HIV Can Re-Emerge From a Single Cell

...lf back to life after powerful drugs allow infected people to eliminate all signs of the disease in their blood? Now, new research suggests HIV can hibernate inside a small number of cells -- or even a single cell -- until re-emerging to wreak havoc. Study co-author Huldrych Gunthard, a researcher at Uni...

Genome of Botulism Bacterium Revealed

...ts. For the prey of its opportunistic attacks, death is swift. Perhaps the most important tool it has to act out its stealth attacks is its ability to hibernate when times are hard by forming dormant spores. More than 110 of its set of almost 3700 genes are used to control spore formation and germinati...

hibernate in Biological News

Mammals that hibernate or burrow less likely to go extinct

The best way to survive the ill-effects of climate change and pollution may be to simply sleep through it. According to a new study published in The American Naturalist , mammals that hibernate or that hide in burrows are less likely to turn up on an endangered species list. The study's autho...

Disappearing act of world's second largest fish explained

...d autumn months, the disappearance of basking sharks during winter has been a great source of debate ever since an article in 1954 suggested that they hibernate on the ocean floor during this time," said Gregory Skomal of Massachusetts Marine Fisheries. "Some 50 years later, we have helped to solve the mystery...

Life in a bubble

...y co-authored by Bush and Morris Flynn, former applied mathematics instructor. Some species, such as Neoplea striola, which are native to New England, hibernate underwater all winter long. This phenomenon was first observed many years ago, but the MIT researchers are the first to calculate the maximum dive ...

Genome of Clostridium botulinum reveals the background to world's deadliest toxin

...ts. For the prey of its opportunistic attacks, death is swift. Perhaps the most important tool it has to act out its stealth attacks is its ability to hibernate when times are hard by forming dormant spores. More than 110 of its set of almost 3700 genes are used to control spore formation and germination...

What animals can tell us about hemorrhage, organ transplants and aging

...2006: Integrating Diversity, taking place October 8-11 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. They spend time in the mountains studying bears, animals that hibernate for months without suffering significant muscle atrophy They follow migrating birds thousands of miles to understand how they fuel their metabolisms ...

Breaks in hibernation help fight bugs

... an immune system that is essentially asleep. "Animals cannot tell when they need to wake up, or if they are infected," says Luis. If the animals hibernate for long they risk serious infection, she says, while waking up frequently wastes precious energy, and could prove fatal as well. In other word...

Possible brain hormone may unlock mystery of hibernation

... that block HP activity in the animals' brains cuts hibernation short. "One of the most curious biological phenomena in mammals is their ability to hibernate circannually, which allows them to survive unusually low body temperatures at or near freezing," said study author Takashi Ohtsu of Kanagawa Academy o...

Darkness unveils vital metabolic fuel switch between sugar and fat

...animals dig deep burrows," said Lee, an expert in circadian rhythms. "They are constantly in the dark. Why not darkness as a switch?" Mice do not hibernate but they can slip into a similar short-term state of torpor. Lee and colleagues started with a microarray analysis of gene expression in the livers o...