Body

AUSTIN, Texas—A team of scientists has documented that Yasuní National Park, in the core of the Ecuadorian Amazon, shatters world records for a wide array of plant and animal groups, from amphibians to trees to insects.

The authors also conclude that proposed oil development projects represent the greatest threat to Yasuní and its biodiversity.

AMES, Iowa - Research at Iowa State University has led scientists to uncover how the deadly Zaire Ebola virus decoys cells and eventually kills them.

A research team led by Gaya Amarasinghe, an assistant professor of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology, had previously solved the structure of a critical part of an Ebola protein known as VP35, which is involved in host immune suppression.

Amarasinghe and his research team now know how VP35 is able to do it.

When most viruses invade a cell, they start to make RNA in order to replicate.

A new model for primate origins is presented in Zoologica Scripta, published by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The paper argues that the distributions of the major primate groups are correlated with Mesozoic tectonic features and that their respective ranges are congruent with each evolving locally from a widespread ancestor on the supercontinent of Pangea about 185 million years ago.

Combining technology and animal health, a group of Kansas State University researchers is developing a more effective way to predict the spread of foot-and-mouth disease and the impact of preventative measures.

The researchers are finding that if a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak is not in the epidemic stage, preemptive vaccination is a minimally expensive way to halt the disease's spread across a network of animals. But if there's a high probability of infection, computer models show that culling strategies are better.

Research published this week in PLoS Medicine synthesizes information from many different studies that attempt to link specific antibody responses to Plasmodium falciparum with protection from clinical malaria and comes to important conclusions about which antigens might be worth advancing as vaccine candidates.

This week PLoS Medicine publishes the third in a four-part series of policy papers examining the ways in which global health institutions and arrangements are changing and evolving.

A new study from the University of Leicester has found that most men in Europe descend from the first farmers who migrated from the Near East 10,000 years ago. The findings are published January 19 in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

Yasuní National Park, located in the core of the Ecuadorian Amazon, shatters a range of world biodiversity records—from trees to amphibians to insects to mammals and an array of other plant and animal groups—new research from U.S. and Ecuadorian scientists shows.

The analysis, published in the journal PLoS ONE, also notes that the greatest threat to this diversity is proposed oil development projects—leased or proposed oil concessions cover the northern half of Yasuní, and four oil access roads have already been built into the park or its buffer zone.

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 19, 2010 – The parasite that causes malignant malaria in humans has been detected in gorillas, along with two new species of malaria parasites, reports a study co-authored by UC Irvine biologist Francisco Ayala.

New research suggests that the most common form of malignant brain cancer in adults, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is probably not a single disease but a set of diseases, each with a distinct underlying molecular pathology. The study, published by Cell Press in the January issue of the journal Cancer Cell, provides a solid framework for investigation of future targeted therapies that may improve the near uniformly fatal prognosis of this devastating cancer.

Repeated exposure to tobacco smoke makes lung cancer much worse, and one reason is that it steps up inflammation in the lung. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that mice with early lung cancer lesions that were repeatedly exposed to tobacco smoke developed larger tumors – and developed tumors more quickly – than unexposed animals. The key contributing factor was lung tissue inflammation.

Scientists trying to understand how cancer cells invade healthy tissue have used the fruit fly's metamorphosis from maggot to flying insect as a guide to identify a key molecular signal that may be involved in both processes.

BOSTON—Even when their tumors are shrinking in response to therapy, some non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients have a scattering of cancer cells that are undeterred by the drug, causing the tumor to resume its growth, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center scientists report in the January issue of Cancer Cell. The findings suggest that identifying such patients and treating them with a combination of drugs from the very start of therapy can produce longer remissions.

BOSTON (January 19, 2010, 12:00 noon EST) — A study by researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts, and Tufts Medical Center improves our current understanding of the origins of breast cancer. The researchers propose a new model for breast cell differentiation that identifies two populations of progenitor cells, one of which appears to be the cell of origin for luminal-like breast cancer, the most common form of the disease.

January 19, 2010 -- Prenatal exposure to ambient levels of flame retardant compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) is associated with adverse neurodevelopmental effects in young children, according to researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The study is online in Environmental Health Perspectives and will be released in the April 2010 print issue.