When a Lake Malawi cichlid loses a tooth, a new one drops neatly into place as a replacement. Why can't humans similarly regrow teeth lost to injury or disease?

Working with hundreds of these colorful fish, researchers are beginning to understanding how the animals maintain their hundreds of teeth throughout their adult lives. By studying how structures in embryonic fish differentiate into either teeth or taste buds, the researchers hope to one day be able to turn on the tooth regeneration mechanism in humans - which, like other mammals, get only two sets of teeth to last a lifetime.

Genetic ancestry, as well as facial characteristics, may play an important part in who we select as mates, according to an analysis that used population genomics and social science data to gauge the relatedness of parents in a study of asthma in Mexican and Puerto Rican children. 

Montreal, October 15, 2015 - Scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and Duke University have made a breakthrough that advances our understanding of how the brain detects and prevents dehydration. They have identified the structure of a key protein located in the brain, which is involved in body hydration and that could control temperature. The findings, which were recently published in the print issue of Cell Reports, could have important clinical implications, as this protein could be a target for the development of treatments and diagnostic tests for many health problems associated with the imbalance of bodily fluids, commonly seen in the emergency room.

Johannes Reiter, former PhD student in the group of Krishnendu Chatterjee at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), is co-author of a Nature paper on genetic alterations that drive the progression and relapse of cancer. An international team of scientists from the US, Germany and Austria identified novel genes associated with chronic lymphocytic leukemia through the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data.

An international team of researchers, together with participation from the University of Bonn, has investigated a stunning fossil finding from the Cretaceous period. The 125-million-year-old mouse- to rat-sized mammal is preserved so well that even detailed analyses of its fur are possible. An astounding finding: The animal may have suffered from a fungal infection of the hair which also strikes mammals nowadays. The scientists are publishing their results in the journal Nature.