Divesting business in China will allow Agenix to focus on its diagnostics projects. [ + ]

Deep Lake, located 5 km from Davis Station in Antarctica, is 3500 years old, 36 m deep and so salty that it remains in liquid form down to a temperature of -20°C. Researchers have now uncovered the secrets of the lake's dominant inhabitants - extremophile microbes from the haloarchaea group. [ + ]

The planet is warming, but Dr Marilyn Ball’s research group has found that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes cold-tolerant plants more susceptible to frost. [ + ]

The sensitivity of next-generation sequencing can be fantastic and also problematic as the system can easily pick up contaminants and lead researchers into false conclusions. [ + ]

Each year the American Chemical Society surveys its members to gain a snapshot of their employment and salaries. This year's survey has found that 2013 is looking much better for chemists and chemical engineers in the US as both employment and salaries are increasing. [ + ]

The first Parkinson's patient has been implanted with Living Cell Technologies' (ASX:LCT) NTCELL regenerative treatment during a phase I trial. [ + ]

Allied Healthcare (ASX:AHZ) said paediatric heart defect patients treated using its CardioCel tissue patch have shown no sign of calcification at the site of repair after up to five years of monitoring. [ + ]

Natasha Harvey will head to ComBio this year with a few years’ worth of results and an exciting new story of a protein called Nedd4 and how it could hold a key to vascular networks and their problems. [ + ]

New Zealand biopharmaceutical company Innate Immunotherapeutics will migrate across the Tasman this month in a bid to get its Phase IIb trial financed and underway in Australia. [ + ]

Investigating why some people seem to resist severe illness has led scientists closer to developing a universal flu vaccine. [ + ]

Many transgenic crops synthesise their own pesticides, usually a toxic protein is synthesised in stems and leaves. Pests attempting to eat the crop are killed while those not attacking the crop are completely unaffected. A pretty nifty solution but now examples are emerging of pests developing resistance to the toxin as a dominant trait. [ + ]

Bioniche (ASX:BNC) has launched a $10m capital raising in Canada to ensure it has funds to continue development of cancer treatment Urocidin while it sells its animal health unit. [ + ]

A phase II trial of Viralytics' (ASX:VLA) Cavatak cancer-targeting virus in late-stage melanoma is still recruiting patients but has already met its primary endpoint. [ + ]

For the first time in Australia, all disciplines involved in brain mapping and therapies will gather at the one conference when the 11th Annual World Congress of the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT Congress) comes to Sydney early next year. [ + ]

A solution to a major problem - arsenic poisoning from natural groundwater - may be within reach thanks to Australian research. [ + ]