News by Subject Biology

A treatment gap remains for many conditions involving damage to the liver, the body's main organ for removing toxins, among other functions. The Experimental Biology 2018 meeting (EB 2018) will feature important research announcements related to the causes of liver degradation and possible treatments.

Researchers at LSTM's Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit are looking at treatment for snakebite in a completely different way and have shown that it is possible to treat the bite from one snake with antivenom produced from a completely different species that causes the same pathology in humans.

Probably the last place anyone would want to find airborne polychlorinated biphenyl compounds (PCBs) is in the kitchen, yet that's exactly where scientists detected their presence, according to a new report in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. They say that the PCBs, which are widely considered carcinogenic, are unwanted byproducts of sealant breakdown in modern kitchen cabinetry.

The US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program has made 'substantial progress' in implementing recommendations outlined in past reports by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, improving the program's overall scientific and technical performance, says a new Academies report. The program, which is used to assess the hazards posed by environmental contaminants, remains a work in progress and should continue to evolve as it adapts and applies new scientific practices and knowledge, the report says.

Worker bees never leave the hive, but even though they do not venture out they are still exposed to toxic insecticides and weed killers brought in by forager bees. New research has shown that worker bees partially lose their sense of taste and find it difficult to learn as a result of exposure to the toxins, possibly placing the future of hives in jeopardy.

Different flavors of e-cigarettes produce different levels of free radicals, toxins often associated with cancer and other diseases, according to Penn State researchers. Many of the chemicals used to flavor e-cigarettes increased the production of free radicals, while a few actually lowered it.

Forkhead Box M1 (FOXM1) is frequently activated in tumors. The researchers studied the expression and the possible mechanism of FOXM1 and evaluated the effects of thiostrepton in an endometriotic rat model.