New study: nine out of ten US infants experience gut microbiome deficiency

Sex-specific chromosomes are a dangerous place to be, if you're a gene. Because these chromosomes -- Y chromosomes, in humans -- do not have a matching chromosome with which to exchange genetic information, they are prone to losing non-essential genes left and right in a process called genetic decay. Now, a new study from research scientist Daniel Winston Bellott in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member David Page broadens our understanding of what makes a gene able to survive on a sex-specific chromosome by looking at one especially slithery branch of the evolutionary tree: snakes. Comparing surviving genes on snake ...

PHILADELPHIA -- (Jan. 21, 2021) -- Researchers at The Wistar Institute have discovered a new enzymatic function of the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) protein EBNA1, a critical factor in EBV's ability to transform human cells and cause cancer. Published in Cell, this study provides new indications for inhibiting EBNA1 function, opening up fresh avenues for development of therapies to treat EBV-associated cancers. EBV establishes life-long, latent infection in B lymphocytes, which can contribute to development of different cancer types, including Burkitt's lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and Hodgkin's lymphoma. The Epstein-Barr Nuclear Antigen 1 (EBNA1) serves as an attractive therapeutic ...

Two out of five individuals delayed or missed medical care in the early phase of the pandemic--from March through mid-July 2020--according to a new survey from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The survey of 1,337 U.S. adults found that 544, or 41 percent, delayed or missed medical care during the survey period. Among the 1,055 individuals who reported needing medical care, 29 percent (307 respondents), indicated fear of transmission of COVID-19 as the main reason. Seven percent (75 respondents) reported financial concerns as the main reason for delaying ...

Researchers from the University Hospitals in Zurich and Basel, ETH Zurich, University of Zurich and the pharmaceutical company Roche have set out to improve cancer diagnostics by developing a platform of state-of-the-art molecular biology methods. The "Tumor Profiler" project aims to derive the comprehensive molecular profile of tumours in cancer patients, which has the potential to predict the efficacy of a host of new cancer medications. It will therefore make it possible to offer treating physicians personalised and improved therapy recommendations. Three years ago, the researchers began a large-scale clinical study involving ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- When sheets of two-dimensional nanomaterials like graphene are stacked on top of each other, tiny gaps form between the sheets that have a wide variety of potential uses. In research published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of Brown University researchers has found a way to orient those gaps, called nanochannels, in a way that makes them more useful for filtering water and other liquids of nanoscale contaminants. "In the last decade, a whole field has sprung up to study these spaces that form between 2-D nanomaterials," said Robert Hurt, a professor in Brown's School of Engineering and coauthor of the ...

TROY, N.Y. -- Warnings about misinformation are now regularly posted on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, but not all of these cautions are created equal. New research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that artificial intelligence can help form accurate news assessments -- but only when a news story is first emerging. These findings were recently published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports by an interdisciplinary team of Rensselaer researchers. They found that AI-driven interventions are generally ineffective when used to flag issues with stories on frequently covered ...

Among the materials known as perovskites, one of the most exciting is a material that can convert sunlight to electricity as efficiently as today's commercial silicon solar cells and has the potential for being much cheaper and easier to manufacture. There's just one problem: Of the four possible atomic configurations, or phases, this material can take, three are efficient but unstable at room temperature and in ordinary environments, and they quickly revert to the fourth phase, which is completely useless for solar applications. Now scientists at Stanford ...

Delivering a minor electric shock into a stream to reveal any fish lurking nearby may be the gold standard for detecting fish populations, but it's not much fun for the trout. Scientists at Oregon State University have found that sampling stream water for evidence of the presence of various species using environmental DNA, known as eDNA, can be more accurate than electrofishing, without disrupting the fish. "It's revolutionizing the way we do fish ecology work," said Brooke Penaluna, a research fish biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service who also has an appointment in OSU's Department ...

If you believe you are capable of becoming the healthy, engaged person you want to be in old age, you are much more likely to experience that outcome, a recent Oregon State University study shows. "How we think about who we're going to be in old age is very predictive of exactly how we will be," said Shelbie Turner, a doctoral student in OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences and co-author on the study. Previous studies on aging have found that how people thought about themselves at age 50 predicted a wide range of future health outcomes up to 40 years later -- cardiovascular events, memory, balance, will to live, hospitalizations; even mortality. "Previous ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A 72-year-old woman was hospitalized with severe COVID-19 disease, 33 days after the onset of symptoms. She was suffering a prolonged deteriorating illness, with severe pneumonia and a high risk of death, and she was unable to mount her own immune defense against the SARS-CoV-2 virus because of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which compromises normal immunoglobulin production. But when physicians at the University of Alabama at Birmingham recommended a single intravenous infusion of convalescent blood plasma from her son-in-law -- who had recovered from COVID-19 disease ...