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Cambridge scientists have discovered a rare genetic disease which predisposes patients to severe respiratory infections and lung damage. Because the scientists also identified how the genetic mutation affects the immune system, they are hopeful that new drugs that are currently undergoing clinical trials to treat leukaemia may also be effective in helping individuals with this debilitating disease.

The ability of invasive plants to rapidly adapt to local climates -- and potentially to climate change -- may be a key factor in how quickly they spread.

According to new research published in Science by UBC evolutionary ecologist Rob Colautti, it is rapid evolution -- as much as resistance to local pests -- that has helped purple loosestrife to invade, and thrive in, northern Ontario.

In two parallel projects, researchers have created new genomes inside the bacterium E. coli in ways that test the limits of genetic reprogramming and open new possibilities for increasing flexibility, productivity and safety in biotechnology.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should consider the unique features of probiotics — bacteria that help maintain the natural balance of organisms in the intestines — in regulating their use and marketing, says Diane Hoffmann, JD, director of the Law and Health Care Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and lead author of the a newly released Science article, "Probiotics: Finding the Right Regulatory Balance."

Changes in gene regulation have been used to study the evolutionary chasm that exists between humans and chimpanzees despite their largely identical DNA. However, scientists from the University of Chicago have discovered that mRNA expression levels, long considered a barometer for differences in gene regulation, often do not reflect differences in protein expression—and, therefore, biological function—between humans and chimpanzees. The work was published Oct. 17 in Science.

In recent years, studies have reported inconsistent findings regarding whether calcium supplements used to prevent fractures increase the risk of heart attack.

Now, in an assessment of the scientific literature, reported as a perspective piece in the October 17, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a UC San Francisco researcher says patients and health care practitioners should focus on getting calcium from the diet, rather than supplements, when possible.

We use them to text, tweet, post and, sometimes, make a call. Now, smartphones are helping with public health research.

A recently published smoking cessation study conducted by a researcher affiliated with the University of Houston includes a technique called "geo-mapping," which makes use of GPS technology to pinpoint a study participant's location and the location of tobacco retail outlets nearby.

The study was published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

Features like the wrinkles on your forehead and the way you move may reflect your overall health and risk of dying, according to a recent health paper. And yet physicians do consider such details when assessing patients' overall health and functioning?

Humans aren't the only species that knows how to carry on polite conversation. Marmoset monkeys, too, will engage one another for up to 30 minutes at a time in vocal turn-taking, according to evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 17.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The combination of heat, chemotherapeutic drugs and an innovative delivery system based on nanotechnology may significantly improve the treatment of ovarian cancer while reducing side effects from toxic drugs, researchers at Oregon State University report in a new study.

The findings, so far done only in a laboratory setting, show that this one-two punch of mild hyperthermia and chemotherapy can kill 95 percent of ovarian cancer cells, and scientists say they expect to improve on those results in continued research.

How some plant species evolved super-efficient photosynthesis had been a mystery. Now, scientists have identified what steps led to that change.

Around three per cent of all plants use an advanced form of photosynthesis, which allows them to capture more carbon dioxide, use less water, and grow more rapidly. Overall this makes them over 50% more efficient than plants that use the less efficient form.

A project to map the microbes present in the digestive systems of fish species holds promise for monitoring the presence of Asian carp in Chicago area waterways and ultimately preventing their spread, according to a study published in Nature's ISME Journal. The work, funded through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, is being conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

UPTON, NY -- Years of experiments on various types of high-temperature (high-Tc) superconductors—materials that offer hope for energy-saving applications such as zero-loss electrical power lines -- have turned up an amazing array of complex behaviors among the electrons that in some instances pair up to carry current with no resistance, and in others stop the flow of current in its tracks. The variety of these exotic electronic phenomena is a key reason it has been so hard to identify unifying concepts to explain why high-Tc superconductivity occurs in these promising materials.

Clay can be used in various forms for a range of objects such as cups, plates or bricks. Similarly, proteins can transform their structure and thus adapt their function and activity. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin have analysed proteins for such modifications that control gene activity, so-called transcription factors. The researchers thereby discovered that DNA changes the form and the activity of the glucocorticoid receptor, and also ascertained how various domains in the molecule communicate with one another.

In collaboration with international colleagues, a research group at Aarhus University, Denmark, has contributed to the compilation of the most comprehensive botanical data set to date. PhD student Naia Morueta-Holme and her supervisor, Professor Jens-Christian Svenning, Department of Bioscience, spearheaded the analysis that reveals where rare species are found in the New World (North and South America) and the factors that determine whether a region is dominated by widespread or rare species.