Recently in ISG

Bees use their vision to navigate, but until now little was known about what happens inside their brains 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,” the study authors explained.

Scientists attending a recent American Society for Microbiology meeting 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 months earlier.

Two 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.

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.

Ten years ago, leaders in the field of toxicology called for a transformation of the discipline to incorporate advances in biotechnology and predictive methodologies into alternative testing strategies. But a decade later, the outcomes of these efforts are not well understood.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper considers the emergence of new forms of race-making using a qualitative analysis of online discussions of individuals’ genetic ancestry test (GAT) results on the white nationalist website Stormfront.

The golden age of antibiotics may be drawing to a close. The discovery of E. coli carrying mcr-1 and ndm-5 has left clinicians without an effective means of treatment for the superbug. But, researchers have assembled a team of three antibiotics that, together, are capable of eradicating the deadly bacterium.

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” and requires the DNA molecule to loop around and bring them in close proximity to their target genes.