News by Subject Biology

Biologists at the University of Cincinnati say the hungrier ticks are, the harder they try to find you or other hosts. The findings could have implications for the spread of tick-borne disease such as Lyme or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have created an easy-to-make, low-cost injectable hydrogel that could help wounds heal faster, especially for patients with compromised health issues.

Scientists have discovered that tropical fish can control their gut microbes to better survive extremes of temperature, a study in eLife reveals.

About three per cent of the world's population is affected by valvular heart diseases. It is also the most common cause of heart surgery, as no drug-based treatment is available. Recent research has shed light on the molecular mechanism on valvular disease that is caused by a genetic mutation in Filamin gene. The result of the research will help to further investigate the mechanism by which the medical condition progress and to develop new treatments.

New research published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics demonstrates that 'good' bacteria in the live probiotic SymproveTM can successfully reach and colonise the gut, where they go on to change the existing gut flora. They are also capable of modifying immune response.

Only a fraction of the microbes residing in, on and around soils have been identified through efforts to understand their contributions to global nutrient cycles. Soils are also home to countless viruses that can infect microbes, impacting their ability to regulate these global cycles. In Nature Communications, giant virus genomes have been discovered for the first time in a forest soil ecosystem by researchers from the DOE Joint Genome Institute and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Until recently, scientists thought of viruses as mostly small infectious agents, tiny compared to typical bacteria and human cells. So imagine the surprise when biologist Jeff Blanchard and Ph.D. student Lauren Alteio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), discovered giant viruses -- relatively speaking the size of Macy's parade day balloons -- in soil at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts.