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Initial data from a study in mice have suggested that SARS-CoV-2 may not actually target taste buds and therefore the symptom of taste loss might arise through other means.

By monitoring the transcriptome of primary cells from multiple organs, researchers have concluded that cells in the human body can be classified into five major groups.

In an unexpected new finding, biochemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report observing that a damage-containment system in stressed bacteria can become overrun and blocked, but that this leads to cells responding by turning on very different pathways to make sure that normal growth continues.

A new study took a novel approach to identifying SNPs influencing the risk of neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar and major depressive disorder.

Genes that are thought to play a role in how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects our cells have been found to be active in embryos as early as during the second week of pregnancy, say scientists at the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology. The researchers say this could mean embryos are susceptible to COVID-19 if the mother gets sick, potentially affecting the chances of a successful pregnancy.

Scientists have found that only around 60% of patients who have had COVID-19 and recovered from it develop protective antibodies. They also showed that some antibodies even "assist" the virus in infecting host cells.

New research has illustrated how a protein inside the body reduces the adverse effects of hypertonicity, including cell death.

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin has explored the role of factors in embryonic development that do not alter the sequence of DNA, but only epigenetically modify its “packaging”. They describe how regulatory mechanisms contribute to the formation of different tissues and organs in early mouse embryos.

Biologists have long known that inbreeding can be detrimental. Inbreeding results in less genetic variation, making species more vulnerable if changes occur that require them to adapt. Now we know more about just how bad inbreeding really is.

Scientists have created a machine learning method and open source software to estimate the dynamics of gene activity in single cells, allowing biologists to robustly predict the future state of individual cells.