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Magazine
In the May 11 & 25 SN: High-tech cricket farming, AI learns from Minecraft, looking for lithium, a new hominid species is named, signs of life in dead pig brains, Cherokee cave texts decoded, water molecules on the moon and more.
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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...
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News
Eating a lot of fiber could improve some cancer treatments
03/01/2019 - 12:32 Microbiology, Cancer, Immune ScienceWhat you eat can affect how well immune therapies work against cancer. High-fiber diets may change gut microbes and make these therapies more effective, but taking probiotics could do the opposite.
Researchers looked at people with melanoma skin cancer who were getting a kind of immune therapy called PD-1 blockade or checkpoint inhibition (SN: 10/27/18, p. 16). Those who ate a high-fiber...
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Feature
A gut-brain link for Parkinson’s gets a closer look
12/07/2018 - 09:00 Health, Neuroscience, MicrobiologyMartha Carlin married the love of her life in 1995. She and John Carlin had dated briefly in college in Kentucky, then lost touch until a chance meeting years later at a Dallas pub. They wed soon after and had two children. John worked as an entrepreneur and stay-at-home dad. In his free time, he ran marathons.
Almost eight years into their marriage, the pinky finger on John’s right hand...
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Reviews & Previews
Two new books explore the science and history of the 1918 flu pandemic
12/07/2018 - 07:00 Health, History of Science, MicrobiologyThe U.S.S. Leviathan set sail from Hoboken, N.J., on September 29, 1918, carrying roughly 10,000 troops and 2,000 crewmen. The ship, bound for the battlefields in France, had been at sea less than 24 hours when the first passengers fell ill. By the end of the day, 700 people had developed signs of the flu.
The medical staff tried to separate the sick from the healthy, but that soon...
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News
A 5,000-year-old mass grave harbors the oldest plague bacteria ever found
12/06/2018 - 11:00 Genetics, Anthropology, MicrobiologyA long-dead Scandinavian woman has yielded bacterial DNA showing that she contracted the earliest known case of the plague in humans.
DNA extracted from the woman’s teeth comes from a newly identified ancient strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, the oldest ever found. The woman’s bones, which date from 5,040 to 4,867 years ago, were found nearly 20 years ago in a...
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News
An acid found in soil may make a disease killing deer less infectious
11/30/2018 - 06:00 Toxicology, Animals, MicrobiologyAn acid found in rich humus soil breaks down the misfolded brain proteins — called prions — that cause chronic wasting disease.
When concentrations of humic acid similar to those found in soils were applied to diseased elk brain tissue, chemical signatures of the infectious prions were nearly erased, researchers report online November 29 in PLOS Pathogens. That suggests that the acid...
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News in Brief
Gut bacteria may guard against diabetes that comes with aging
11/19/2018 - 10:55 Microbiology, Physiology, Immune ScienceLosing one variety of gut bacteria may lead to type 2 diabetes as people age.
Old mice have less Akkermansia muciniphila bacteria than young mice do, researchers report November 14 in Science Translational Medicine. That loss triggers inflammation, which eventually leads cells to ignore signals from the hormone insulin. Such disregard for insulin’s message to take in glucose is known as...