An international team of researchers has identified a previously unknown avian influenza virus in a group of Adelie penguins from Antarctica. The new virus is described in a study published this week in mBio. Other research groups have previously detected influenza antibodies in Antarctic birds, but until now no one had detected an actual live […]
US scientists have found that a type of herpes-virus infection of the eye is associated with age-related macular degeneration, a disease that causes blindness in the elderly. The findings, appearing in PLoS Pathogens, indicate that human cytomegalovirus causes the production of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a signal protein that regulates the formation of new […]
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to make significant improvements to the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells by utilizing viruses to perform assembly work on the solar cell at the microscopic level. The new construction technique, reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is based on previous research that showed […]
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists explain how a previously unknown and dangerous virus carried by tics has been responsible for seasonal outbreaks of the disease in six of China’s most populated provinces. The disease first came to attention five years ago, when large numbers of farmers in central China began falling […]
Recent widespread flu scares have seen a clamor for antiviral medications, but researchers from the University of Texas at Austin (UT) have raised serious concerns about stopping viral infections in this way. According to their research, appearing in the journalGENETICS, medications that kill viruses by forcing their nucleic acid to mutate rapidly might actually, in […]
A type of virus known to cause leukemia and sarcomas in animals has been found for the first time in malignant human prostate cancer cells. The finding could have important implications for the development of a vaccine to block infection by the virus and thus prevent the development of prostate cancer. The researchers behind the […]
Parents expect to pass on their eye or hair color to their children through their genes but new research from the University of Rochester Medical Center shows that some parents pass on the human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6) to their children because it is integrated into their chromosomes. Reporting their findings in the journalPediatrics, the […]
New research suggests that viruses may contribute to cancer by causing excessive death to normal cells while promoting the growth of surviving cells with cancerous traits. Writing in the journal PLoS ONE, the scientists behind the hypothesis say that viruses may act as forces of natural selection by wiping out normal cells that support the […]
A team of researchers has devised a system that consistently converts the measles virus into a therapeutic killer that hunts down and destroys cancer cells. The researchers harnessed the viral trait for attacking and commandeering cells, and then redirected the virus to attack diseased, rather than healthy cells. The research, appearing in Nature Biotechnology, was […]
Strains of bacteria that occur naturally in the human mouth can snare the HIV virus and even cells it has infected, according to researchers at the UIC College of Dentistry. The findings were reported at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. The researchers found that the bacteria latched onto the sugar […]
