News by Subject Biology

In 2014, a team of researchers led by a paleobiologist from the University of Missouri found that clams from the Holocene Epoch (that began 11,700 years ago) contained clues about how sea level rise due to climate change could foreshadow a rise in parasitic trematodes. Now, an international team from Mizzou and the Universities of Bologna and Florida has found that rising seas could be detrimental to human health on a much shorter time scale.

University of South Florida biologists have found that a crucial window in the development of tadpoles may influence a frog's later ability to fight infectious diseases as an adult.

A plant parasitic nematode is a pest that parasitizes the roots of agricultural crops and creates nests called 'galls' which deprive plants of nutrition. Research from Japan on plant reactions to parasitic worms shows that parasitism activates plant stem cells which grow to form galls on their roots. This finding is expected to improve crop breeds and alleviate nematode damage, which is estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars each year worldwide.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can result in structural changes within the lungs over time. Scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have now been able to show that these changes not only affect the organ itself, but also the bacteria that live in the lung. The results have been published in PLOS ONE.

A lack of evidence that bats are key reservoirs of human disease has not prevented their vilification or efforts to exterminate bat colonies where threats are presumed to lurk. 'The fact is that they provide important ecosystem services...and we want them around,' says Tony Goldberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist and virus hunter. 'But bats are also increasingly acknowledged as hosts of medically significant viruses. I have mixed feelings about that.'