An international team of researchers used historical museum collections to study the effects of human-made antibiotics over the entire history of their application. They found that the increased use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture in the 1950-1990s led to increases in antibiotic resistance in wild Swedish brown bears. However, the latest 20 years show a downward trend in resistance.
Females and males differ in many ways and yet they share the same genome. The only exception is the male Y chromosome. Using beetles as a study system, new research from Uppsala University, now published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, shows that despite of the Y chromosome containing very few genes, it can dramatically change male body size and thus facilitate the evolution of sex differences.
Hormones released after a brain injury contribute to movement problems on the left and right sides of the body, scientists from Uppsala University and elsewhere can now show in a new study in rats. The results also suggest that hormone-blocking treatments may help counteract these effects, a finding that has implications for treating people with traumatic brain injuries or stroke.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for methods to identify new or repurposed drugs as antivirals. Researchers at Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet are now presenting a new screening approach that focuses on the identification of virus-specific morphological changes in virus-infected cells.
In a study published in the US journal Science Advances, a single cell type map of human tissues is presented. An open access atlas has been launched with more than 250,000 interactive plots to allow researchers to explore the expression in individual single cell types for all protein-coding genes in these tissues.
Mothers leaving their families is not a new theme in Swedish fiction. But the reasons for leaving have changed. It is no longer about lack of gender equality, instead, they feel suffocated by the nuclear family, by the children or simply by society’s demands to have children. That is one of the conclusions in Jenny Björklund’s research on why mothers in 21st century books leave their families.
Male seed beetles with genital structures that injure females may have greater reproductive success. As new research from Uppsala University shows, females that mate with such males benefit, in the sense that their offspring are healthier. This new piece of the puzzle will help scientists to understand how complex mating interactions between males and females have developedevolved.
Uppsala University scientists have designed a new mouse model that facilitates study of factors contributing to the progression of human bladder cancer and of immune-system activation when the tumour is growing. Using this model, they have been able to study how proteins change before, while and after a tumour develops in the bladder wall. The study has now been published in PLOS ONE.
Researchers at Uppsala University have discovered lymph node-like structures close to the tumour in brain cancer patients, where immune cells can be activated to attack the tumour. They also found that immunotherapy enhanced the formation of these structures in a mouse model. This discovery suggests new opportunities to regulate the anti-tumour response of the immune system.
The tiny beetle Triamyxa coprolithica is the first-ever insect to be described from fossil faeces. The animal the researchers have to thank for the excellent preservation was probably the dinosaur ancestor Silesaurus opolensis, which 230 million years ago ingested the small beetle in large numbers.
A few males are enough to fertilise all the females. The number of males therefore has little bearing on a population’s growth. However, they are important for purging bad mutations from the population. This is shown by a new Uppsala University study providing in-depth knowledge of the possible long-term genetic consequences of sexual selection. The results are published in Evolution Letters.
Indonesia’s volcanoes are among the world’s most dangerous. Why? Through chemical analyses of tiny minerals in lava from Bali and Java, researchers from Uppsala University and elsewhere have found new clues. They now understand better how the Earth’s mantle is composed in that particular region and how the magma changes before an eruption. The study is published in Nature Communications.
