The entire family of coronaviruses is equipped with multiple methods of evading the human immune system, and two new studies have taken a deep dive into how these viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, leverage highly specialized enzymes that keep human immune forces at bay.

Sensory cells in the vagus nerve can detect and locate food in the esophagus. Their signals help transport the food onward to the stomach. Signal failure leads to swallowing disorders, say a team led by Carmen Birchmeier at the Max Delbrück Center. They have published their findings in Neuron.

Five subtypes of heart failure that could potentially be used to predict future risk for individual patients have been identified in a new study led by UCL researchers.

A team of psychiatrists from Duke University and Yale University has found what they describe as a causal association between evening social media use and delayed sleep. In their study, reported in the journal Sleep Medicine, the group tracked social media use and delayed sleeping patterns for 44,000 Reddit users.

A new method than enables researchers to dial up or tone down the amount of a certain metastatic protein inhibitor (BACH1) within a cell could provide a new path in cancer research that reassesses the effectiveness of protein inhibitors to treat disease. Led by a team of Stony Brook University scientists, the research involves adjusting the levels of BACH1 using a gene circuit placed into human breast metastatic cells. Their findings are published in Nature Chemical Biology.