A vaccine protects more than 100 million infants each year from severe tuberculosis (TB), including the fatal brain swelling it can cause in babies and toddlers. But the vaccine doesn’t prevent adults from developing the more common form of TB that attacks the lungs, which still kills 1.25 million people each year. Scientists from Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, The University of Utah, and other institutions took a new approach to understanding why this is. Their genetic study in mice reveals that TB bacteria can “play dead” in the face of an immune system primed to attack—a finding that may pave the way for better vaccines and therapies for the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

Viome Life Sciences, the leader in AI-powered, RNA-based diagnostics and precision nutrition and Scripps Research, the leader in accelerating the impact of fundamental research on human health, today announced a strategic partnership to develop and clinically validate the first at-home RNA test designed to detect precancerous colon polyps, enabling early prevention of colorectal cancer.

Studying how cells work inside a living body is one of the most powerful ways to understand health and disease. However, looking deep inside live tissue is extremely challenging, especially when trying to see very small structures like mitochondria the tiny engines inside cells that produce energy and help regulate many important biological functions. These structures are constantly moving and changing, so scientists need imaging tools that can capture them in action, clearly and without harming the animal.

Using a high-throughput fluorescence microscopy system and machine learning algorithms, oxidative stress-related changes in protein localization have been mapped by researchers from Japan. Furthermore, a comprehensive database called Localizatome has been developed by compiling the subcellular protein localization data of 10,287 human proteins. This database provides information on both the steady-state subcellular localization of proteins and dynamic localization changes that occur in response to oxidative stress.

Researchers from the universities of Basel and Zurich have used a historical specimen from UZH’s Medical Collection to decode the genome of the virus responsible for the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic in Switzerland. The genetic material of the virus reveals that it had already developed key adaptations to humans at the outset of what became the deadliest influenza pandemic in history.