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When the alert goes out that a virus has invaded the body, cells that have yet to be attacked prepare by "armoring" themselves for combat, attaching specific antiviral molecules to many of their own proteins to help resist the invader. Unfortunately, the deadly Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus knows a simple but devastating way around this defense: just cut the armor off host cell proteins.

Researchers suggest epigenetics, or the way DNA is processed and expressed, may be the underlying cause for male infertility.

About 5 percent of women considered low-risk for heart disease by current classification standards have evidence of advanced coronary artery calcium and may be at increased risk for cardiovascular events, according to a report in the Dec. 10/24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Studies in mice show identifying medications or physical shielding to protect astronauts from cosmic and solar radiation will be important for the success of human space missions beyond low Earth orbit, according to researchers from the University of Florida, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and NASA.

Scientists, using zebrafish to study the gastrointestinal tract, say that an enzyme long assumed to be involved in digestion instead is a detoxifying traffic cop, maintaining a friendly rapport between resident gut bacteria and cells.

Researchers have isolated a human blood cell that represents the great-grandparent of all the cells of the blood, a finding that could lead to new treatments for blood cancers and other blood diseases.

Novel treatment strategies for major depression with broader treatment success or a more rapid onset of action would have immense impact on public health, a new study published in the Dec. 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry explains.

A new study shows that women's spines have evolved to compensate for the weight of the baby during pregnancy. This dimorphism allows a woman to remain more active and mobile, despite the weight of the baby.

Research reported Dec. 11 in the journal Advanced Materials describes a potentially promising strategy for encouraging the regeneration of damaged central nervous system cells known as neurons. The technique would use a biodegradable polymer containing a chemical group that mimics the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to spur the growth of neurites, which are projections that form the connections among neurons and between neurons and other cells. The biomimetic polymers would then guide the growth of the regenerating nerve.

Surrounding the small islands of genes within the human genome is a vast sea of mysterious DNA. While most of this non-coding DNA is junk, some of it is used to help genes turn on and off. As reported online this week in Genome Research, Hopkins researchers have now found that this latter portion, which is known as regulatory DNA and contributes to inherited diseases like Parkinson's or mental disorders, may be more abundant than we realize.