Body

Having been attacked, paralysed and implanted with a wasp egg to its belly, a wolf spider carries on with its life fully mobile and active. At least, until it is time for the larva to reach out for its first solid meal at a certain development stage.

With its enormous green and purple leaves, the South American miconia tree is invading botanic gardens all around the world on account of its beauty. This plant, however, is called the 'green cancer' for its ability to infest new territories. A new study that has identified 91 countries which are at risk for being colonised by this plant warns that the plant's expansion in infested areas will not be negatively affected by a rise in temperatures.

An international collaboration between scientists in Sweden, Russia, and the United States has resulted in the successful engineering of new diaphragm tissue in rats using a mixture of stem cells and a 3D scaffold. When transplanted, it has regrown with the same complex mechanical properties of diaphragm muscle. The study is published in the journal Biomaterials, and offers hope of a cure for a common birth defect and possible future heart muscle repairs.

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, helps explain why Staphylococcus aureus infections take hold after prosthetic surgery that are resistant to both the body's natural defenses as well as antibiotic treatments. In the report, researchers from the University of Nebraska Medical Center show that the bacteria use a naturally occurring molecule called interleukin-10 to shield themselves and survive.

A treatment for managing blood sugar levels might be as close as the local health food store, suggests a new research report published in the December 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal. Specifically scientists from Italy have found that when the plant and mammal hormone, abscisic acid, is taken in low doses, glycemia in both rats and humans is reduced.

A group of researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of Edinburgh have been the first to find the genetic material of a human virus from old human bones. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study analysed the skeletal remains of Second World War casualties from the battlefields of Karelia.

Upon infection, many viruses remain in the tissues and their DNA can be analysed even decades thereafter. Although their genetic material has been found in many organs, the researchers show that viral DNA is also present in bone.

In a paper appearing in Lancet Oncology, researchers representing the European Organisation of Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM), the European Society of Radiology (ESR), and the United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) laid the foundation for discussions aimed at improving the implementation and utilization of imaging biomarkers in cancer clinical trials.

In a study into the prevention of HIV transmission, people who took the antiretroviral drug Truvada were 86% less likely to contract the disease than those who took a placebo, report the researchers who led the study. "The medication was taken as needed around periods of sexual activity. All study participants received regular HIV and STD prevention counselling and services, and stocks of condoms and lubricant," explained Dr. Cécile Tremblay of the University of Montreal and the CHUM Research Centre, who led the Canadian component of the research.

Cancer cells are continuously produced in our bodies, where most of them are recognized by our immune systems and destroyed. Some, however, escape this innate surveillance system and find a place to survive and grow.

Several factors expelled by tumor cells are concentrated in the area immediately surrounding the tumor, called the tumor microenvironment. While it is established that these factors support and enhance cancer cell growth and multiplication, it was not known whether these factors influence neighboring normal cells.

The world's soils store on the order of 2500 gigatons of carbon, which is three times the amount in the atmosphere (or equivalent to 9170 gigatons of CO2). Yet the mechanisms behind this storage are not completely understood. A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that lazy, or 'cheater' microbes, which rely on those around them to make enzymes for digesting plant material lead to the build-up of organic material in soil by regulating the rate of decomposition and increasing the amount of microbial remains in the soil.

Particulate matter (PM) in the air can enter the human body, affecting the cardiovascular system as well as other major organs. Chronic exposure leads to a number of health risks. The European Commission's in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have identified the main categories of PM in urban air in 51 different cities around the world. On average, traffic is the biggest source of air pollution, responsible for one quarter of particulate matter in the air.

Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT have engineered changes to the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system that significantly cut down on "off-target" editing errors. The refined technique addresses one of the major technical issues in the use of genome editing.

Ovarian cancer is the seventh most common cancer among women worldwide, and it often goes undetected until it has spread to other parts of the body. More than 70% of ovarian cancer patients experience relapse; when recurrent cancers become resistant to chemotherapy, they become extremely difficult to treat. But what if patients could make use of their own immune system?

Kobe University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan have developed a technology enabling the selection of proteins with a high affinity for drug target molecules (also proteins) on cell membranes. This discovery will advance research targeting membrane proteins linked to diseases such as cancer, and therefore has potential applications in the development of new biopharmaceuticals. The results of this research were published in the British science journal Scientific Reports on Nov. 19, 2015 at 10am GMT.

A group of biophysicists, including representatives from MIPT, have developed a mathematical model of arterial thrombus formation, which is the main cause of heart attacks and strokes. The scientists described the process of platelet aggregation as being similar to the popular video game Tetris and derived equations that allowed them to reproduce the wave process of platelet aggregate formation in a blood vessel.