Biochemistry, Genetics, and Molecular Biology

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis wanted to find out the reasons behind inflammation in diabetics, which is an underlying cause of various problems such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney problems, and so on. To understand what causes inflammation, the researchers genetically altered mice that were incapable of producing the enzyme for fatty acid synthase in immune cells called macrophages. Read more about their research here.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham conducted a study that found that high levels of cortisol, also known as the 'stress hormone', in the hair of women who were undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) were associated with about a third less chance of conceiving. Read more about their research here.

Do some mosquitoes prefer to feed on animals rather than humans? To understand if there is a genetic basis to the host preference, researchers at the Vector Genetics Lab at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine sequenced the genomes of 23 human-fed and 25 cattle-fed mosquitoes, which they collected indoors and outdoors from Tanzania’s Kilobero Valley. Read more about their research here.

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge, have found that the time at which our body is invaded by viruses has an impact on our susceptibility to infection. Conducting a study on mice, the researchers exposed the mice to herpes virus at different times of the day. Read more about their research here. 

Researchers at the Max Plank Institute led by Didier Stainier, Director of the Department of Developmental Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim, have located cloche – a mutant gene present in one of the model organism zebrafish that prevented the development of both blood vessels and blood cells in the zebrafish. Read more about their research here.

A team of researchers from the University of Buffalo have developed an E. coli based capsule, which according to them, can transport vaccines more efficiently than the currently available immunizations. While most people fear E. coli, the study’s co-lead author Blaine A. Pfeifer, PhD, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences says that “there are many strains of the bacteria, most of which are perfectly normal in the body, that have great potential to fight disease.” Read more about their research here.

When a mosquito bites a human, it leaves behind some of its saliva, leading to an inflammation that can help the virus it is carrying to infect the body. However, when the white blood cells – neutrophils and myeloid – attempt to stave off the infection, at times, they themselves get infected and inadvertently replicate the virus. Thus, a group of researchers at the University of Leeds studied how the inflamed and itchy sites of mosquito bites help viruses such as Zika or dengue to infect the victim’s body. Read more about their research here.

A team of researchers from Cardiff University's Systems Immunity Research Institute found that T-cells – a type of white blood cell that defends humans from germs – get activated by some types of bacteria, leading the T-cells to attack beta cells that produce insulin. Read more about their research here.

Researchers from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology worked together to find out whether the Asian Zika virus led to microcephaly in mammals. They injected the virus directly into the brains of fetal mice and found that embryos at a nascent stage failed to survive the virus attack. Read more about their research here.

A team of researchers at the University of Southern California, led by stem cell researcher Lindsey Barske, have identified the molecular signals that control the development of the vertebrate face. They studied the early development in zebrafish using hi-tech genetic, genomic and imaging tools to understand how facial patterns form. Read more about their research here.