Life
Scientists want to build a Noah’s Ark for the human microbiome
Just as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault protects global crop diversity, the Microbiota Vault may one day protect the microbes on and in our bodies.
Microbes
More Stories in Microbes
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LifeMicrobiologists took 12 years to grow a microbe tied to complex life’s origins
Years of lab work resulted in growing a type of archaea that might help scientists understand one of evolution’s giant leaps toward complexity.
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LifeHow bacteria create flower art
Different types of microbes growing in lab dishes can push each other to make floral patterns.
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MicrobesMicrobes slowed by one drug can rapidly develop resistance to another
Hunkering down in a dormant, tolerant state may make it easier for infectious bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics.
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Health & MedicineInjecting a TB vaccine into the blood, not the skin, boosts its effectiveness
Giving a high dose of a tuberculosis vaccine intravenously, instead of under the skin, improved its ability to protect against the disease in monkeys.
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MicrobesAirplane sewage may be helping antibiotic-resistant microbes spread
Along with drug-resistant E. coli, airplane sewage contains a diverse set of genes that let bacteria evade antibiotics.
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ArchaeologyDNA from 5,700-year-old ‘gum’ shows what one ancient woman may have looked like
From chewed birch pitch, scientists recovered DNA from an ancient woman and her mouth microbes and hazelnut and duck DNA from a meal she’d consumed.
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EcosystemsA newly found Atacama Desert soil community survives on sips of fog
Lichens and other fungi and algae unite to form “grit-crust” on the dry soil of Chile’s Atacama Desert and survive on moisture from coastal fog.
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LifeA single-celled protist reacts to threats in surprisingly complex ways
New research validates a century-old experiment that shows single-celled organisms are capable of complex “decision making.”
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LifeAcrobatic choanoflagellates could help explain how multicellularity evolved
A newfound single-celled microbe species forms groups of multiple individual organisms that change shape in response to light.