From skeletons and biopsies, an international team of scientists was successful in reconstructing a dozen medieval and modern genomes of the leprosy-causing bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Under the direction of Professor Johannes Krause, University of Tübingen, and Professor Stewart Cole, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), the research group created a genome from archaeological finds for the first time without having to resort to a reference sequence. Professor Almut Nebel and Dr. Ben Krause-Kyora, both of the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Social phobias affect about 15 million adults in the United States, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and surveys show that public speaking is high on the list of such phobias. For some people, these fears of social situations can be especially acute: For example, individuals with Asperger's syndrome often have difficulty making eye contact and reacting appropriately to social cues. But with appropriate training, such difficulties can often be overcome. Now, new software developed at MIT can be used to help people practice their interpersonal ...

They lie dormant for years, but at the first sign of favorable conditions they awaken. This sounds like the tagline for a science fiction movie, but it describes the amazing life-cycles of microbial organisms that form the biological soil crusts (BSCs) of Earth's deserts. Now a research team with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has reported a unique molecular-level analysis of a BSC cyanobacterium responding to the wetting and drying of its environment. The results hold implications for land management, improved ...

MADISON-— As spring warms up Wisconsin, humans aren't the only ones tending their gardens. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Bacteriology, colonies of leaf-cutter ants cultivate thriving communities of fungi and bacteria using freshly cut plant material. While these fungus gardens are a source of food and shelter for the ants, for researchers, they are potential models for better biofuel production. "We are interested in the whole fungus garden community, because a lot of plant biomass goes in and is converted to energy for the ants," says Frank ...

WORCESTER – Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have developed a novel transgenic system which allows them to remotely activate individual brain cells in the model organism Drosophila using ambient temperature. This powerful new tool for identifying and characterizing neural circuitry has lead to the identification of a pair of neurons – now called Fdg neurons – in the fruit fly that decide when to eat and initiate the subsequent feeding action. Discovery of these neurons may help neurobiologists better understand how the brain uses memory and stimuli ...

By midcentury, snowfall on Los Angeles–area mountains will be 30 to 40 percent less than it was at the end of the 20th century, according to a UCLA study released today and led by UCLA climate expert Alex Hall. The projected snow loss, a result of climate change, could get even worse by the end of the 21st century, depending on how the world reacts. Sustained action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions could keep annual average snowfall levels steady after mid-century, but if emissions continue unabated, the study predicts that snowfall in Southern California mountains ...

It is a mystery that has stymied astrophysicists for decades: how do black holes produce so many high-power X-rays? In a new study, astrophysicists from The Johns Hopkins University, NASA and the Rochester Institute of Technology bridged the gap between theory and observation by demonstrating that gas spiraling toward a black hole inevitably results in X-ray emissions. The paper states that as gas spirals toward a black hole through a formation called an accretion disk, it heats up to roughly 10 million degrees Celsius. The temperature in the main body of the disk ...

A study published in this week's PLOS Computational Biology reports that menopause is an unintended outcome of natural selection caused by the preference of males for younger female mates. While conventional thinking has held that menopause prevents older women from continuing to reproduce, the researchers, from McMaster's University, concluded that it is the lack of reproduction that has given rise to menopause. The researchers found that, over time, competition among men of all ages for younger mates has left older females with much less chance of reproducing. The pressures ...

Contact: Michael S. Irwig mirwig@mfa.gwu.edu 202-741-2489 The George Washington University Contact: Chuck Zorumski zorumskc@psychiatry.wustl.edu 314-286-1700 Washington University School of Medicine Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Finasteride, medication for male pattern hair loss, may also decrease drinking Finasteride is a synthetic drug for the treatment of male pattern hair loss and an enlarged prostate. Rodent research has shown that finasteride can reduce alcohol intake. A preliminary study of men with finasteride-related sexual ...

Contact: Stephania A. Cormier scorm1@lsuhsc.edu 504-568-2810 Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Contact: George Leikauf gleikauf@pitt.edu 412-383-5305 University of Pittsburgh Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Chronic drinking + exposure to particulate matter dramatically decreases lung function Alveolar macrophage (AM) function plays a critical role in protecting the lungs by removing particulates. Chronic drinking causes persistent oxidative stress in the lungs, leading to impaired AM function. A new rodent study shows that ...

Contact: Eva E. Redei e-redei@northwestern.edu 312-908-1791 Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Contact: R. Thomas Zoeller tzoeller@bio.umass.edu 413-545-2088 University of Massachusetts Amherst Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders and autism spectrum disorder share common molecular vulnerabilities Both Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and Autism Spectrum Disorder are neurodevelopmental in origin. A new rodent study has found that these disorders share common molecular vulnerabilities. Findings ...

Contact: Carolyn E. Sartor carolyn.sartor@yale.edu 203-932-5711 ext. 3894 Yale University School of Medicine Contact: Denise Herd tiara@berkeley.edu 510-642-4842 University of California at Berkeley Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Certain environmental factors impact alcohol problems more for European than African-American women An early age at first drink (AFD) is associated with a greater risk for subsequent alcohol use disorders. A new study looks at the influences of genetics versus the environment on AFD and problem drinking among African ...

HAMILTON, ON, June 13, 2013 — After decades of laboring under other theories that never seemed to add up, a team led by biologist Rama Singh has concluded that what causes menopause in women is men. Singh, an evolutionary geneticist, backed by computer models developed by colleagues Jonathan Stone and Richard Morton, has determined that menopause is actually an unintended outcome of natural selection – the result of its effects having become relaxed in older women. Over time, human males have shown a preference for younger women in selecting mates, stacking the Darwinian ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Next time you see a fruit fly in your kitchen, don't swat it. That fly could have a major impact on our progress in deciphering sensory biology and animal behavior, including someday providing a better understanding of the human brain. UC Santa Barbara researchers in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and the Neuroscience Research Institute (NRI) have been studying the mechanisms underlying salt taste coding of Drosophila (fruit flies). And they have made some rather remarkable discoveries. Their findings ...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shed new light on how diving mammals, such as the sperm whale, have evolved to survive for long periods underwater without breathing. The team identified a distinctive molecular signature of the oxygen-binding protein myoglobin in the sperm whale and other diving mammals, which allowed them to trace the evolution of the muscle oxygen stores in more than 100 mammalian species, including their fossil ancestors. Myoglobin, which gives meat its red colour, is present in high concentrations in elite mammalian divers, so high ...

Staph infections in hospitals are a serious concern, so much so that the term Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is as commonly known as MRI. Far less known is that in many of these cases, patients are infecting themselves. In heart surgeries and knee and joint-replacement procedures, up to 85 percent of staph infections after surgery come from patients' own bacteria, according to a 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Despite the threat that staph bacteria pose to patients, there is no uniformly accepted procedure to reduce surgical-site ...

CHICAGO --- In a surprising new finding, a Northwestern Medicine® study has found a common molecular vulnerability in autism and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Both disorders have symptoms of social impairment and originate during brain development in utero. This the first research to explore a common mechanism for these disorders and link their molecular vulnerabilities. The study found male offspring of rat mothers who were given alcohol during pregnancy have social impairment and altered levels of autism-related genes found in humans. Female offspring were ...

Why was there a sudden drop in the incidence of leprosy at the end of the Middle Ages? To answer this question, biologists and archeologists reconstructed the genomes of medieval strains of the pathogen responsible for the disease, which they exhumed from centuries old human graves. Their results, published in the journal Science, shed light on this obscure historical period and introduce new methods for understanding epidemics. In Medieval Europe, leprosy was a common disease. The specter of the leper remains firmly entrenched in our collective memory: a person wrapped ...

Frontiers in Microbiology Insights into fungal communities in composts revealed by 454-pyrosequencing: Implications for human health and safety Composting is a process for converting waste into materials beneficial for plant growth through the action of microbes, especially of fungi which can break down large molecules. But fungi involved in composting are not always harmless. Vidya De Gannes and colleagues show that composts can contain more fungi that are potentially harmful to humans than was previously realized. Using intensive DNA-sequencing to analyze fungal ...

Irvine, Calif., June 10, 2013 – New satellite imagery reveals that several areas across the United States are all but certain to suffer water-related catastrophes, including extreme flooding, drought and groundwater depletion. The paper, to be published in Science this Friday, June 14, underscores the urgent need to address these current and rapidly emerging water issues at the national scale. "We don't recognize the dire water situation that we face here in the United States," said lead author Jay Famiglietti, a professor of Earth System Science at the University of ...

Sponsors and researchers will be given one year to act before independent scientists begin publishing the results themselves using previously confidential trial documents. The BMJ and PLOS Medicine have already endorsed the proposal and committed to publishing restorative clinical trial submissions - and will discuss it in more detail at a meeting in London on Friday 14 June 2013. Unpublished and misreported studies make it difficult to determine the true value of a treatment. Around half of all clinical trials for the medicines we use today have never been published ...

However, the authors stress that the overall risk of severe problems is small and the results are significant only for women who have previously given birth – not for first-time mums. The relative safety of planned home births is a topic of continuous debate, but studies have so far been too small to compare severe maternal complications between planned home and planned hospital birth among low risk women. Of all Western countries, the Netherlands has the highest percentage of home births, assisted by a primary care midwife. So a team of Dutch researchers decided ...

Grenoble, 12 June 2013: Swedish, Australian and French researchers present for the first time miraculously preserved musculature of 380 million year old armoured fish discovered in north-west Australia. This research will help scientists to better understand how neck and abdominal muscles evolved during the transition from jawless to jawed vertebrates. The scientific paper describing the discovery is published today in the journal Science. The team of scientists who studied the fossilised fish was jointly directed by Prof. Kate Trinajstic, Curtin University, Perth, Australia ...

PITTSBURGH, June 13, 2013 – Allowing all employees access to paid sick days would reduce influenza infections in the workplace, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health modeling experts. The researchers simulated an influenza epidemic in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County and found that universal access to paid sick days would reduce flu cases in the workplace by nearly 6 percent and estimated it to be more effective for small, compared to large, workplaces. The results are reported in the online version ...

Irvine, Calif. – Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves, not icebergs calving into the sea, are responsible for most of the continent's ice loss, a study by UC Irvine and others has found. The first comprehensive survey of all Antarctic ice shelves discovered that basal melt, or ice dissolving from underneath, accounted for 55 percent of shelf loss from 2003 to 2008 – a rate much higher than previously thought. Ice shelves, floating extensions of glaciers, fringe 75 percent of the vast, frozen continent. The findings, to be published in the June ...