News

Sexual reproduction and viral infections actually have a lot in common. According to new research, both processes rely on a single protein that enables the seamless fusion of two cells, such as a sperm cell and egg cell, or the fusion of a virus with a cell membrane. The protein is widespread among viruses, single-celled protozoans, and many plants and arthropods, suggesting that the protein evolved very early in the history of life on Earth.

Contact tracing -- a process of identifying everyone who has come into contact with those infected by a particular disease -- combined with targeted, indoor spraying of insecticide can greatly reduce the spread of the mosquito-borne dengue virus, finds a study led by Emory University researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The mosquito Aedes aegypti, which can spread dengue fever, chikungunya, Zika fever, and yellow fever virus, requires a blood meal to develop eggs. One way to control the spread of these diseases is to tamper with the reproductive events that follow this mosquito's blood meal. This is what a team of scientists at the University of California, Riverside has explored at the molecular level. The researchers focused on small regulatory RNA molecules, called microRNAs, which play a critical role in mosquito egg maturation.

The human whipworm, which infects 500 million people and can damage physical and mental growth, is killed at egg and adult stage by a new drug class developed at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford and University College London.

About the size of a tablet, a portable device that could be used in a host of environments like a busy airport or even a remote location in South America, may hold the key to detecting the dreaded Zika virus accurately, rapidly and inexpensively using just a saliva sample. While scientists across the world are scrambling to find some sort of immunization, researchers from Florida Atlantic University are working to develop a diagnostic tool to reduce the impact of the outbreak until a vaccine is identified.

Australia's Ross River Virus (RRV) could be the next mosquito-borne global epidemic according to a new research study led by the University of Adelaide and the Australian National University. The virus has been thought to be restricted largely to Australia and Papua New Guinea where it is harbored by marsupial animals, specifically kangaroos and wallabies, and spread by mosquitoes.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has launched a Phase 1 clinical trial to test an investigational vaccine intended to provide broad protection against a range of mosquito-transmitted diseases, such as Zika, malaria, West Nile fever and dengue fever, and to hinder the ability of mosquitoes to transmit such infections. The study, which is being conducted at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, will examine the experimental vaccine's safety and ability to generate an immune response.

A Rice University study suggests that researchers planning to use the CRISPR genome-editing system to produce designer gut bacteria may need to account for the dynamic evolution of the microbial immune system. CRISPR is an acquired immune system that allows bacteria and other single-celled organisms to store snippets of DNA to protect themselves from viruses called phages. The system allows a cell to "remember" and mount a defense against phages it has previously battled.