Erin Garcia de Jesús

Staff Writer

Erin Garcia de Jesús is a staff writer at Science News. She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington, where she studied virus/host co-evolution. After deciding science as a whole was too fascinating to spend a career studying one topic, she went on to earn a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writing has appeared in Nature News, Science, Eos, Smithsonian Voices and more, and she was the winter 2019 science writing intern at Science News.

All Stories by Erin Garcia de Jesús

  1. Health & Medicine

    A man in Hong Kong is the first confirmed case of coronavirus reinfection

    During a 33-year-old man’s first round with the virus, he had symptoms, but not the second time — a hint his immune system protected him from disease.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Dust can spread influenza among guinea pigs, raising coronavirus questions

    In three out of 12 guinea pig pairs, an animal coated in influenza virus, but immune to infection, spread the virus to another rodent through dust.

  3. Plants

    New Guinea has more known plant species than any island in the world

    In the first verified count of plants on New Guinea, a team of 99 botany experts identified more than 13,600 species.

  4. Health & Medicine

    How two coronavirus drugs for cats might help humans fight COVID-19

    Scientists are exploring if drugs for a disease caused by a coronavirus that infects only cats might help also people infected with the coronavirus.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Five big questions about when and how to open schools amid COVID-19

    Researchers weigh in on how to get children back into classrooms in a low-risk way.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Coronavirus outbreak at a Georgia overnight camp infected over 200 kids and staff

    A report documenting a COVID-19 outbreak in Georgia hints that children might play a key role in spreading the virus.

  7. Animals

    An immune system quirk may help anglerfish fuse with mates during sex

    Deep-sea anglerfish that fuse to mate lack genes involved in the body’s response against pathogens or foreign tissue.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Close relatives of the coronavirus may have been in bats for decades

    The coronavirus lineage that gave rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating in bats for around 40 to 70 years, a study suggests.

  9. Archaeology

    Ancient DNA suggests Vikings may have been plagued by smallpox

    Viral genetic material from human remains provides direct evidence that smallpox infected people dating back to the year 603.

  10. Animals

    How some superblack fish disappear into the darkness of the deep sea

    Some fish that live in the ocean’s depths are superblack as a result of a special layer of light-absorbing structures in the skin.

  11. Health & Medicine

    4 reasons not to worry about that ‘new’ swine flu in the news

    Researchers identified a pig influenza virus that shares features with one that sparked the 2009 pandemic — that doesn’t mean another one is imminent.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Here’s what we’ve learned in six months of COVID-19 — and what we still don’t know

    Six months into the new coronavirus pandemic, researchers have raced to uncover crucial information about SARS-CoV-2. But much is still unknown.