News by Subject Biology

Spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB), defined as birth before 37 weeks of gestation, and the related complications, are the largest contributors to infant death in the United States and worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have discovered that bacteria and innate immune factors in a woman's birth canal and cervix may increase the risk of spontaneous preterm birth or provide protection against such births.

A researcher in the Vera Bradley Foundation Center for Breast Cancer Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine, working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Maryland, recently reported several important findings related to triple negative breast cancer and its future treatment in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Even when chronic myelogenous leukemia is in remission, 'sleeper cell,' quiescent leukemic stem cells are maintained in microenvironments in the bone marrow. This maintenance is poorly understood. Researchers now describe how niche-specific expression of a particular chemokine by a particular type of bone marrow cell controls quiescence of these treatment-resistant leukemic stem cells. The chemokine is CXCL12, and the particular bone marrow cells expressing it are mesenchymal stromal cells.

Scientists have harnessed powerful data analysis tools and three-dimensional studies of genomic geography to implicate new risk genes for osteoporosis, the chronic bone-weakening condition that affects millions of people. Knowing the causative genes may later open the door to more effective treatments.

The creation of new library of mutants of the single-celled photosynthetic green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii enabled a Carnegie- and Princeton University-led team of plant scientists to identify more than 300 genes that are potentially required for photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae, and some bacteria convert energy from sunlight into carbohydrates -- filling our planet's atmosphere with oxygen as a byproduct.

Researchers from the Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University constructed an artificial chemical DNA switch and made the first step towards artificial epigenetics -- targeted switching on and off of genes. Their paper was recently published in the journal Chemical Science.

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reveal that genomic data extracted from population biobanks across the globe contain much less ethnic diversity than desirable. Of the nearly 5 million samples of DNA contributed to biobanks worldwide, 68 percent come from individuals of European ancestry.

Researchers from Mount Sinai and IBM reveal that the number of mitochondria in a cell is, in great part, associated with how the cancer responds to drug therapy.