journal PLoS Biology.

Interactions between proteins are at the heart of cellular processes, and those interactions depend on the interfaces where the direct physical contact occurs. A new study published this week suggests that there may be roughly a thousand structurally-distinct protein-protein interfaces – and that their structures depend largely on the simple physics of the proteins.

About 90 percent of people are infected at some time in their lives with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), usually with no ill effects. But individuals with compromised immune systems, such as people with organ transplants or HIV infection, have a greater risk of cancer occurring because of this virus.

Polar bears were added to the threatened species list nearly three years ago when their icy habitat showed steady, precipitous decline because of a warming climate.

A remarkable discovery into how tumour cells invade normal tissue should lead to vital diagnostic tools and help develop strategies to stop the spread of cancer cells. A new study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University reveals that the surface of aggressive tumour cells lack the strong molecular 'glue' responsible for binding normal cells together. This allows tumour cells to break away, detach from their neighbors, and spread to other regions of the body.

Cultured mesenchymal stem cells can "feel" at least several microns below the surface of an artificial microfilm matrix, gauging the elasticity of the extracellular bedding that is a crucial variable in determining their fate, researchers reported today at the American Society for Cell Biology's 50th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Deleting the receptor, not the protein ghrelin itself, turns up the body's fat-burning thermostat, giving aging mice an exothermic boost toward a svelte physique, researchers reported at the American Society of Cell Biology's 50th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

One big challenge in converting plants to biofuels is that the very same molecules that keep plants standing up make it hard to break them down. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are unraveling details of how plant cells' structural supports - their cell walls - are made, with the hope of finding ways to change their composition for more efficient biofuel production.

Plants are very sensitive to light conditions because light is their source of energy and also a signal that activates the special photoreceptors that regulate growth, metabolism, and physiological development. Scientists believe that these light signals control plant growth and development by activating or inhibiting plant hormones. New research from Carnegie plant biologists has altered the prevailing theory on how light signals and hormones interact. Their findings could have implications for food crop production.

Only half of eligible women in the United States are getting their annual mammograms, even if they have insurance to pay for the procedure, according to data presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

A myriad of inputs can indicate a body's health bombard pancreatic beta cells continuously, and these cells must consider all signals and "decide" when and how much insulin to release to maintain balance in blood sugar, for example. Reporting in Nature Chemical Biology last month, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have teased out how these cells interpret incoming signals and find that three proteins relay signals similar to an electrical circuit.

Scientists have sequenced the genome of a major fungal disease that affects barley and other cereal crops, a breakthrough that could lead to significant advances in our understanding of how plant diseases evolve. The research, published today in the journal Science, suggests that parasites within the genome of the fungus help the disease to adapt and overcome the plant's defences.

Johns Hopkins scientists have identified a previously unrecognized step in the activation of infection-fighting white blood cells, the main immunity troops in the body's war on bacteria, viruses and foreign proteins.

Using stem cell technology, reproductive scientists in Texas, led by Dr. Richard R. Berhringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, have produced male and female mice from two fathers.

Yale University researchers have found that a single molecule not only connects brain cells but also changes how we learn. The findings, reported in the December 9 issue of the journal Neuron, may help researchers discover ways to improve memory and could lead to new therapies to correct neurological disorders.

Two new studies raise public health concerns about increasing antiviral resistance among certain influenza viruses, their ability to spread, and a lack of alternative antiviral treatment options. The findings are published in the January 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases. (Please see below for links to these articles online.)

The role a key molecule plays in a plant's ability to remember winter, and therefore bloom in the spring, has been identified by University of Texas at Austin scientists.

Bacteria are among the simplest organisms in nature, but many of them can still talk to each other, using a chemical "language" that is critical to the process of infection. Sending and receiving chemical signals allows bacteria to mind their own business when they are scarce and vulnerable, and then mount an attack after they become numerous enough to overwhelm the host's immune system.

With new tools that can grab individual strands of DNA and stretch them like rubber bands, Rice University scientists are working to unravel a mystery of modern genomics. Their latest findings, which appear in Physical Review Letters, offer new clues about the physical makeup of odd segments of DNA that have just one DNA base, adenine, repeated dozens of times in a row.

Arsenic - an element that triggers death for most Earthly life forms - is actually allowing for a bacterium to thrive and reproduce.

Many brain imaging studies have reported that tobacco smoking is associated with large-scale and wide-spread structural brain abnormalities.

The jaws of adolescent great white sharks may be too weak to capture and kill large marine mammals, according to a new study published in the Journal of Biomechanics by an international team of scientists.