Marine ecosystems worldwide are suffering from a loss of biodiversity due to destruction of food chains and habitats. In particular, the effects of commercial fishing on sensitive ecosystems and species has had disastrous effects on marine life in recent years. One way to mitigate for these effects is to create areas which are set aside… Read more »
In September 2012 a patient in Saudi Arabia died of acute respiratory illness and kidney failure due to an unknown infectious agent. A novel species of coronavirus was later identified and shown to be the cause of this and eleven subsequent cases, which were spread across the Middle East and the UK. A timely review,… Read more »
Elephantiasis, schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, dracunculiasis, neurocysticercosis – if you have heard of these diseases at all, you probably think of them as being rare diseases, but in all probability you’ve never heard of them or many other diseases like them. They are part of a group of infections called the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) – diseases… Read more »
February was an unexpectedly busy month for science. A mangy skeleton lying unceremoniously under a concrete parking lot was shown by forensic science to be no lesser a historical figure than the last Plantagenet King of England. To trump Richard III, a once-in-a-century meteor strike in Russia startled stargazers distracted by an asteroid flyby, in… Read more »
Biologists have become wary of claiming that any cellular system is now understood but for the odd t left uncrossed, or i undotted, at least since the discovery of introns in the late 1970s opened up a new world of questions undreamed-of in the philosophy of the time. So Sean Munro opens his contribution to… Read more »
Sustainable Chemical Processes, a new open access journal published by Chemistry Central, sister publisher of BioMed Central, is now accepting submissions. The journal has a broad scope, covering all scientific and engineering aspects of sustainable approaches in chemistry. This includes, but is not limited to, green routes to isolation, purification and synthesis of compounds; all… Read more »
On the list of humanity’s priorities, tissue regeneration finds itself near the very top; together with eternal youth and immortality. And, in legends and myths, both heroes and villains – but most commonly monsters – possess an amazing ability to grow back lost organs and limbs. Myths can have a grain of truth, though. In… Read more »
One of the most fascinating leaps in evolution is the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms. How individual free living cells joined forces to create more complex multicellular organisms is still not well understood. For metazoans, this transition is thought to have occurred through a colonial intermediate that was composed of cells similar to choanoflagellates…. Read more »
Retrovirology Associate Editor Monsef Benkirane has been elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows are members of the academy, which is the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). The mission of the academy is to recognize scientists for outstanding contributions to microbiology and provide microbiological expertise in the… Read more »
Microbial Cell Factories invites submissions to a special thematic series on Systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering, edited by Sang Yup Lee. Systems biotechnology can be defined based on the definition of biotechnology from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as “The application of science and technology at systems level to living organisms as… Read more »