Category Archives: News & Archives

Microscopic, blobby-bodied tardigrades — also known as "water bears" — are famed for their ability to survive in extreme conditions, even appearing to come back from the dead. But although tardigrades' hardiness has intrigued scientists for over 250 years, the mechanisms that enable these animals to recover after drying out for a decade or longer…

Researchers from Canada, South Africa and Italy have identified a new gene that can lead to sudden death among young people and athletes. The gene, called CDH2, causes arrhythmogenic right ventricle cardiomyopathy (ARVC), which is a genetic disorder that predisposes patients to cardiac arrest and is a major cause of unexpected death in seemingly healthy…

Colorectal cancer rates are on the rise among millennials and Gen Xers in the U.S., a new study finds. The findings come as rates of these cancers have continued to decline in adults ages 55 and up, according to the study. People in the U.S. born in 1990 now have double the risk of colon…

FOCUSING ON THE CELL’S POWER HOUSE More and more, scientists are becoming convinced that aging is a disease that can be stopped or, at least, slowed. Recently, researchers from Russia and Sweden investigated this idea further in a joint study by Lomonosov Moscow State University and Stockholm University. Their study, published in the journal Aging, focuses on the…

The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering. Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist…

The largest ever genetic study of children with previously undiagnosed rare developmental disorders has discovered 14 new developmental disorders. Published today in Nature, the research led by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute also provided diagnoses of rare conditions for over a thousand children and their families. These diagnoses allow families with the same…

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered a protein that fine-tunes the cellular clock involved in aging. This novel protein, named TZAP, binds the ends of chromosomes and determines how long telomeres, the segments of DNA that protect chromosome ends, can be. Understanding telomere length is crucial because telomeres set the lifespan of…

Michigan State University researchers have discovered that a chemical compound, and potential new drug, reduces the spread of melanoma cells by up to 90 percent. The human-made, small-molecule drug compound goes after a gene's ability to produce RNA molecules and certain proteins in melanoma tumors. This gene activity, or transcription process, causes the disease to…

Many infectious pathogens are difficult to treat because they develop into biofilms, layers of metabolically active but slowly growing bacteria embedded in a protective layer of slime, which are inherently more resistant to antibiotics. Now, a group of researchers at Caltech and the University of Oxford have made progress in the fight against biofilms. Led…

A groundbreaking study of the virosphere of the most populous animals -- those without backbones such as insects, spiders and worms and that live around our houses -- has uncovered 1445 viruses, revealing people have only scratched the surface of the world of viruses -- but it is likely that only a few cause disease.…