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Magazine
In the June 22 SN: New approaches in Lyme disease diagnostics, seafood shells get a second life, illegal emissions traced to China, Pluto’s icy volcano, how to walk like a sauropod, a World War II uranium cube mystery and more.
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News in Brief
These fungi drug cicadas with psilocybin or amphetamine to make them mate nonstop
06/25/2019 - 14:42 Microbiology, AnimalsSAN FRANCISCO — A cicada-infecting fungus produces drugs that make the insects literally mate their butts off.
Massospora fungi make either a drug found in hallucinogenic mushrooms or an amphetamine found in khat leaves, plant pathologist Matthew Kasson of West Virginia University in Morgantown reported June 22 at the ASM Microbe 2019 meeting.
The fungi may use psilocybin, which...
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News in Brief
Dried Earth microbes could grow on Mars with just a little humidity
06/25/2019 - 06:00 MicrobiologySAN FRANCISCO — Salt-loving microbes can dry out and come back to life with just a little humidity, researchers have demonstrated for the first time.
Scientists have suspected that microbes in arid places may get their moisture from humidity alone, but no one has shown that dried-out microbes can revive with water sucked from the air. Dessicated Halomonas bacteria from Washington’s Hot...
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News
Gut microbes might help elite athletes boost their physical performance
06/24/2019 - 11:00 Microbes, Biomedicine, MicrobiologyOne difference between elite athletes and the rest of us might be in what hangs out in their guts.
Microbes that flourished in the guts of some runners after a marathon boosted the time that lab mice ran on a treadmill, researchers report June 24 in Nature Medicine. These particular microbes seem to take lactate, pumped out by muscles during exercise, and turn it into a compound that may...
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News
Norovirus close-ups might help fight stomach flu
06/17/2019 - 10:00 Microbiology, Microbes, HealthKnowing your enemy is an important principle of competition, and scientists may just have become more familiar with one nasty stomach virus.
Closeup looks at several strains of norovirus reveal that the vomit- and diarrhea-inducing virus can come in a variety of sizes, researchers report online June 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Knobs studding the virus’s...
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News
Gut bacteria may change the way many drugs work in the body
06/03/2019 - 11:00 Microbiology, Biomedicine, HealthPrescribing the best medication may require going with a patient’s gut — or at least, the bacteria that live there.
Anecdotal reports have revealed that some gut-dwelling microbes chemically alter oral medications, affecting how well those drugs work (SN Online: 7/19/13). But the scope of this problem has remained unclear. Now, a sweeping survey of these interactions suggests that gut...
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News
How bacteria nearly killed by antibiotics can recover — and gain resistance
05/28/2019 - 06:00 Microbiology, Genetics, BiomedicineMostly dead bacteria can sometimes be resurrected as antibiotic-resistant cells.
A protein that pumps toxic chemicals out of E. coli bacterial cells can buy time for even nearly dead microbes to become antibiotic resistant. The protein, known as the AcrAB-TolC multidrug efflux pump, doesn’t work well enough to defeat antibiotics on its own. But it can move enough antibiotic molecules out...
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News
A gut bacteria transplant may not help you lose weight
05/09/2019 - 00:05 Microbiology, Health, Clinical TrialsChanging your gut microbes may not help you lose belly fat.
In a preliminary study, obese people got either capsules containing gut microbes from a lean person or placebo pills. Microbes from the lean donor took hold in the guts of the obese recipients. But early results suggest that the bacteria didn’t change the volunteers’ weight or levels of a hormone that helps signal fullness,...
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50 years ago, scientists were unlocking the secrets of bacteria-infecting viruses
Unusual virus is valuable tool —04/05/2019 - 06:00 MicrobiologyViruses, which cannot reproduce on their own, infect cells and usurp their genetic machinery for use in making new viruses.... But just how viruses use the cell machinery is unknown.… Some answers may come from work with an unusual virus, called M13, that has a particularly compatible relationship with ... [E. coli] bacteria. — Science News, April 5...
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Reviews & Previews
In ‘The Perfect Predator,’ viruses vanquish a deadly superbug
04/01/2019 - 09:00 Health, Microbiology, BiomedicineThe Perfect PredatorSteffanie Strathdee and Thomas PattersonHachette Books, $28
Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, Thomas Patterson, went to Egypt in 2015 expecting to come home with some photos and souvenirs. Instead, Patterson was hit with his own version of the 10 plagues.
At first, doctors in Egypt thought Patterson had pancreatitis. But his health...
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News
How helpful gut microbes send signals that they are friends, not foes
03/07/2019 - 14:26 Cells, Immune Science, MicrobiologySome gut bacteria really put the hooks into their host — but in a good way. Observations in mice show that certain filamentous microbes use a hooklike appendage to send messages that researchers believe are aimed at preventing immune cells from attacking the microbes.
The finding, reported in the March 8 Science, could help explain how an immune system distinguishes friendly gut bacteria...