News by Subject Biology

Of the 34 million people worldwide with HIV, and the 200 million with schistosomiasis, the majority live in Africa -- where millions of people are simultaneously infected with both diseases. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have shown that schistosomiasis infections are associated with increased HIV onward transmission, HIV acquisition in HIV negative women with urogenital schistosomiasis, and progression to death in HIV positive women.

Molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler and graduate student Justin Silpe found a bacteria-killing virus that can listen in on bacterial conversations -- and then they made it attack diseases including salmonella, E. coli and cholera.

Researchers spent two years testing chemical compounds for their ability to inhibit the malaria parasite at an earlier stage in its lifecycle than most current drugs, revealing a new set of chemical starting points for the first drugs to prevent malaria instead of just treating the symptoms.

Current treatment options for the parasitic disease leishmaniasis are largely ineffective, expensive, and tend to be plagued by resistant parasites and side effects. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have showed that a natural flavonoid is effective at treating Leishmania amazonensis infections.

Together with colleagues from Sweden and Luxembourg, scientists from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have observed that, during a natural vaginal birth, specific bacteria from the mother's gut are passed on to the baby and stimulate the baby's immune responses. This transmission is impacted in children born by caesarean section.

It sounds like the plot of the world's tiniest horror movie: deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a newly discovered species of wasp transforms a 'social' spider into a zombie that abandons its colony to do the wasp's bidding. That's the gruesome, real-life discovery by University of British Columbia researchers, who detail the manipulative relationship between a new Zatypota species wasp and a social Anelosimus eximius spider in a study published recently in Ecological Entomology.

Conversion from the asexual to the sexual phase of the malaria parasite is necessary for its transmission to the mosquito.