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Scientists develop new research mice to help understand "good" cholesterol

Scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues have developed new research mice to help them better understand how the body makes and uses "good" cholesterol to protect against heart attacks and strokes.

21 Mar 2006

Natural selection drives extremely rapid evolution in antiviral RNAi genes

There is now new evidence that animals in fact do an impressive job of keeping up in the ongoing evolutionary arms race between viruses and their hosts.

20 Mar 2006

Attractive birds appear to have greater avian virus resistance

A research team at Uppsala University, Sweden has shown in a new study, published in the journal Acta Zoologica, that the size of the spot on a male collared flycatcher's forehead reflects how well the immune defence system combats viruses such as avian influenza.

20 Mar 2006

Scientists exploit novel route to reverse enlarged hearts in obese mice

Working on genetically engineered obese mice with seriously thickened hearts, a condition call cardiac hypertrophy, scientists at Johns Hopkins have used a nerve protection and growth factor on the heart to mimic the activity of the brain hormone leptin, dramatically reducing the size of the heart muscle.

13 Mar 2006

Smk-1 is the first known gene that regulates longevity without disrupting life-sustaining function

Within a hormone-triggered cascade of molecular signals that plays a crucial for a wide range of physiological functions, researchers for the very first time have identified a protein that functions specifically to extend lifespan and youthfulness - without disrupting fertility

13 Mar 2006

A map of recent positive selection in the human genome

By scanning the entire human genome in search of genetic variations that may signal recent evolution, University of Chicago researchers found more than 700 genetic variants that may be targets of recent natural positive selection during the past 10,000 years of human evolution.

9 Mar 2006

Scientists create a mosquito resistant to Type 2 dengue fever virus

Researchers have successfully created a genetically engineered mosquito that shows a high level of resistance against the most prevalent type of dengue fever virus, providing a powerful weapon against a disease that infects 50 million people each year.

9 Mar 2006

Gene regulation determines human-chimp differences

The vast differences between humans and chimpanzees are due more to changes in gene regulation than differences in individual genes themselves

9 Mar 2006

New genome-wide map of miRNA-MRNA interactions

Researchers at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics and the University of California, Berkeley have used computational analyses to predict a genome-wide map of microRNA (miRNA) targets in the animal model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans).

9 Mar 2006

How mammalian brains recognize other individuals

Imagine seeing a former high school classmate you always wanted to know better. Then imagine seeing that kid who used to push you in the hallways. Do you react differently? What happens in your brain during these encounters?

9 Mar 2006

Cornell develops technique for making living, functional cells glow

The development gives researchers insights into how hearts develop in living mouse embryos and could improve our understanding of irregular heartbeats, known as arrhythmias, as well as open doors to observing cellular processes to better understand basic physiology and disease.

9 Mar 2006

Father-daughter inbreeding avoidance in a wild primate population

A 14 year behavioral and genetic study of a population of wild capuchin monkeys has shown that fathers almost never mate with their daughters, even though alpha males sire the majority of offspring produced by females unrelated to them.

9 Mar 2006

Global evolutionary map reveals new insights into our last common ancestor

In 1870 the German scientist Ernst Haeckel mapped the evolutionary relationships of plants and animals in the first 'tree of life'.

7 Mar 2006

Genome signature tagging used to quickly identify and distinguish between pathogens and harmless microbes

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new, high-throughput technique for identifying the many species of microorganisms living in an unknown "microbial community."

6 Mar 2006

Anti-inflammatory effect of beer

Scientists at Innsbruck Medical University have succeeded in demonstrating the anti-inflammatory effect of beer extracts.

6 Mar 2006

Rhodium quinones promise better drugs

By combining a common organic compound with a rare metal, a team of Brown University chemists has created a new class of molecules that have potentially important applications for the pharmaceutical, chemical and energy industries.

1 Mar 2006

Hydrogel scaffold materials used to create stable networks of blood vessels

Yale biomedical engineers have created an implantable system that can form and stabilize a functional network of fine blood vessels critical for supporting tissues in the body, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

1 Mar 2006

Scientists can now predict memory of an event before it even happens

A team at UCL (University College London) can now tell how well memory will serve us before we have seen what we will remember.

27 Feb 2006

Scientists grow a human prostate from embryonic stem cells

In a giant step towards understanding prostate disease, Melbourne scientists have grown a human prostate from embryonic stem cells.

27 Feb 2006

Charles Darwin proven right on natural selection

The famous scientist would be pleased because a study published online this week provides the first clear evidence that natural selection, his favored mechanism of evolution, drives the process of species formation in a wide variety of plants and animals.

27 Feb 2006