Microbiology

A newly discovered function for a hormone in melons suggests it plays a role in how sexual systems evolve in plants. Scientists from several French institutions, led by Abdel Bendahmane of the…

Scientists have unravelled a potential mechanism for how top-level rowers develop enlarged strengthened hearts as a result of long-term intensive training. The research in the August edition of…

Low levels of naturally occurring antibodies may represent an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, particularly stroke in men. This discovery, published in Atherosclerosis, has now…

A strain of mice with the natural ability to repair damaged cartilage may one day lead to significant improvements in treatment of human knee, shoulder and hip injuries. Researchers at Oregon Health…

Cut off one finger from a salamander and one will grow back. Cut off two and two will grow back. It sounds logical, but how the salamander always regenerates the right number of fingers is a…

Cells are intrinsically artistic. When the right signals tell a cell to divide, it usually splits down the middle, resulting in two identical daughter cells, though stem cells are the exception to…

A new discovery could lead to treatments which turn off the inflammation in the lungs caused by influenza and other infections, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Immunology.…

The question of whether insulin-producing cells of the pancreas can regenerate is key to our understanding of diabetes, and to the further development of regenerative therapies against the disease.…

For millennia, humans and viruses have been locked in an evolutionary back-and-forth -- one changes to outsmart the other, prompting the second to change and outsmart the first. With retroviruses,…

Viruses achieve their definition of success when they can thrive without killing their host. Now, biologists Pamela Bjorkman and Zhiru Yang of the California Institute of Technology have uncovered…