"There's an app for that." To a cadre of scientists, the familiar phrase will soon mean they can enter a specific RNA from baker's yeast into their iPhone and see a depiction of its two-dimensional structure -- thanks to a new technology developed by scientists at Stanford University.

One of the most difficult aspects of working at the nanoscale is actually seeing the object being worked on. Biological structures like viruses, which are smaller than the wavelength of light, are invisible to standard optical microscopes and difficult to capture in their native form with other imaging techniques.

In the winter of 1979, the world celebrated the end of smallpox, a highly contagious and often fatal viral infection estimated to have caused between 300 and 500 million deaths during the 20th century.

Trypanosomes are parasites responsible for many human and animal diseases, primarily in tropical climates. One disease these parasites cause, African sleeping sickness, results from the bite of infected tsetse flies, putting over 60 million Africans at risk in 36 sub-Saharan countries. The recent 1998-2001 sleeping sickness epidemics in South Sudan, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda killed tens of thousands of people and resulted in over a half million infected individuals.

In these lean times, smart consumers refuse to pay a lot for throwaway items, but will shell out a little more for products that can be used again and again. The same is true of bacteria and other microbes, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned.

In these lean times, smart consumers refuse to pay a lot for throwaway items, but will shell out a little more for products that can be used again and again. The same is true of bacteria and other microbes, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned.

A unique experiment at Rice University that forces bacteria into a head-to-head competition for evolutionary dominance has yielded new insights about the way Darwinian selection plays out at the molecular level. An exacting new analysis of the experiment has revealed precisely how specific genetic mutations impart a physical edge in the competition for survival.

Using a $225,000 microscope, researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys.

Home to a diverse range of microorganisms, a healthy human body contains at least tenfold more bacteria cells than human cells. The most abundant and diverse microbial community resides in the intestine, and changes to the gut microbiota are linked with diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.

Researchers report new scientific evidence on the effectiveness of that old folk remedy -- cranberry juice -- for urinary tract infections, at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), being held in Boston.