A research team has pinpointed a new class of gene mutations, which identify cases of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that have a high risk of relapse and death. The finding suggests specific drugs that could treat this high-risk leukemia subtype in children, particularly because such drugs are already in clinical trials for similar blood diseases in adults. While the cure rate in ped...

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered a family of green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) in a primitive sea animal, along with new clues about the role of the proteins that has nothing to do with their famous glow. GFPs recently gained international attention with the awarding of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry...

In the developing fetus, cell growth follows a very specific schedule. In the eye`s retina, for example, cones — which help distinguish color during the day — develop before the more light-sensitive rods — which are needed for night vision. But minor differences in the timing of cell proliferation can explain the large differences found in the eyes of two species — owl monk...

Experts say that more than half of the world`s coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. But now Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming. "Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really...

A discovery made by researchers at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Research Institute for Medical Research at Montreal`s Jewish General Hospital offers new hope for the early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer`s disease. In a study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry on May 15, Dr. Hemant Paudel, his PhD student Dong Han and postdoctoral fellows Hamid Qureshi and Yif...

You can tell without looking whether you`ve been stuck by a pin or burnt by a match. But how? In research that overturns conventional wisdom, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), have shown that this sensory discrimination begins in the skin at the very earliest stages of neuronal information processing, ...

New sequencing and analysis of six strains Chlamydia will result in improved diagnosis of the sexually transmitted infection. This study provides remarkable insights into a new strain of Chlamydia that was identified in Sweden in 2006 after spreading rapidly across the country by evading most established diagnostic tests. The results also reveal more about the evolution of the Chlamydia trachomati...

A new study uncovers a molecular mechanism that explains why joints fail to develop in embryos with paralyzed limbs. The research, published by Cell Press in the May issue of the journal Developmental Cell, answers a longstanding question about the influence of muscle activity on developing joints and underscores the critical contribution of movement to regulation of a signaling pathway that is im...

Scientists have discovered that cells use a very simple phase transition — similar to water vapor condensing into dew — to assemble and localize subcellular structures that are involved in formation of the embryo. The discovery, which was made during the 2008 Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), is reported in the May 21 early online edition of Science by Cliff...

Two genes clarify the genetic control of female sexual maturation, and point to regulatory mechanisms involved in human growth and development. Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School, along with collaborators from research institutions across Europe and the United States, have for the first time identified two genes that are involved in determining when girls begin menstruation.  The f...