Recently in ISG

Bees use their vision to navigate, but until now little was known about what happens inside their brains — which are smaller than a grain of rice — as they perform this task. “Polarized-light-based compass neurons and optic-flow-based speed-encoding neurons are located in a part of the bee brain called the central complex,”…

Scientists attending a recent meeting of the American Society for Microbiology reported they had uncovered a highly disturbing trend. They revealed that bacteria containing a gene known as mcr-1 – which confers resistance to the antibiotic colistin – had spread round the world at an alarming rate since its original discovery 18…

Two separate teams of researchers have used advanced DNA sequencing methods to analyze the 52,000-year-old remains of a Neanderthal woman from Vindija Cave in Croatia, and the 34,000-year-old remains of four anatomically modern humans from the Upper Paleolithic archaeological site of Sunghir. The findings are published in two papers in the journal Science. Kay…

Sixty years ago, a team of scientists went looking for yellow fever in the jungles that line the northwestern edge of Lake Victoria. What they found instead, in the blood of a rhesus monkey, was a new virus, one they named for the area’s dense vegetation: Uganda’s Zika Forest. Within a few years, Zika…

Patrick Allard, ISG faculty, along with Virginia Zaunbrecher, Elizabeth Beryt, Daniela Parodi, Donatello Telesca, Joseph Doherty, and Timothy Malloy, published the paper titled “Has Toxicity Testing Moved into the 21st Century? A Survey and Analysis of Perceptions in the Field of Toxicology” in the August 2017 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Ten years ago, leaders in…

In research that potentially could delay the onset of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases of aging, biologists have produced a genetic one-two punch that significantly slowed aging and improved health in the middle-aged fruit flies they studied. The approach focuses on mitochondria, the tiny power generators…

In a study analyzing the genomes of 210,000 people in the United States and Britain, researchers have found that the genetic variants linked to Alzheimer’s disease and heavy smoking are less frequent in people with longer lifespans, suggesting that natural selection is weeding out these unfavorable variants in both populations. “It’s a…

A new in-vitro study by University of California, Davis, researchers indicates that quaternary ammonium compounds, or “quats,” used as antimicrobial agents in common household products inhibit mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, as well as estrogenic functions in cells. Their findings appear online today (Aug. 22) in Environmental Health Perspectives, a publication of the…

A new study by UCLA researchers reveals the range of reactions — from rejection to reinterpretation to acceptance — after white nationalists learn that DNA ancestry test results indicate they may not be as white or European as they previously thought. The study, “When Genetics Challenges a Racist’s Identity: Genetic Ancestry Testing Among White…

Aaron Panofsky, ISG faculty, and Joan Donovan, former ISG postdoctoral fellow now at  Data & Society Research Institute, have published a paper titled “When Genetics Challenges a Racist’s Identity: Genetic Ancestry Testing among White Nationalists,” August 17, 2017. Abstract: This paper considers the emergence of new forms of race-making using a qualitative analysis…

The golden age of antibiotics may be drawing to a close. The recent discovery of E. coli carrying mcr-1 and ndm-5 — genes that make the bacterium immune to last-resort antibiotics — has left clinicians without an effective means of treatment for the superbug. But in a new study, University at Buffalo…

The genes that are involved in the development of the fetus are activated in different tissues and at different times. Their expression is carefully regulated by so-called “enhancer sequences”, which are often located far from their target genes, and requires the DNA molecule to loop around and bring them in close proximity…