As mosquito-borne viral diseases like West Nile fever, dengue fever, and chikungunya fever spread rapidly around the globe, scientists at Virginia Tech are working to understand the mosquito's immune system and how the viral pathogens that cause these diseases are able to overcome it to be transmitted to human and animal hosts.

When nerve cells communicate with one another, specialized receptor molecules on their surfaces play a central role in relaying signals between them. A collaborative venture involving teams of chemists based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and the University of California in Berkeley has now succeeded in converting an intrinsically "blind" receptor molecule into a photoreceptor.

In a new study from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), people with schizophrenia showed greater brain activity during tests that induce a brief, mild form of delusional thinking. This effect wasn't seen in a comparison group without schizophrenia.

Type 1 diabetes is caused by the body's own immune system attacking its pancreatic islet beta cells and requires daily injections of insulin to regulate the patient's blood glucose levels. A new method described in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine uses stem cells from cord blood to re-educate a diabetic's own T cells and consequently restart pancreatic function reducing the

The underlying reason autism is often associated with gastrointestinal problems is an unknown, but new results to be published in the online journal mBio® on January 10 reveal that the guts of autistic children differ from other children in at least one important way: many children with autism harbor a type of bacteria in their guts that non-autistic children do not. The study was conducted

Modified probiotics, the beneficial bacteria touted for their role in digestive health, could one day decrease the risk of Listeria infection in people with susceptible immune systems, according to Purdue University research.

Researchers have discovered that children under the age of two control speech using a different strategy than previously thought.

Wearing a nicotine patch may help improve memory loss in older adults with mild cognitive impairment, according to a study published today in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have developed a new way to identify the genes of harmful microbes, particularly those that have been difficult to study in the laboratory.

Researchers at the University of Iowa have worked out the exact function of an enzyme that is critical for normal muscle structure and is involved in several muscular dystrophies. The findings, which were published Jan. 6 in the journal Science, could be used to develop rapid, large-scale testing of potential muscular dystrophy therapies.