The discovery that blocking an inhibitory immune receptor restores T cell function in HIV sheds light on immune dysfunction.

In the late 1970s, scientists were divided on how viruses enter and infect host cells. Some investigators thought viruses were directly penetrating the cell membrane into the cytoplasm, while others argued the pathogens were first engulfed into clathrin-coated pits. As evidence, both sides used static electron microscopy images, which told different stories "depending on how you took the pictu

A cell line used in more than 650 published breast cancer studies may not be a breast cancer cell line at all

A Stanford postdoc rules the Sudoku world

There are many ways to ward off a predator, but perhaps none so enthusiastic as the Giant honeybee's team "wave." New research, linkurl:published this week;http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003141 in PLoS One, demonstrates that a communal motion called the shimmering effect, in which hundreds of bees successively flip their abdomens upwards in a rapid wave, protects a hive by startling wasps away. "People have known for a long time that the Asian species of honeybees do this shimmering,

National Medal of Science laureate Robert Lefkowitz was one of the first to show that receptors were real protein structures

The NIH has turned the locks and barred the windows on several previously open access databases of genetic information in response to new research proving it's possible to identify a single individual's genetic profile out of a pool of DNA. Last week in linkurl:PLoS Genetics,;http://www.plosgenetics.org/home.action researchers from the University of California, Los Angles, and the Translational Genomics Institute in Phoenix published a new bioinformatics method for pinpointing an individual D

To ensure complete accuracy and fairness in determining the winners for the Life Science Industry Awards, The Scientist selected BioInformatics, an unbiased third-party research firm based in Arlington, Va. The Life Science Industry Awards are unique as they allow the scientists to determine the winners. BioInformatics designed and fielded a 34-question electronic survey to registered members of The Science Advisory Boar

Credit: brainmaps.org" /> Credit: brainmaps.org The paper: G. A. Jacoby et al. "qnrB, another plasmid-mediated gene for quinolone resistance," Antimicrob Agents Chemother, 50:1178-82, 2006. (Cited in 65 papers) The finding: Eight years after discovering qnrA, the first plasmid-mediated gene for resistance to the broad-spectrum antibiotic quinolone, George Jacoby of the

By Megan Scudellari Tom?to Tomäto brainmaps.org The paper: N. Schauer et al., "Comprehensive metabolic profiling and phenotyping of interspecific introgression lines for tomato improvement," Nature Biotech, 24:447-54, 2006. (Cited in 51 papers) The methods: To explore the genetics behind tomato nutrition and taste, Alisdair Fernie of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and collaborators embarked on t

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Inverted tubes of gelled macrophage supernate (left) and water (right) for comparison. Credit: © Stossel, T.P., and J.H. Hartwig originally published in J Cell Biol 68:602-619, 1976." />Inverted tubes of gelled macrophage supernate (left) and water (right) for comparison. Credit: © Stossel, T.P., and J.H. Hartwig originally published in J Cell Biol 68:602-619, 1976. It w