Lurking in Genomic Shadows: How Giant Viruses Fuel the Genetic Evolution of Organisms
Viruses are tiny invaders that cause a wide range of diseases, from rabies to tomato spotted wilt virus and, most recently, COVID-19 in humans. But…
Genetics
Birds Play by Different Evolutionary Rules in the Amazon’s “Sand Forests”
Birds travel across habitats patches to breed, unlike their forest counterparts. Picture the Amazon. You’re thinking lush rainforests teeming with animals, right? It turns out,…
Global Coral Reef Survival: Could Key Gene System Discovery Be Suffocating Corals’ Last Gasp?
Ocean deoxygenation is now being recognized as major threat to future global coral reef survival. Oxygen is life, in or out of the water, raising…
Where the Wild Things Are: Scientists Map and Forecast Apex Predator Populations at Unprecedented Scale
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), together with national and international collaborators, have developed statistical methods that allows mapping and forecasting of…
Super-Recognizers Possess an Extraordinary Ability to Memorize and Recall Faces – Test Could Help Us Find the World’s Best
While in Paris in the 1990s, Georgie briefly watched a professional photographer taking pictures of kids playing in a small park near Les Halles and…
Suffering in Silence: Two-Thirds of Seniors Say They Won’t Treat Their Depression
New nationwide poll shows 1 in 3 respondents age 65+ think they can just “snap out of it.” As the nation continues to struggle with…
Genetic Sequencing of 240 Mammals to Help Identify the Mutations That Lead to Human Diseases
A large international consortium led by scientists at Uppsala University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has sequenced the genome of 130 mammals…
Common Coronavirus Mutation May Actually Make COVID-19 More Susceptible to a Vaccine
Mutation is not expected to interfere with effectiveness of vaccines under development. A new study published in Science confirms that SARS-CoV-2 has mutated in a…
Evolution Favors New Epidemic Diseases of “Intermediate” Severity
New epidemic diseases have an evolutionary advantage if they are of “intermediate” severity, research shows. Scientists tested the theory that pathogens (disease-causing organisms) that inflict…
How Human Cells Grow and Develop Revealed Through New Molecular Atlases
An artist’s interpretation of the creation of two cell atlases that track gene expression and chromatin accessibility during the development of human cell types and…
Zoonomia Project: Largest Set of Mammalian Genomes Reveals Species at Risk of Extinction
The Zoonomia Project has released this vast dataset to advance both biomedical research and biodiversity conservation. An international team of researchers with an effort called…
Mysterious New “Hidden” Gene Discovered in COVID-19 Virus
Researchers have discovered a new “hidden” gene in SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — that may have contributed to its unique biology and…
Scientists Can Now Scoop Molecular Contents of Individual Cells for Study
New method bridges in situ microscopy with single cell omics. Scientists can now select individual cells from a population that grows on the surface of…
Cleveland Clinic: Melatonin May Be a Viable Treatment for COVID-19
New findings published in PLOS Biology use “big data” approach. Results from a new Cleveland Clinic-led study suggest that melatonin, a hormone that regulates the…
SARS-CoV-2 Could Evolve Resistance, Rendering COVID-19 Vaccines Ineffective
Similar to bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics, viruses can evolve resistance to vaccines, and the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could undermine the effectiveness of vaccines that…
Using Bioinformatics to Silence Gene Expression and Cure Complex Diseases
Immuneering uses bioinformatics to develop new medicines while also helping large pharmaceutical companies improve their treatments. Many people think of new medicines as bullets, and…
COVID-19 Patient Zero: Data Analysis Identifies the “Mother” of All SARS-CoV-2 Genomes
Temple researchers have identified the first genome to transmit the coronavirus. In the field of molecular epidemiology, the worldwide scientific community has been sleuthing to…
Coronavirus Mutation Concern Verified by Largest COVID-19 Viral Sequence Analysis in U.S.
Argonne computational resources supported the largest comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 genome sequences in the U.S. and helped corroborate growing evidence of a protein mutation. Before…