A new study shows how a humble crab can accomplish the difficult trick of merging beauty with strength. Male fiddler crabs face two major challenges in their life: attracting females and fending off competing males. The crabs rely on an extra-large claw to achieve both of these goals. However, scientists have assumed that as the male crab evolved, it was forced to make a trade off between an attractive, long claw, or a shorter one that's more effective in combat, until now. Now, new research shows that function and beauty may reside in the same fiddler crab claw after all.  The new study, led...

New research shows that our body chooses which microorganism can live in our gut. The human gastrointestinal (GI) tract is home to about 100 trillion symbiotic bacteria, which, seen from their DNA content, amount to more than 150 times the number of genes in the human genome. But, don't worry, many of these GI tract bacteria have beneficial functions. Beneficial gut bacteria ally with your intestinal cells to break down indigestible plant fibers, they also help your immune system protect itself against viruses, and increase intestinal absorption of dietary fats and carbohydrates.
Now, new...

Newts and salamanders are known for their ability to grow new limbs after injury, yet little is known about the inner workings of this ability. Now, a new study led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Dayton, in Ohio, USA, makes a significant step towards understanding this amazing ability. Their findings, published online on February 20 in the journal Genome Biology, may one day lead the way for new approaches to regenerate limbs or organs in non-amphibian species (like us). The research team, led by Dr. Thomas Braun, identified the RNAs (Ribonucleic...

New research shows how some bacteria manage to evade a widely used antibiotic by removing it from their protein factories.

The widespread use of antibiotics over the past decades has led to the emergence of resistant bacteria. Since their discovery in the 1930s, antibiotics have been overused in human medicine and in industrial farms as food supplements to promote animal growth. A shocking 80% of antibiotics produced in the USA are used in farms, despite warnings from the World Health Organization of the danger this poses to public health. Antibiotic resistant bacteria can spread from animals...

You wouldn't think that those pesky flies hovering around your fruit bowl could help scientists understand cancer. Flies don't have cancer, and a fly is, well, just a fly. However, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been one of scientists' favourite animal models for over a century, and is nowadays used to study many human diseases. New research using fruit flies has now uncovered molecular details in tissue overgrowth that explain some long-standing questions in cancer research.

Why Drosophila? When compared to other lab animals like mice, for instance, flies have many advantages. They...

Genetic testing aims to find altered genes that could lead to a disease, and give doctors a head start in finding the best treatment. However, new research now suggest that finding these potentially ill-fated genes may not be such a big deal.

Researchers from Cambridge and Cardiff universities found that a normal person typically has about 400 DNA mutations in potentially important sites in the genome. But the researchers also found that people carrying these disease-causing mutations usually, and who represent about 10% of all the people carrying these mutations, have a very mild version of...