These slow growing bacteria have long puzzled TB researchers with their fairly rapid resistance to antibiotics. Researchers may have been barking up the wrong tree in exploring genetics, because the answer seems to lie in the epigenetic domain. Now, TB researchers at San Diego State University have uncovered a crucial clue to the mystery: the…

Accurately assessing the exposure of a population to a particular virus is difficult because the tools for doing so do not account for the fact that many viruses comprise multiple circulating strains, or the fact that people can be vaccinated or naturally immune, among other factors. Using influenza as a model, researchers have developed a…

Bioengineershave found a way to radically increase the efficiency of single-cell RNA-sequencing, a powerful tool that can ‘read’ the genetic profile of an individual cell. Because scRNA-seq captures the activity of all genes in the cell’s genome — thousands of genes at once — it has become the gold standard for defining cell states and…

Proteins discovered as ‘smoke detectors’ in plants that depend on fire exposure for germination have been adapted as strigolactone hormone detectors in other plants, researchers found. Curiously, KAI2 proteins also show up in a wide variety of plant species that do not live in fire zones. Now a team of researchers led by Professor Nitzan…

More people could be protected from life-threatening rabies thanks to an agile approach to dog vaccination using smart phone technology to spot areas of low vaccination coverage in real time. The work could help save the lives of children worldwide. Vets used a smart phone app to help them halve the time it takes to…

Scientists have shown that a dysfunctional placenta can play a previously unrecognized role during the earliest stages of development in mouse models of Cornelia de Lange syndrome. People with this rare genetic disorder often harbor mutations in cohesins, ring-like proteins that help DNA organize and repair itself. The researchers found that mice with cohesin mutations…

Lignin, a chief component of cell walls in plants, is naturally degraded in the soil. Identifying new microorganisms involved in this degradation can help develop novel lignin breakdown processes in industrial settings. Now, researchers have isolated 8 microorganisms that degrade the lignin model compound 2-phenoxyacetophenone (2-PAP). They found that one of these microbes uses a…

Employing a strategy known as ‘population modification,’ which involves using a CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive system to introduce genes preventing parasite transmission into mosquito chromosomes, researchers have made a major advance in the use of genetic technologies to control the transmission of malaria parasites. University of California, Irvine postdoctoral researcher Adriana Adolfi, in collaboration with colleagues…

Human prion diseases include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease (GSS). A new study reports a significant advance in the development of mouse models of human prion diseases. The study demonstrates spontaneous formation of disease-relevant, transmissible prion protein assemblies in mice bearing only human forms of the prion protein. Prion diseases are due to the…

More than 380,000 babies are born prematurely in the United States each year, according to the March of Dimes. ‘Preemies’ can be severely underweight babies and struggle to get the nutrients they need from breast milk alone, so neonatal intensive care units provide an additional milk fortifier, either in the form of cow’s milk or…