Digital atlases of the brains of humans, monkeys, dogs, cats, mice, birds and other animals have been created and posted online by researchers at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.

A new study being published by the American Physiological Society (www.The-APS.org) finds that the body responds differently to colitis (inflammation of the colon) based on whether the disease is acute (sharp and brief) or chronic (long-term). Researchers, using an experimental mouse model of colitis, discovered that the effects of acute colitis were associated with decreased body weight, food intake, and body fat content.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an inherited motor-neuron disease that, in its most severe form, leads to death before 2 years of age and for which there is no treatment.

Healthy and viable mice that survive until adulthood have, for the first time, been cloned from adult stem cells. Scientists from Rockefeller University, including Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Elaine Fuchs, used cells called keratinocyte stem cells, which represent a new model system for cloning. Keratinocytes come from the skin, making them a particularly attractive stem cell source because of their ready accessibility.

Concerns about the risk of radiation-induced cancer are growing with the increasing number of cancer patients surviving long term.

Human-chimp genetic difference is as big as 6 percent.
Approximately six per cent of human and chimp genes are unique to those species, report scientists from the University of Bristol and three other institutions.