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According to latest estimates by the World Health Organisation, over 3.4 billion people are at risk from contracting malaria and an estimated 627,000 people die each year from the disease. Thanks to the painstaking efforts of leading researchers in the field, however, much progress has been made in curbing down on malaria. Since 2000, increased […]
One of the most popular urban myths speaks of Bigfoot – an 8-foot tall creature, covered in thick, dark hair. The creature, also known as sasquatch or Yeti (the Asian counterpart) has spurred the imagination of countless people, some of whom went a step farther to report actual sightings of the elusive beast. If you […]
A class of drugs currently used to treat leukemia has been found to have some severe side effects – positive ones, that is. The drug was found to drastically boosting immune responses against many different cancers, reports a new study. The drug class is referred to as p110´ inhibitors. Recently, it has been used with […]
Every baby has a mother and a father, right? As in one of each. Well, that may change soon, according to a new UK report. In February, the FDA announced it was considering 3-parent embryos; while this would be an excellent way to stop some deadly diseases, it also raises many ethical questions, and the reaction (as […]
While being taller has been correlated with success in life, being short also has its perks: a team of researchers has shown that shorter men tend to live longer. “We split people into two groups — those that were 5-foot-2 and shorter, and 5-4 and taller,” said Dr. Bradley Willcox, one of the investigators for […]
The entire living world is “written” with just four DNA bases: A = adenine C = cytosine G = guanine T = thymine However, for the first time, researchers have now created a living cell with an added pair of DNA “letters,” or bases, not found in nature – the DNA alphabet just got some new letters! “Life on Earth […]
A new “organ on a chip” has been developed by Harvard researchers, reproducing the structure, functions, and cellular make-up of bone marrow, a complex tissue that until now, could only be studied on living animals. Bone marrow is one of the more complex and fragile parts of the human body – many drugs and toxic elements […]
Humans and squids are not exactly close relatives – as a matter of fact, we’re really different from squids, so how come we came to have surprisingly similar eyes? The answer, as usually, is in our genes. Eyes are complicated things – and like all organs, they rely on many genes working together, keeping everything […]
Scientists have shown that trauma can leave epigenetic marks – chemical changes that affect how DNA is expressed without altering its sequence. Basically, your traumatic experiences genetically affect your offspring. Scientists have recently focused on the long term after effects of trauma, finding them to be numerous and diverse. The offspring of traumatized people are at […]
It’s a truly terrifying story, and a truly terrifying disease. The flesh-eating culprit in question is called GAS, or Group A β-hemolytic streptococcus, a highly infective bacteria. Apart from causing the flesh-eating disease necrotizing fasciitis, GAS is also responsible for a range of less harmful infections. But like most bacteria, it was harmless at one point in its […]
The origin and evolutionary history of modern lions has been revealed through genetic analysis. This recent study suggests that the lions’ most recent common ancestor lived around 124,000 years ago. A fallen king Modern lions evolved in two different groups – one of them currently lives in Eastern and Southern Africa, the other includes lions […]
As incredible as it may sound, scientists have successfully reversed the aging process in mice, according to a new study published in Cell. Reversing aging, a real possibility? Many of the chronic diseases that exist in older adults constitute a highly significant social and economic burden to the community; if you think about it, eliminating […]
In a huge breakthrough in synthetic biology, scientists at Johns Hopkins University have engineered from scratch a yeast chromosome. This is the first time scientists have been able to assemble a chromosome from a creature as complicated as a yeast, namely a prokaryrite. The implications of this research are far and wide. For one, the […]
Sea anemones are remarkable creatures. They are a group of water-dwelling, predatory animals, but if you look at them, they look like plants more than animals. Now, a team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Vienna has discovered that sea anemones display a remarkable genome, featuring a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit […]
The largest clinical study ever conducted to date of patients with advanced leukemia found that an incredible 88% of patients entered remission after being treated with genetically modified versions of their own immune cells. It’s like the medicine of tomorrow – today; and it’s super effective. “These extraordinary results demonstrate that cell therapy is a […]
Human embryonic stem cells can be induced into forming a developing brain tissue. The brain development process represents one of the most specific processes; during it, neuroepithelium, formed as a flat sheet by the nervous system, grows on the exterior layer of the embryo, after which it folds in to create a neural tube giving […]
Sure to raise a slew of controversy and debate, researchers in Japan are currently investigating the possibility of growing human organs, like kidneys, livers or even hearts, inside pigs. A real life chimeric tale, as if spawned from the Island of Dr. Moreau. The challenges are numerous though, both technical (we’re talking about growing human […]
Some people just have the knack of remembering the face of everyone they’ve met in their lives, while others, on the opposite end of the spectrum, have a difficult time recognizing who they met yesterday. Now, researchers at Emory have identified the oxytocin receptor, a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding and pair bonding in monogamous […]
Just like taste, it’s really common for people not to agree on how pleasant or fowl a scent may be. You might find the meal you just cooked to have a pleasant odor or you might have bought a perfume you thought smelled divine, only for some other person to disagree and express a distaste. […]
From the common cold to pneumonia and potentially life threatening lung diseases: a single protein was found to play a key role. Now, an international team of researchers has finally zeroed in it. The key protein is called MUC5B – it is one of the two proteins found in the mucus that normally and helpfully […]
Mice in the control group refused to drink alcohol When a certain gene was deactivated, they started preferring alcohol over water Researchers stress that human alcoholism depends much more on environmental and personal factors Researchers have discovered a gene that regulates alcohol consumption; when this genes becomes faulty, it makes humans more prone to […]
University of Utah researchers found that female mice that live in a competitive social environment and choose to mate casually with multiple partners give birth to males who are much more attractive to female mice, at the cost of a dramatic cut in life expectancy however. You only have one life, says the sexy male […]
It’s not the cancer tumor itself that kills people, but rather the spread of cancer cells is what ultimately may bring the killing blow to patients. This is called metastasis, and oddly enough not nearly enough is known about how it works. University of Minnesota researchers have devised a pathological method for doctors to assess whether […]
You’ll be pretty impressed by this novel research. Scientists at University of Iowa have developed an ingenious biopatch which expels nanoparticles containing DNA that instructs cells to turn into bone. Practically, you just apply this patch over a damaged area that needs reconstruction, dental surgery site or congenital bone defect and the genes do the rest of […]
Researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laser Zentrum Hannover have worked together to discover a natural compound which can be used in the 3D printing process of creating medical implants out of non-toxic polymers. The compound goes by the name riboflavin, but is better known as […]
One of the greatest mysteries scientists have been trying to reveal is how inanimate chemicals joined to produce life. It’s definitely one of the biggest questions scientists are trying to answer, and the challenges are numerous since it’s very difficult to appreciate what the exact conditions necessary for this to happen were billions of years […]
Anti-baldness treatments available today work by stimulating hair follicle health or slow down hair loss. There is no available method that promotes the growth of new hair, however. You might have heard of hair transplants, but this typically involves transplanting hair from another area of the hair, like the back of the head, to the […]
Faeces based treatment halts the advance of Clostridium difficile bacteria, but a commercial treatment is still far away. Using a faeces in the treatment of the gut infections and diarrhea is not a new idea, though it’s still in its initial stages. In 2010, we told you about a woman who had a life threatening […]
Has it already been a year? It’s Nobel Prize season once again, and the first award has been given in “Physiology or Medicine“. James E Rothman, Randy W Schekman and Thomas C Südhof took the prize for their work on the mechanism that controls the transport of membrane-bound parcels or ‘vesicles’ through cells. The American […]
After they identified precise groups of cells in mice brain that induce eating and others that curb it, a team of researchers caused full mice to continue eating and hungry mice to stop eating simply by stimulating one of these areas. Their findings could aid in the development of novel drugs that target eating disorders […]
The X-Shape in which we usually see chromosomes depicted in is only a snapshot of their real complexity – a new method for visualizing them showed. A joint project involving the Babraham Institute, the University of Cambridge and the Weizmann Institute has produced the most beautiful and accurate models of chromosomes available up to date. […]
Some people are born with the innate ability, or better said disability, of not feeling pain – whatsoever. It’s not that they can’t feel anything, quite on the contrary – they still have a sense of texture, they feel pressure, they can feel a hug or handshake just like anyone, they experience warmth or coldness […]
It’s amazing how two different animals from two completely different environments evolve some identical physical features. Take bats and dolphins for instance. Both of them use a complex system that produces, receives and process ultrasonic sound waves in order to identify visually hidden objects, track down prey or navigate through obstacles better – typically this […]
A team of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University has shown for the first time that asexual lineages of a species are doomed not necessarily from a long, slow accumulation of new mutations, but rather from fast gene conversions which unmask preexisting genetic mutations. The groundbreaking research started with the sequencing of the entire genomes of […]
Scientists have discovered an atypical gene that is thought to be crucial for the generation of new neurons in the brain, a process called neurogenesis. The discovery and further study of the gene might help scientists better understand how neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s affect the brain and, in term, how to address them. New […]
The insertion of one gene can shut down the extra chromosome which causes Down Syndrome, according to a study published today in Nature. A dreadful disease Down Syndrome (DS), also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It’s the […]
An extremely challenging study published by a team of researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine claims that through some unknown mechanism mammals can bias the sex of their offspring in order to win the genetic lottery and produce extra grandchildren. The holy graal of modern evolutionary biology After analyzing 90 years of breeding records […]
Less than 1.5 percent of our DNA is used in a conventional way, that is to encode for proteins – this was the common sense around this issue 10 years ago; recently, previous research has shown that 5-8% of the genome is conserved at the level of DNA sequence, indicating that it is functional, but […]
A number of human-like unique limb features, like the thumb, can be witnessed from the earliest most stages of development. Intuition tells us that this means the genetic changes and material that underlie these traits are active in the embryo stage. Recently, researchers Yale School of Medicine found there are thousands of active sequences that control […]
Mammals can naturally regenerate the very top of their fingers and toes after amputation; starting from this idea, researchers have demonstrated the mechanism that describes this process, and explain how stem cells from nails could play a pivotal role in future regeneration of entire fingers. A study conducted on mice showed that the chemical signal […]
Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease (HD), is a chronic infection caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. It was quite a common disease in Europe until the 16th century. Now, researchers have extracted DNA from skeletons that were 1,000 years old, analyzing the disease genetic code and comparing it to that of new strains, […]
The case of birds missing out on a proper penis has been a longstanding mystery in evolutionary biology. Roughly 97% of avian species sport little or nothing like a real phallus, yet they still reproduce via internal fertilization. A new study, conducted by Martin Cohn, a developmental biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville […]
One big obstacle scientists face in their efforts to develop effective drugs against HIV is the virus’ capsid – an outer cell membrane-derived envelope and an inner viral protein shell that protects HIV essential proteins and genetic information. Current drugs have a hard time breaching this structure, however this might change. Using a supercomputer that crunched immense […]
Babies learn to babble before they can talk, usually starting with the “ba-ba”, or “ga-ga”, or in the really fortunate cases – with “ma-ma”. After that, they start stringing a few random syllables together, and only after that, they actually start talking. Songbirds exhibit the same type of behavior when they start singing, and the […]
Reconstructive surgery has made huge strides forward in the past few decades alone, helping countless people live a life closer to normal, freer from the immense harshness and pain that comes with damaged and exposed tissue. In the future, regenerative surgery will only evolve, and gene therapy is set to play a major role. A […]
Mosquitoes are not only extremely annoying, but they’re some of the most lethal creatures out there, with malaria infecting over 200 million people each year. But genetically modified mosquitoes that lack some of their sense of smell cannot tell humans from other animals and no longer avoid approaching people who are slathered in bug spray. […]
A study has shown that genetically modified salmon that breed with wild trout can produce a fast-growing, competitive fish that not only screws around with the local ecosystem, but because it also alters the fish genome in ways which cannot be anticipated. What do you get when you cross a genetically modified salmon and wild […]
Only 2% of the human genome is comprised of genes, while the vast majority of genetic material is known as noncoding DNA – that is to say DNA that doesn’t code proteins. A complex plant, the carnivorous bladderwort plant, known as Utricularia gibba, recently became the center of attention for evolutionary biologists after a recently published paper by […]
The human genome has been sequenced a mere few years ago, and since then a great deal of advancements have been made in the field. This is extremely important since in the future, personalized medicine needs each individual’s genetic markup such that treatment may get the most effective punch or diseases and afflictions might be […]
It’s hard to find two populated areas as far apart as Brazil and Polynesia; however, a recent genetic study showed that indigenous people that lived in southeastern Brazil in the late 1800s shared some genetic sequences with Polynesians. This could suggest that Pacific islanders traded with South America thousands of years ago (or traveled across […]
