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Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have reported details of how certain drugs can precisely target and inhibit an enzyme essential for the influenza virus' replication. Since all strains of the virus require the same functioning enzyme, researchers believe their findings will yield drugs that can effectively treat new strains of the virus, which may be resistant to current antiviral treatments.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have demonstrated in the laboratory that a new drug is effective in treating a very common kidney disease –– although it will be a few years before it becomes available for clinical testing. The findings resulted from a collaboration between UCSB and a biotech firm based in Indiana. The study is published in this week's Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Australian scientists have discovered a new virus in bats that could help shed light on how Hendra and Nipah viruses cause disease and death in animals and humans.The new virus - named 'Cedar' after the Queensland location where it was discovered - is a close relative of the deadly Hendra and Nipah viruses.

However, CSIRO's initial studies have discovered one surprising key difference - the Cedar virus does not cause illness in several animal species normally susceptible to Hendra and Nipah.

Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, have determined the detailed 3-dimensional structure of part of the flu virus' RNA polymerase, an enzyme that is crucial for influenza virus replication. This important finding is published today in PLoS Pathogens. The research was done on the 2009 pandemic influenza strain but it will help scientists to design innovative drugs against all the different influenza strains, and potentially lead to a new class of anti-flu drugs in the next 5-10 years.

A genetic screening approach to studying bone disease has found nine new genes associated with bone health and suggests a new way to discover genes that may be implicated in human skeletal diseases. A collaborative study of the mineral content, strength and flexibility of bones has found clues to the cause of bone disorders such as osteoporosis, osteogenesis imperfecta, and high bone density syndromes.

ant compound phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC) hinders the development of mammary tumors in a mouse model with similarities to human breast cancer progression, according to a study published August 2 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Edible plants are gaining ground as chemopreventative agents. PEITC has shown to be effective as a chemopreventative agent in mice for colon, intestinal, and prostate cancer, by inducing apoptosis.

What makes some species more prone to extinction? A new study of nearly 300 species of New Zealand birds — from pre-human times to the present — reveals that the keys to survival today differ from those of the past.

The results are important in light of the growing number of studies that try to predict which species could be lost in the future based on what kinds of species are considered most threatened today, said lead author Lindell Bromham of Australian National University.

Severson, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and her collaborators, are tracking the evolution of the live oaks of eastern North America, seeking to understand how the trees adapted to climate change during glacial periods.

A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rhode Island has observed a never-before-seen defensive strategy used by a small species of deep-sea squid in which the animal counter-attacks a predator and then leaves the tips of its arms attached to the predator as a distraction.

Stephanie Bush said that when the foot-long octopus squid (Octopoteuthis deletron) found deep in the northeast Pacific Ocean "jettisons its arms" in self-defense, the bioluminescent tips continue to twitch and glow, creating a diversion that enables the squid to escape from predators.

Despite the current and rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, it remains far from certain just when we will have reached a point when scientists will be able to predict its disappearance. Recent research conducted by the University of Copenhagen in conjunction with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the Danish National Survey and Cadastre (KMS) in collaboration with an international team of scientists reports that this is not the first time in recent history that the ice sheet has been in retreat and then stabilised again.

To minimise the chance of being recognised and thus attacked by the birds they are trying to parasitize, female cuckoos have evolved different guises. The new research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, was published today, 03 August, in the journal Science.

African elephants are known to be great communicators that converse with extremely low-pitched vocalizations, known as infrasounds, over a distance of miles. These infrasounds occupy a very low frequency range—fewer than 20 Hertz, or cycles, per second—that is generally below the threshold of human hearing.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a potential target for treating diabetes and obesity.

Studying mice, they found that when the target protein was disabled, the animals became more sensitive to insulin and were less likely to get fat even when they ate a high-fat diet that caused their littermates to become obese.

The findings are published online in the journal Cell Metabolism.

ATLANTA – Results from a study conducted at Georgia State University suggest that a "fight" between bacteria normally living in the intestines and the immune system, kicked off by another type of bacteria, may be linked to two types of chronic disease.

The study suggests that the "fight" continues after the instigator bacteria have been cleared by the body, according to Andrew Gewirtz, professor of biology at the GSU Center for Inflammation, Immunity and Infection. That fight can result in metabolic syndrome, an important factor in obesity, or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

August 2, 2012

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University student's research project related to zebrafish eye development could lead to a better understanding of vision problems that affect billions of people worldwide.

Zeran Li, as an undergraduate student in biological sciences, led a research team that uncovered an enzyme's role in the regulation of eye size in the fish. If the enzyme's role is similar in human eyes, it could be relevant to human vision problems, such as nearsightedness and farsightedness.