Upon entering a cell, a virus often becomes dormant, turning off its genes and laying low until awakened by som e trigger from its environment. When that trigger is pulled, the virus quickly ramps up production of proteins through built-in positive-feedback loops that turn up gene transcription. (

Despite the explosive growth in size and complexity of the human brain, the pace of evolutionary change among the thousands of genes expressed in brain tissue has actually slowed since the split, millions of years ago, between human and chimpanzee, an international research team reports in the December 26, 2006, issue of the journal, PLOS Biology.

Researchers have discovered two genes that guide land plants to develop microscopic pores that they can open and close as if each pore was a tiny mouth.

Chemists and biologists find gene which might - if defect - contribute to the development of Type II diabetes

Novel discovery demonstrates how popular class of pain killers can alter various forms of cancer

While great interest has followed the discovery of neural stem cells and their potential for someday treating diseases and injuries of the brain and spinal cord, recent research identified "cancer stem cells," a small population of cells that appear to be the source of cells comprising a malignant brain tumor.

More than a decade of searching for factors that make the common parasite Toxoplasma gondii dangerous to humans has pinned 90 percent of the blame on just one of the parasite's approximately 6,000 genes.

Working with a common form of brewer's yeast, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have uncovered novel functions of a key protein that allow it to act as a master regulatory switch - a control that determines gene activity and that, when malfunctioning in humans, may contribute to serious neurological disorders.