A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that a specialized area of the mosquito brain mixes tastes with smells to create unique and preferred flavors. The findings advance the possibility, they say, of identifying a substance that makes “human flavor” repulsive to the malaria-bearing species of the mosquitoes, so instead of feasting on us, they keep the disease to…
Remnants of extinct monkeys are hiding inside you, along with those of lizards, jellyfish and other animals. Your DNA is built upon gene fragments from primal ancestors. Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have made it more likely that ancestral genes, along with ancestral proteins, can be confidently identified and reconstructed. They have benchmarked a vital tool that…
An international team of researchers has sequenced a strain of the Zika virus that will be used as a World Health Organization (WHO) reference strain to identify Zika virus infection in the blood, thus making it easier to diagnose the disease. While the reference material will undergo formal WHO review in October, the agency has given the go-ahead for the…
There’s no need to reinvent the genetic wheel. That’s one lesson of a new study that looks to the saliva of humans, gorillas, orangutans, macaques and African green monkeys for insights into evolution. The research, published on Aug. 25 in Scientific Reports, examined a gene called MUC7 that tells the body how to create a salivary protein of the same…
Female fish have a novel way of finding Mr Right when it comes to picking fathers for their offspring, scientists have revealed. Like most other species of fish, female ocellated wrasse release their eggs into the water for fertilization by males, making just who ends up as the daddy something of a lottery. But now researchers have revealed that females…
Scientists from Oxford University and UCL have identified part of our brain that helps us learn to be good to others. The discovery could help understanding of conditions like psychopathy where people’s behaviour is extremely antisocial. The researchers were led by Dr Patricia Lockwood, who explained: ‘Prosocial behaviours are social behaviours that benefit other people. They are a fundamental aspect…