General

New research led by The University of Western Australia has shown that the social conditions that a male experiences while growing up can influence the amount of X and Y chromosome sperm that he produces as an adult. The findings, published in Evolution Letters, provide insight into how exposure to […]

Researchers from King’s College London have uncovered the earliest signs of Parkinson’s disease in the brain, many years before patients show any symptoms. The results, published in The Lancet Neurology, challenge the traditional view of the disease and could potentially lead to screening tools for identifying people at greatest risk. […]

From a biological standpoint, the earliest stages of life are the most mysterious. A developing human embryo undergoes a flurry of rapid changes, and these changes are exceedingly difficult to study because they transpire within the confines of a womb. But with new technology, it might soon be possible to […]

Transitions are a hallmark of life. When dormant plants flower in the spring or when a young adult strikes out on their own, there is a shift in control. Similarly, there is a transition during early development when an embryo undergoes biochemical changes, switching from being controlled by maternal molecules […]

Sortilin, which is a receptor expressed on the surface of nerve cells, plays a central role in memory and is now shown surprisingly also to be crucial in pain development in laboratory mice – and in all likelihood in humans as well. This is the main conclusion of the study […]

For many years, the classification of gliomas relied largely on the cells’ general appearance, or histological characteristics, as seen under a microscope. Today, our understanding of glioma subtypes has expanded to include the molecular and genetic variants that can influence a tumor’s development, prognosis, and response to treatment. Until recently, […]

Scientists from the University of Bath are challenging the claims of two high profile papers from 2018 which reported that in the mouse, RNA has to be added to sperm for them to be fully fertile. The Bath findings undermine a proposed mechanism of epigenetic inheritance in which offspring inherit […]

A compound with potential as a treatment for ALS has gained further promise in a new study that showed it improved the condition of mice whose motor neurons had been damaged by an environmental toxin known to cause features of ALS. ALS patients are categorized either as familial – meaning […]

Stem cells are jacks of all trades, capable of alleviating the consequences of such diverse pathologies as heart attacks, strokes and cancer. However, stem cell therapies have been hampered by possible side effects, which are frequently hard to predict. One way around this conundrum is to understand how stem cells […]

Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the human body, an essential function for survival. Anemia results when someone has fewer red blood cells than normal. The world’s most common blood disorder, anemia comes in many different varieties — mild to severe, acquired or genetic. Yale pediatrician and geneticist Patrick Gallagher, M.D., […]

A research team at the University of California, Riverside, has found that electronic cigarettes, often targeted to youth and pregnant women, produce a stress response in neural stem cells, which are critical cells in the brain. Present throughout life, stem cells become specialized cells with more specific functions, such as […]

Cancer cells use a bizarre strategy to reproduce in a tumor’s low-energy environment; they mutilate their own mitochondria! Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) also know how this occurs, offering a promising new target for pancreatic cancer therapies. Why would a cancer cell want to destroy its own functioning […]