Research traces the evolution of a gene variant that reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, finding that it originally evolved in response to infectious bacteria.
As cricket blastoderms form, cell nuclei are pulled into an egg’s remaining empty space to form the new cell layers that will shape the developing animal.
For the first time, researchers performed a head-to head longitudinal study comparing the immune response elicited by mRNA and traditional COVID-19 vaccines to primary infections.
Stressed cells can form hollow actin bridges to neighbors to get help, but the virus may hijack these tiny tunnels for its own purposes, a study suggests.
The marine animals have evolved a unique molecular pathway enabling them to use toxins to fight off invaders without poisoning themselves in the process.
Researchers are going beyond fecal samples to understand how the patterns of commensal microbes in the gastrointestinal tract influence development and health.
The Scientist spoke with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers Scott Weiss and Yang-Yu Liu, who propose that people bank stool samples when they’re young and healthy so that they can be transplanted to rejuvenate the gut microbiome later on.
Health data from 5,744 adults over the age of 50 reveals an association between stressors such as discrimination and a relatively small proportion of younger infection-fighting immune cells.
Acute stress makes immune cells migrate immediately to the bone marrow, which prepares the body for injury at the expense of increasing infectious disease susceptibility.
Dozens of intranasally delivered vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 are in development. Could they pave the way for widespread nasal vaccination in the future?