Mosquitoes are notorious for their ability to spread disease, but in some cases they may prove to be a boon instead of a bane. In a recent study, researchers at New York University School of Medicine found that one mosquito-borne virus automatically targets and kills tumor cells in mice. Most importantly, it does so while leaving healthy cells alone, a feature that may make it a promising treatment for some forms of cancer. Read the rest of this story »

A subtle structural change that may play a role in the molecular machinery for making HIV-1 (the virus that causes AIDS) has been identified by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Maryland working at the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB). If confirmed in living cells, the mechanism, described in the Jan. 20 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, might provide a new target for antiviral drugs. Read the rest of this story »

Predatory bacteria are native to many microbial communities and have been found in terrestric and aquatic ecosystems, as well as in the human and animal intestine. A research team at the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology, Read the rest of this story »

The threat of bioterrorism has led to the recommendation to vaccinate health care workers and other first responders, but some worry about the side effects of smallpox vaccination, which can harm children, pregnant women and people with immune disorders or certain skin conditions. Read the rest of this story »

New biochemical studies may hold clues to more powerful malaria and pneumonia treatments that could save more than 2 million lives worldwide. Using baker’s yeast as a surrogate disease model, researchers led by Dartmouth Medical School are exploring why enzymes in organisms that cause pneumonia and malaria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. This work could provide the answer to testing a new generation of drugs to combat these prevalent diseases. Read the rest of this story »

Kary Myers, a Ph.D. student in statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, has won a Student Paper Competition Award from the Statistical Computing and Statistics Graphics sections of the American Statistical Association for her paper, “The Billion Byte Brain: Combining Physiological Data and Gigabytes of Images to Improve Maps of Brain Activity.” The paper will be published as part of the proceedings of the Joint Statistical Meetings in August. Read the rest of this story »

A retrospective analysis by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center published in The New England Journal of Medicine found no causal relationship between testosterone replacement and prostate cancer or heart disease risk. Read the rest of this story »

UCSF researchers have found that use of black tar heroin by injection drug users in West Coast cities accounts for a dramatically lower percentage of IDUs in these locations who are infected with HIV. The finding is based on comparison to East Coast cities, where powder heroin is commonly used. Read the rest of this story »

A Japanese-U.S. team today reported the successful creation of transgenic animals using sperm genetically modified and grown in a laboratory dish, an achievement with implications for a wide range of research from developmental biology to gene therapy. Read the rest of this story »

The Commission of the European Union has awarded 12,000,000 Euro to 24 bioinformatics groups based in 14 countries throughout Europe to create a pan-European BioSapiens Network of Excellence in Bioinformatics. Read the rest of this story »