Scientists describe T. adhaerens’ unusual behavior, including its capacity to repair its DNA even after significant radiation damage and to extrude injured cells, which later die. The findings advance scientific investigations of natural cancer-suppression mechanisms across life. Insights gleaned from these evolutionary adaptations may find their way into new and more effective therapies for this…

A new antibacterial agent that has been engineered to essentially hide from the human immune system may treat life-threatening MRSA infections. A new article provides details on the agent, which is the first lysin-based treatment with the potential to be used multiple times on a single patient, making it ideal to treat particularly persistent drug-resistant…

The Zika virus outbreak in Latin America has affected over 60 million people up to now. The infection can have potentially fatal consequences for pregnant women and their unborn children: many children have subsequently been born with malformations of the head (microcephaly). A particularly high incidence of these Zika-associated malformations exists in northeastern Brazil. Scientists…

Exposure to the parasitic roundworm Ascaris lumbricoides among young men can cause a striking reduction in lung function and nearly five times higher odds of having asthma compared to the non-exposed, study shows. The paper «Ascaris exposure associated with lung function, asthma and DNA-methylation in Northern-Europe» was just published in The Journal of Allergy and…

Scientists have figured out how to modify CRISPR’s basic architecture to extend its reach beyond the genome and into what’s known as the epigenome — proteins and small molecules that latch onto DNA and control when and where genes are switched on or off. In a paper published April 9, 2021, in the journal Cell,…

A team of infectious disease researchers has developed a new method to identify virulence genes in Streptococcus pneumoniae, the leading cause of bacterial pneumonia. Using this technique in a mouse model of pneumonia, they were able to gain new insights into the progression of the disease and its interaction with the flu virus. «Bacterial pneumonia…

Scientists have shown that the recycling program of cells, autophagy, leads to the fusion of several single cells into multinucleated cell units during wound healing. Autophagy is a cellular recycling mechanism that has been conserved over the course of evolution from yeast to humans. Autophagic vesicles, small bubbles within the cell, recognize, engulf, and digest…

‘Efficient coding theory’ describes the most perfect, low-energy way to design a light-detecting device for a future camera or prosthetic retina. Or you could just look at a mammalian retina that’s already organized this way. In a pair of papers on retinal structure, a team of neurobiologists has shown that the rigors of natural selection…

Researchers uncover the evolution of the hepatitis B virus since the Early Holocene by analyzing the largest dataset of ancient viral genomes produced to date. HBV and the peopling of the Americas Present-day HBV strains are classified into nine genotypes, two of which are found predominantly in populations of Native American ancestry. The study provides…

Researchers have developed a mouse model of COVID-19 that is expected to speed up the search for drugs and vaccines for the potentially deadly disease. The mouse model is described in a paper published online June 10 in the journal Cell. In addition to drug and vaccine testing, scientists can use the model with mice…