News by Subject Biology

The lungs and placentas of fetuses in the womb -- as young as 11 weeks after conception -- already show a bacterial microbiome signature, which suggests that bacteria may colonize the lungs well before birth. This first-time finding deepens the mystery of how the microbes or microbial products reach those organs before birth and what role they play in normal lung and immune system development.

Researchers found that eating walnuts daily as part of a healthy diet was associated with increases in certain bacteria that can help promote health. Additionally, those changes in gut bacteria were associated with improvements in some risk factors for heart disease.

A new study, published in PeerJ, shows how University of Liverpool researchers have used a newly developed eye movement test to improve the understanding of how parts of the brain work.

MDC researchers established a new model to study neuromuscular development and disorders. For the first time two distinct human tissues co-developed in the lab from one progenitor cell type and self-organized into a complex, functional neuromuscular organoid.

In findings published in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science, researchers have detailed the discovery of a tactile-sensory system stowed within the suction disc of remora, believed to enable the fish to acutely sense contact pressure with host surfaces and gauge ocean forces in order to determine when to initiate their attachment, as well as adjust their hold on hosts while traversing long distances.

The world's most common vision problem myopia or short/near sightedness, which causes damage to the eye and even blindness, just got easier to assess. Progressive research at Flinders University in Australia has identified a new method to measure how it affects the eye, a new article in PLOS ONE reveals.

Preclinical experiments have revealed a key missing piece of the Alzheimer's disease puzzle. That allowed proof-of-concept experiments -- using an existing drug -- that dramatically reduced Alzheimer's pathology and symptoms in two mouse models, potentially offering an immediate treatment for this devastating disease. The research included human brain tissue analysis and longitudinal clinical data that supported the in vivo mouse model data. The study identifies an amyloid-beta/G protein-coupled receptor interaction that represents an attractive, disease-specific therapeutic target.

A new study cautions that while Google is adept at sorting the most reliable websites to the top of the list, most websites providing information on probiotics are from unreliable commercial sources. The public should be wary of searching for probiotic information online as the majority of webpages originate from unreliable sources and health-benefit claims are often not supported by robust scientific evidence.