All fat is not not created equal: In the past couple years researchers have come to realize that there's good fat and bad fat, and a study in this week's Nature points to a biological reason for this difference.

White fat, the main type of fat in the body, develops from fat precursor cells and stores excess energy. Brown fat, however, burns energy rather than storing it, and the new findings suggest it originates from muscle precursor cells. That means that "brown fat is one gene away from... Click to continue

New insights into how HIV becomes latent in host cells could lead the way to improved retroviral therapy, according to a report in the August issue of Cell Host and Microbe.

Once HIV infection occurs, the virus can integrate into actively transcribed host genes, where it becomes latent. These reservoirs of latent HIV can reactivate and continue to spread the disease after ... Click to continue