Microbes
Me and my microbiome
Tina Hesman Saey tries out new services offering clients a peek at their own bacteria.
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
Microscopic menagerie
The microbes dwelling in and on multicellular organisms should be viewed as evolutionarily inseparable from their hosts, some biologists argue.
Reviews & Previews
Science Visualized
Microbes
Gut bacteria respect diets, not borders
Malawian and Guahibo gut microbiomes resembled those of herbivorous mammals, while American guts were more similar to carnivores’.
Notebook
Plants
Kleptoplast
A cellular part such as a light-harvesting chloroplast that an organism takes from algae it has eaten.
Features
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The vast virome
When it comes to the microbiome, bacteria get all the press. But virologists are starting to realize that their subjects also do a lot more than make people sick.
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Mother lode
Certain sugar molecules in human breast milk do more to foster beneficial microbes, and banish harmful ones, than they do to nourish newborns.
More Stories from the January 11, 2014 issue
- Health & Medicine
Thalidomide treats Crohn’s disease
Study of children with the inflammatory bowel disorder raises possibility of new use for tainted drug.
- Neuroscience
Fear can be inherited
Parents’ and even grandparents’ experiences echo in offspring, a study of mice finds.
- Animals
Insect form of sexual frustration takes toll
Smelling female fruit flies but not mating with them can actually shorten males’ lives.
- Life
To cook up life, just add citrate
The theory that RNA spawned the first organisms gets a boost from a common compound.
- Planetary Science
Moon wears dusty cloak
Old data from Apollo missions stir up debate about speed of lunar dust accumulation.
- Genetics
Evolution of venom, binge eating seen in snake DNA
Python and cobra genes evolved quickly to enable hunting strategies.
- Animals
How the ghost shark lost its stomach
The lack of a digestive organ in fish and other animals is linked to genetics.
- Health & Medicine
Cell counts provide a read on ovarian cancer
New technology might discern which tumors are most dangerous and help guide treatment.
- Life
Autism may have link to chemicals made by gut microbes
Beneficial bacteria improved abnormal behaviors in mice with altered intestines.
- Astronomy
Sun’s rotation driven by enormous plasma flows
Long-lasting plasma flows 15 times the diameter of Earth transport heat from the sun’s depths to its surface, helping explain solar rotation.
- Math
Twin primes and prime bunches in mathematicians’ crosshairs
For second time this year, a mathematician makes a major advance toward proving a long-standing conjecture.
- Astronomy
Saturn’s six-sided cloud pattern gets a close look
New images show particles in the planet’s hexagonally shaped jet stream.
- Humans
Fossils reveal a strong-armed, dead-end hominid
Olduvai Gorge finds suggest extinct hominid both walked and hung out in trees.
- Animals
Flightless birds face extinction
New Zealand’s flightless birds have limped through the last few decades, but conservation efforts have had some success.
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