A new study published in Global Change Biology and coauthored by researchers from UT, explores how climate, evolution, plants, and soils are linked. The research is the first to show how climate-driven evolution in tree populations alters the way trees directly interact with their immediate soil environment. By surveying 17 naturally occurring populations of narrowleaf…
Viruses depend on host cells for replication, but how does a virus induce its host to transcribe its own genetic information alongside that of the virus, thus producing daughter viruses? For decades, researchers have been studying a type of bacteriophage known as ‘lambda’ to try and find an answer to this question. Using high-resolution cryo-electron…
When it comes to marketing electronic cigarettes to young people, fake news appears to stick. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently requires a prominent warning about the dangers of nicotine for e-cigarettes. But just before that mandate, a 2017 campaign by e-cigarette maker blu included fake warnings in precisely the place the real warnings…
Obesity is a major public-health problem in the United States and around the world, with an estimated 650 million people suffering from the condition. One of the biggest challenges of this ever-worsening condition is figuring out why people become obese in the first place, and why some people are more vulnerable to obesity than others.…
Looking at your cell phone, you realize the battery is low, which means you have to make another long walk into town to pay money to charge the device. By the time you get home, it’s getting dark. You light the kerosene lamp that casts a dim glow across the room. A significant amount of…
Researchers at Saint Louis University have found that eating a Mediterranean diet can improve athletes’ endurance exercise performance after just four days. In a small study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, investigators found that participants ran a 5K six percent faster after eating a Mediterranean diet than after eating a…
Woodland caribou populations have been dwindling towards local extinction across much of their range and scientists believe that predators, and specifically wolves, are a leading cause of the decline. Wolf populations are thought to have increased and expanded into caribou range due to the expansion of linear features, such as pipelines and roads, resulting from…
Translocation is an important management tool that has been used for more than 50 years to increase bighorn sheep population numbers in Arizona and to restore herds to suitable habitat throughout their historical range. Yet, translocation also can alter the underlying genetic diversity and spatial structure of managed wildlife species in both beneficial and detrimental…
An estimated 15 to 20 percent of all breast cancer patients are “triple negative.” These unfortunate women lack three crucial treatment targets — the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. Because they lack these targets, most triple negative patients are treated with standard chemotherapy, rather than the preferred targeted…
UT Southwestern researchers used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine the near-atomic structure of the smallest membrane protein solved to date. Their work could lead to better immunotherapies in cancer and improved treatments for autoimmune diseases like lupus. Cryo-EM — the technology credited with the “resolution revolution” underway in structural biology — uses a massive microscope…