Discoveries

By Alexandria Oviatt DNA repair pathways such as NER have the integral role of protecting us from potentially damaging mutations. Defects in these mechanisms can lead to diseases such as XP or cancers. (Gernot Krautberger, stock.adobe.com) A recent Nucleic Acids Research paper from the lab of Walter… Read More

By Amanda N. Johnson “Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the U.S. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 7% (17.3 million) of American adults had at least one major depressive episode in 2017.” (Tadamichi, stock.adobe.com) Existing drug treatments relieve mental illness for… Read More

By Suneethi Sivakumaran C-MYC, a variant of MYC, and MAX bound to DNA. (Molekuul.be, stock.adobe.com) Cancers are complex and diverse in nature, assailing the human body through different mechanisms. Cancer cells outsmart normal cells through myriad mechanisms, including sustained proliferation, insensitivity to growth suppressors, and resistance to cell… Read More

By Sohini Roy New research can lead to improved vaccines against the flu, including strains such as H7N9 and antiviral-resistant strains. Image by Heather Hazzan, SELF Magazine. Published under a CC BY 2.0 license. Obtained from Flickr. Asian lineage avian influenza virus (H7N9) is… Read More

By Deborah Roby A mouse drinking from a water dispenser. Published under a CC0 1.0 license. Researchers at the Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, along with collaborators at MIT and Salk Institute, have determined a neurological pathway that may be used to determine a… Read More

By Julia Thompson Artist’s rendering of a mental health concept, by Quince Media. Image reproduced under a CC BY 4.0 license. Fear is a crucial emotion for human survival. Without the ability to experience fear in response to possible threats in the environment, it is all too easy… Read More

By Suneethi Sivakumaran Proposed mechanism of skin barrier formation. SDR9C7-catalyzed oxidation of linoleate in ceramides is required for covalent binding to the protein matrix and sealing of the water permeability barrier. Diagram courtesy of Alan Brash. Human skin has three major layers: epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. Epidermis is the outermost… Read More

By Cassandra Awgulewitsch   A 3D drawing of a B cell. From Blausen.com staff (2014). “Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014”. WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436. Reproduced under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Kristy Stengel, a postdoc in… Read More

By Jaime Jensen An artist’s rendering of the pore-forming action of a C. difficile binary toxin. Courtesy of the artist. Eve Moll 2019. This article originally appeared in the Nature Research Microbiology Community blog. The bacterium Clostridioides* difficile (C. diff) has been called many things: a superbug,… Read More

By Alexandra Fuller Model of vertebrate replication termination. Adapted with permission from Dewar et al. Nature 2018; 525:345–350. DOI: 10.1038/nature14887. You might break chicken eggs for your breakfast, but the lab of James Dewar (Biochemistry) breaks frog eggs to better understand the mechanisms cells use to terminate DNA replication. Published… Read More