Duke researchers connect important genetic variation to malaria resistance.

The bacterium behind one of mankind’s deadliest scourges, tuberculosis, is helping researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Brookhaven National Laboratory move closer to answering the decades-old question of what controls the switching on and off of genes that carry out all of life’s functions.

Anyone who has watched crime dramas on TV knows that forensic scientists can use DNA “profiling” to identify people from evidence gathered at a crime scene, establish a paternity link or help free an innocent person who has been wrongly jailed.

Dennis Jenkins, an archeologist from the University of Oregon, along with other researchers, have recovered mitochondrial DNA from human excrements found in the Paisley Caves located in the Summer Lake Basin north of Paisley in south-central Oregon.

Researchers report that a set of genetic variations in at least four regions of DNA strongly predicts prostate cancer risk and that these variations may be responsible for a large number of prostate cancer cases in white men in the United States.

An international research consortium today announced the 1000 Genomes Project, an ambitious effort that will involve sequencing the genomes of at least 1,000 people from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation.

A new study shows that the intellectual boost associated with breast milk is only attained if a child has inherited one of two versions of a specific gene.

Scientists are closer to understand why although 99 per cent of the human and chimpanzee genes are identical, there are vast differences in the way the two look, behave, think and react to pathogens.

Light becomes polarized in detectable ways when reflected from chlorophyll and other chiral molecules necessary to life, so scientists working at NIST have built a device that can detect this polarization—potentially offering a way to find extraterrestrial life from great distances.

The National Science Foundation - Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation has announced 12 grants for fiscal year 2008, awarding a total of $23,779,056 over four years to 54 investigators representing 20 institutions.

Evidence Suggests Late Cretaceous Period South America-Madagascar Link

New "soup and sandwich" hypothesis suggests spaces between mica layers may have provided exactly the right conditions for earliest life.

Plants prepare to respond to light while still in the dark

How are physicists helping an effort to eradicate malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than one million people every year?

In new table-top reactor, bacteria from wastewater produce abundant, clean hydrogen from cellulose, or even vinegar, and a little electricity.

Wanted: Bacterium that can eat sugar or sludge; must be team player or electrochemically active; ability to survive without oxygen, a plus.

Bacteria can sense light, and light exposure increases the virulence of one type of disease-causing bacteria

Novel bacterium lives in colorful microbial mats within hot springs