Everyone’s heard of THC and CBD. But many other active compounds in cannabis interact to influence its effects. A new study confirms that those compounds are seldom tested for, and strain name is not indicative of potency or chemical makeup. Machine learning techniques could help fill the knowledge gap. Anyone who has used, sold, studied…

Scientists set out to investigate the evolution of a gene that helps women stay pregnant: the progesterone receptor gene. The results come from an analysis of the DNA of 115 mammalian species. «For example, we don’t know why human women go into labor,» Lynch says. «Human pregnancy tends to last longer than pregnancy in other…

Infections are still responsible for one in five childhood deaths in England and Wales, with respiratory infections topping the league table of known causes, reveals an analysis of the most up to date figures. This is despite sharp declines in overall childhood death rates over the past decade, helped in part by the introduction of…

Several proteins have been identified in hosts that interact with Ebola virus and primarily function to inhibit the production of viral genetic material in cells and prevent Ebola virus infection, according to a new study. Zaire ebolavirus or Ebola virus, an RNA virus pathogen that belongs to the filovirus family, causes outbreaks of severe disease…

Specific antibodies protect us against viral infections — or do they not? Researchers studied the immune response to papillomaviruses in mice and discovered a hitherto unknown mechanism by which the pathogens outwit the immune system: At the beginning of the infection cycle, they produce a longer version of a protein that surrounds the viral genome.…

As a molecular machine found in the cells of all organisms, the ribosome is responsible for making new proteins. For a number of reasons, this process can fail, leaving the ribosome stalled on the mRNA and bringing synthesis of the protein to a halt. An international research team has now identified a bacterial protein called…

In image compression, a large file that could be cumbersome to store or share loses a small amount of visual information. This ‘lossiness’ largely preserves the image while vastly reducing its file size — and serves as the inspiration for a new research direction in genomics, according to a professor of biomedical engineering. Pritchard and…

Motherhood takes over the brain’s decision-making regions to prioritize caring for offspring, according to new research. Making decisions requires the medial prefrontal cortex filtering and repressing multiple streams of information. This often involves picking between powerful, conflicting stimuli, such as when drug-using mothers must choose between their new child or drug-seeking. Since the most effective…

Researchers have uncovered the reason mutations in a particular gene lead to mitochondrial disease. The finding, published in PNAS journal and led by Professor Mike Ryan from Monash University’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute, shows that a gene responsible for causing loss of vision and hearing, TMEM126A, makes a protein that helps build an important energy generator…

When cells multiply and migrate, they can be compressed and their nucleus may break open. This phenomenon causes DNA damage. Scientists have now shown that this facilitates the spread of cancer cells in breast tumors. These scientists have shown that when cells are compressed and that breaks the nucleus, DNA can come into contact with…