Body

Malaria parasites cause hundreds of millions of infections, and kills hundreds of thousands of people annually, mostly in Africa. And in recent years the most dangerous malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, has become increasingly resistant to the main anti-malarial drugs. Now, an international team of researchers shows that some members of a class of compounds called oxaboroles, which contain the element, boron, have potent activity against malaria parasites.

OAKLAND, Calif., June 6, 2016 -- Daughters of overweight mothers who develop gestational diabetes are significantly more likely to experience an earlier onset of one sign of puberty, according to new Kaiser Permanente research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Research into kidney regeneration, an organ that has been extremely difficult to regenerate, has taken a great stride forward with research coming out of a collaboration between Kumamoto University, Japan and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US. The research demonstrates a method of increasing kidney progenitor cell proliferation in vitro. These progenitor cells contribute to the formation of kidney tissues but normally disappear before or soon after birth.

Griffith University researchers have found evidence that demonstrates Aboriginal people were the first to inhabit Australia, as reported in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this week.

The work refutes an earlier landmark study that claimed to recover DNA sequences from the oldest known Australian, Mungo Man.

This earlier study was interpreted as evidence that Aboriginal people were not the first Australians, and that Mungo Man represented an extinct lineage of modern humans that occupied the continent before Aboriginal Australians.

The Neanderthal genome included harmful mutations that made the hominids around 40% less reproductively fit than modern humans, according to estimates published in the latest issue of the journal GENETICS. Non-African humans inherited some of this genetic burden when they interbred with Neanderthals, though much of it has been lost over time. The results suggest that these harmful gene variants continue to reduce the fitness of some populations today. The study also has implications for management of endangered species.

For most of the last 45,000 years Europe was inhabited solely by hunter-gatherers. About 8,500 years ago a new form of subsistence - farming - started to spread across the continent from modern-day Turkey, reaching central Europe by 7,500 years ago and Britain by 6,100 years ago. This new subsistence strategy led to profound changes in society, including greater population density, new diseases, and poorer health. Such was the impact of farming on how we live that scientists have debated for more than 100 years how it was spread across Europe.

Microorganisms can better withstand the heavy metal uranium when glutathione is present, a molecule composed of three amino acids. Scientists from the German based Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Bern in Switzerland have now proven this resilience by closely examining cell heat balance. They discovered that glutathione is an effective decontamination agent. The studies provide important insights into bioremediation of mining waste piles and other contaminated areas with the help of bacteria or plants.