A new bacterium that uses caffeine for food has been discovered by a doctoral student at the University of Iowa. The bacterium uses newly discovered digestive enzymes to break down the caffeine, which allows it to live and grow.

New information has come to light explaining how injured skin cells and touch-sensing nerve fibers coordinate their regeneration during wound healing. UCLA researchers Sandra Rieger and Alvaro Sagasti found that a chemical signal released by wounded skin cells promotes the regeneration of sensory fibers, thus helping to ensure that touch sensation is restored to healing skin. They discovered that the reactive oxygen species hydrogen peroxide, which is found at high concentrations at wounds, is a key component of this signal.

This is a harbor seal and pup. Seals and other marine mammals in the Pacific Northwest are being infected by two kinds of parasites that normally infect land mammals. A study of tissue samples from 161 marine mammals that died between 2004 and 2009 in the Pacific Northwest reveals an association between severe illness and co-infection with two kinds of parasites normally found in land animals. One, Sarcocystis neurona, is a newcomer to the northwest coastal region of North America and is not known to infect people, while the other, Toxoplasma gondii, has been established there for some time and caused a large outbreak of disease in people in 1995.

A protein isolated from beneficial bacteria found in yogurt and dairy products could offer a new, oral therapeutic option for inflammatory bowel disorders (IBD), suggests a study led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researcher Fang Yan, M.D., Ph.D.

Johns Hopkins scientists say that a newly discovered "survival protein" protects the brain against the effects of stroke in rodent brain tissue by interfering with a particular kind of cell death that's also implicated in complications from diabetes and heart attack.

Singled out by unique color codes, ants provide evidence through their interactions that challenges previous assumptions about how social networks function. Be it through the Internet, Facebook, the local grapevine or the spread of disease, interaction networks influence nearly every part of our lives.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a special wound dressing that they report was able to significantly reduce scar tissue caused by incisions.

The poisonous pufferfish (Latin: Lagocephalus sceleratus) is one of the species that have invaded the coastal environments of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. More than 900 new alien species have been encountered in the coastal environments of the eastern Mediterranean Sea in recent decades, including the poisonous pufferfish. The invasion of alien species has had the consequence that the whole food chain is changing, while there is a lack of knowledge on which to base relevant risk assessments, a four-year study conducted at the University of Gothenburg shows.

In a study to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report the discovery of a novel hepatitis C-like virus in dogs. The identification and characterization of this virus gives scientists new insights into how hepatitis C in humans may have evolved and provides scientists renewed hope to develop a model system to study how it causes disease.