This is an image of an embryo of the sea squirt Ciona. A new study by Weill Cornell Medical College scientists reveals a mechanism through which the expression of genes is controlled – a finding that highlights genetic mutations that can impair the timing of gene expression. Such mutations can affect the co-ordination of key events that are required for stepwise development of an organism, and can also give rise to cancer by turning on genes at the wrong time.

An international team of scientists, led by physicists from the University of York, has shed important new light on coral skeleton formation.

The key to future HIV treatment could be hidden right in our own genes. Everyone who becomes infected deploys defense strategies, and some even manage to hold the virus at bay without any therapy at all. This immune system struggle leaves its mark within the pathogen itself – genetic mutations that indicate how the virus reacted to its host's attacks. Scientists from EPFL and the Vaud university hospital center (UNIL-CHUV) retraced the entire chain of events in these battles, from the genome of the virus to the genome of the victim. They have created the first map of human HIV resistance. The goal of their research, which has been published in the journal eLife on the 29th of October, is to find new therapeutic targets and to enable individualized treatment strategies.