Cell cultures are good for broad biology and medical research, they can help eliminate a lot of broad concerns, but they are not a faithful mimic of real tissue. For the foreseeable future, though the public thinks animal testing is unnecessary, it really is.

A new study finds that laboratory-grown cells experience altered cell states within three days as they adapt to their new environment, and studies of human disease, including cancer, rely on the use of cell cultures that have often been grown for decades. 

Researchers have cracked a code that governs infections by a major group of viruses including the common cold and polio.

Until now, scientists had not noticed the code, which had been hidden in plain sight in the sequence of the ribonucleic acid (RNA) that makes up this type of viral genome.

But a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Early Edition by a group from the University of Leeds and University of York unlocks its meaning and demonstrates that jamming the code can disrupt virus assembly. Stopping a virus assembling can stop it functioning and therefore prevent disease.

Researchers have cracked a code that governs infections by the common cold and polio viruses.

The code was known, it was 'hidden in plain sight' in the sequence of the ribonucleic acid (RNA) that makes up this type of viral genome but its meaning had not been unlocked. Now, researchers have found that jamming the code can disrupt virus assembly. Stopping a virus assembling can stop it functioning and therefore prevent disease. 

Single-stranded RNA viruses are the simplest type of virus and were probably one of the earliest to evolve. However, they are still among the most potent and damaging of infectious pathogens.

A new genus and species of flowering plants from the custard apple family, Annonaceae, has been discovered in the jungles of Gabon by French and Gabonese botanists. The extraordinary genus was named Sirdavidia, after David Attenborough to honor his influence on the life and careers of the scientists who discovered it.

But what is so special about this new discovery? The new genus was in fact erected to accommodate an unusual new species, found in Monts de Cristal National Park, Gabon during an expedition focusing on the study of Magnoliidae floral diversity in rain forests, to which the Annonaceae family belongs.

By inserting a specific strain of bacteria into the microenvironment of aggressive ovarian cancer, researchers transformed the behavior of tumor cells from suppression to immunostimulation - they attack themselves.

Tumors protect themselves from attack by the immune system by generating an immunosuppressive microenvironment.  By introducing an attenuated and safe form of the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), created by Aduro Biotech Inc., they found that the attenuated bacteria is taken up by the immunosuppressive cells and transforms them from cells that protect the tumor into cells that attack the tumor 

The world's urban areas have experienced significant increases in heat waves over the past 40 years, according to new research published today.

These prolonged periods of extreme hot days have significantly increased in over 200 urban areas across the globe between 1973 and 2012, and have been most prominent in the most recent years on record.

The results, which have been published today, 30 January, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, show that over the same time period, more than half of the studied areas showed a significant increase in the number of individual extreme hot days, whilst almost two-thirds showed significant increases in the number of individual extreme hot nights.