Reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as peroxides and superoxides are important signalling molecules in an organism's regulation of metabolism and inflammation. Accumulation of ROS have been linked to neurodegeneration and cancer. Researchers at Umeå University and Hospital of Halland in Sweden now reveal an unexpected function of ROS. They dampen a key inflammatory process and weaken the immune system´s ability to combat pathogens such as those that cause pneumonia. The findings are published in the July 2016 issue of the Cell Press Journal Immunity.

Fossil bones and stone tools can tell us a lot about human evolution, but certain dynamic behaviours of our fossil ancestors - things like how they moved and how individuals interacted with one another - are incredibly difficult to deduce from these traditional forms of paleoanthropological data. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, along with an international team of collaborators, have recently discovered multiple assemblages of Homo erectus footprints in northern Kenya that provide unique opportunities to understand locomotor patterns and group structure through a form of data that directly records these dynamic behaviours. Using novel analytical techniques, they have demonstrated that these H.

Washington, DC - July 12, 2016 - Ebola and Marburg filovirus disease outbreaks have typically occurred as isolated events, confined to central Africa. However, the recent Ebola epidemic spread to several African countries, and caused 11,000 deaths. That epidemic underscored the need to develop vaccines and therapeutics that could be used to fight future disease outbreaks. Now new research suggests that antibodies to filoviruses from individuals who have survived these diseases may offer protection--not only against the particular filovirus that infected an individual, but against other filoviruses, as well. The research is published in Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

WHAT: Scientists at the National Institutes of Health are reporting new, unexpected details about the fundamental structure of collagen, the most abundant protein in the human body. In lab experiments, they demonstrated that collagen, once viewed as inert, forms structures that regulate how certain enzymes break down and remodel body tissue. The finding of this regulatory system provides a molecular view of the potential role of physical forces at work in heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and other disease-related processes, they say. The study appears in the current online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Decreasing set of proteins reduces depression in mice

A lone Sentinel cell monitors and coordinates the defense of the entrance to the colon's most sensitive parts. The Sentinel cell detects nearby bacteria and signals to a line of defensive cells to send out a cascade of mucus to push away the invaders. As a final self-sacrificing action the cell commits suicide and ejects itself into the intestinal lumen.

Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, have discovered a new group of cells that can wash away the bacteria that have penetrated through the protective mucus barrier. The discovery, published in the journal Science, may be important in understanding how inflammatory bowel disease, e.g. ulcerative colitis, occurs.