News by Subject Biology

In a paper published Sept. 24 in the journal Nature Plants, an international team of researchers has discovered that the gene FT -- the primary driver of the transition to flowering in plants each spring -- does something unexpected in Arabidopsis thaliana plants grown in natural environments, with implications for the artificial growing conditions scientists commonly used in the lab.

Researchers have discovered that the protein ASTN2 shuttles receptors away from the surface of neurons, a process that facilitates efficient brain activity.

Babies born before their due date show better brain development when fed breast milk rather than formula, a study from the University of Edinburgh has found.

New 3D maps of water distribution during cellular membrane fusion are accelerating scientific understanding of cell development, which could lead to new treatments for diseases associated with cell fusion. Using neutron diffraction at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers have made the first direct observations of water in lipid bilayers used to model cell membrane fusion.

With an estimated 1.6 million people in the US dealing with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), physicians can have a hard time telling which newly diagnosed patients have a high risk of severe inflammation or what therapies will be most effective. Now researchers report in the journal JCI Insights finding an epigenetic signature in patient cells that appears to predict inflammation risk in a serious type of IBD called Crohn's disease.

A new study is challenging the long-held belief that specialization in mammal backbones date back to the earliest land animals. Evidence suggests that the spine gained regions during mammal evolution, with the first -- located in close proximity to the shoulders and front legs -- appearing some 250 million years ago, just as dramatic changes began to appear in the forelimbs of animals known as non-mammalian therapsids.

Weight gain during early childhood is related to the composition of oral bacteria of two-year-old children, suggesting this understudied aspect of a children's collection of microorganisms could serve as an early indicator for childhood obesity.

In a study published today in Genome Research, researchers performed detailed whole-community sequencing on the microbial communities of three maternal body sites (vagina, gut, and oral cavity) over the course of pregnancy from the first trimester through delivery revealing variations in bacterial diversity.