Scientists have mapped out the genes that keep our cells alive, creating a long-awaited foothold for understanding how our genome works and which genes are crucial in disease like cancer.

A particular location in DNA, called the Dlk1-Gtl2 locus, plays a critical role in protecting hematopoietic, or blood-forming, stem cells--a discovery revealing a critical role of metabolic control in adult stem cells, and providing insight for potentially diagnosing and treating cancer, according to researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

The mosquito-borne virus chikungunya may lead to severe brain infection and even death in infants and people over 65, according to a new study that reviewed a chikungunya outbreak on Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar in 2005-2006. The study is published in the November 25, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Many cases have occurred in the United States in people who acquired the virus while traveling, but the first locally transmitted case in the U.S. occurred in Florida in July.

Nearly 37 million people worldwide are living with HIV. When the virus destroys so many immune cells that the body can't fight off infection, AIDS will develop. The disease took the lives of more than a million people last year.