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Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus), denizens of Arctic seas, are known to live more than 200 years, yet they show few signs of the age-related ailments that plague other animals, including humans. Even the bowhead's closest cetacean relative, the much smaller minke whale, lives only 50 years. That suggests the larger whales (which have more than 1000 times as many cells as humans) have evolved some special natural mechanisms that protect them against cancer and aging.

Unlike the rats favoured as animal models for many other diseases, dogs develop haemophilia naturally, have enough blood to contribute to research studies and live long enough to reveal long-term outcomes of treatments. "We have a 60-year track record now showing that if it works well in dogs, it's likely going to work well in humans," says Nichols.

" The typical naked mole rat lives 25 to 30 years, during which it shows little decline in activity, bone health, reproductive capacity and cognitive ability. What is the secret to this East African rodent's long, healthy life?"

Life sciences focus on all things living, exploring the patterns, processes and relationships of organisms. The goal of life sciences is to demonstrate how unifying principles can help us to make sense of the natural world and solve problems in the world we live in. High school life sciences extend student knowledge of topics such as organisms, ecosystems, heredity and evolution, integrating a long history of scientific research from multiple fields. In high school, students will build on their conceptual understanding of life sciences by investigating and witnessing the relationships among structure and function, matter and energy, ecosystems and natural selection. Students should be able to effectively communicate facts and findings, as supported in the science literacy skills covered in the Common Core State Standards.

A paper published today in Science Advances just might change that. By creating a reliable method of studying viruses' long evolutionary history-hitherto nearly impossible-researchers have found new evidence that strongly suggests viruses are indeed living entities.

In this interrupted case study, students will help Dr. Gupta investigate and assess complications arising in one of her long-term patients, Jorge Alvarez. Jorge was diagnosed with Type II diabetes mellitus 10 years ago as documented in "Living the Sweet Life," an optional prequel case study also in the NCCSTS collection. Jorge has been working with Dr. Gupta to manage his condition, but this year he has come under additional stress, both emotionally and financially, and his health has deteriorated. Jorge now presents with several new signs and symptoms, including numbness, tingling and burning sensations, and a foot sore that just won't heal. Students will review the nervous system and assess Jorge's symptoms, vitals, and blood tests to determine if his diabetes has worsened. Students will also learn about tests used to diagnose types of neuropathy and consider which of them would be most beneficial for Jorge. In addition to a non-majors anatomy and physiology course, this case study may be appropriate for an introductory biology, nutrition/dietetics, or a sensory and perception course.

"Scientists have sequenced the complete genome of the naked mole rat, a pivotal step to understanding the animal's extraordinarily long life and good health."

"Biologists at the University of Rochester have determined how blind mole rats fight off cancer -- and the mechanism differs from what they discovered three years ago in another long-lived and cancer-resistant mole rat species, the naked mole rat."

CRISPR still has a long way to go before it can be used safely and effectively to repair-not just disrupt-genes in people. That is particularly true for most diseases, such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis, which require correcting genes in a living person because if the cells were first removed and repaired then put back, too few would survive. And the need to treat cells inside the body means gene editing faces many of the same delivery challenges as gene transfer-researchers must devise efficient ways to get a working CRISPR into specific tissues in a person, for example. CRISPR also poses its own safety risks. Most often mentioned is that the Cas9 enzyme that CRISPR uses to cleave DNA at a specific location could also make cuts where it's not intended to, potentially causing cancer.

Youth based website focused on healthy choices and long term health.

In a paper this week in Science, Vogelstein and Cristian Tomasetti, who joined the biostatistics department at Hopkins in 2013, put forth a mathematical formula to explain the genesis of cancer. Here's how it works: Take the number of cells in an organ, identify what percentage of them are long-lived stem cells, and determine how many times the stem cells divide. With every division, there's a risk of a cancer-causing mutation in a daughter cell. Thus, Tomasetti and Vogelstein reasoned, the tissues that host the greatest number of stem cell divisions are those most vulnerable to cancer. When Tomasetti crunched the numbers and compared them with actual cancer statistics, he concluded that this theory explained two-thirds of all cancers.

Controversial new research suggests that contrary to the history books, the "Black Death" that devastated medieval Europe was not the bubonic plague, but rather an Ebola-like virus. History books have long taught the Black Death, which wiped out a quarter of Europe's population in the Middle Ages, was caused by bubonic plague, spread by infected fleas that lived on black rats. But new research in England suggests the killer was actually an Ebola-like virus transmitted directly from person to person.

What does it mean to be 'alive'? At a basic level, viruses are proteins and genetic material that survive and replicate within their environment, inside another life form. In the absence of their host, viruses are unable to replicate and many are unable to survive for long in the extracellular environment. Therefore, if they cannot survive independently, can they be defined as being 'alive'?

In 1977, a University of Oxford statistician named Richard Peto pointed out a simple yet puzzling biological fact: We humans should have a lot more cancer than mice, but we don't. Dr. Peto's argument was beguilingly simple. Every time a cell divides, there's a small chance it will gain a mutation that speeds its growth. Cells that accumulate several of these mutations may become cancerous. The bigger an animal is, the more cells it has, and the longer an animal lives, the more times its cells divide. We humans undergo about 10,000 times as many cell divisions as mice - and thus should be far more likely to get cancer.