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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Timber harvested illegally under fraudulent permits is undercutting conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon, new research by an international collaboration shows. The findings represent a troublesome counterpunch to an overall decline in deforestation rates in the region and indicate high-value timber species such as ipe? may be at risk of overexploitation. The study appeared today in Science Advances. At 2.1 million square miles, the Amazon Rainforest is the world's [...]

A lineage of type 1 dengue virus found in Brazil is able to prevail over another even though it multiplies less in vector mosquitoes and infected human cells. This discovery was made under the scope of a Thematic Project supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP involving several Brazilian institutions as well as a university in the United States. According to the study, the lineage activates a weaker immune response in the patient and is less strongly combated. As a result, the [...]

Brazilian researchers may have discovered why Africanized honeybees are so aggressive. The scientists detected higher levels of certain chemical substances in the brains of Africanized honeybees than in gentler strains of honeybees bred by beekeepers. According to a study published in Journal of Proteome Research, the chemical substances in question may trigger irascible behavior by normally placid bees. The same compounds had been detected in the brains of flies and mice, where they appeared [...]

  A novel laboratory-synthesized molecule based in natural compounds found in marine gliding bacteria - known as marinoquinolines - is a strong candidate for the development of a new antimalarial drug. In tests, the molecule proved capable of killing even the strain that resists conventional antimalarials. The molecule displays low toxicity and high selectivity, acting only on the parasite and not on other cells of the host organism. The molecule was developed in Brazil at the Center for [...]

Some relationships can be complicated. Take the one between sweet potato crops and soil nitrogen, for example. Too little nitrogen and sweet potato plants don't grow well and have low yields. Too much nitrogen, however, boosts the growth of leaves and branches at the expense of storage roots. That also leads to low yields. "Carefully managing soil nitrogen levels is essential to obtain high yields from sweet potato crops," says Adalton Fernandes, an agronomist at the Center for Tropical Roots [...]

The offspring of females fed a low-protein diet during pregnancy and lactation are significantly more likely to develop prostate cancer as they age. This is the main finding of a study performed with rats at São Paulo State University's Bioscience Institute (IBB-UNESP) in Botucatu, Brazil. The results of the study, which was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), have been published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A. "Our previous research showed that intrauterine [...]

Despite international breeding efforts, advanced agronomy and effective management of pests and diseases, sugarcane yields have been static for decades owing to constraints on culm development. The culm's sugar storage capacity is physically limited, restricting the volume of sucrose and biomass that can be obtained from the crop for sugar and second-generation (2G) ethanol production, according to experts in the area. "Breaking through this developmental threshold by conventional breeding [...]

A group of researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil used a DNA editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9 to manipulate on of the genes associated to the autoaggressive T lymphocytes responsible for inducing autoimune diseases such as autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type 1 (APS-1) and type 1 diabetes. The autoimmune regulator or "Aire" gene acting in medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) was recently described as playing an important role in controling "aggressive autoimmunity" - [...]

The strategy used by the Oropouche virus to replicate in human cells has been described for the first time by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil and international collaborators in an article published in the journal PLOS Pathogens. According to the study, shortly after invading the cell, the pathogen "hijacks" an organelle called the Golgi complex, which becomes a veritable virus factory. The virus does this by recruiting host cell protein complexes known as ESCRT [...]