Once in a while one comes upon a surprising good-news story. Evidence is flooding in to show our attitudes to our intestinal bacteria are wrong. As I wrote recently, the new view is simply: Bugs “R” Us. We have discovered that our inner microbes care for many of our basic needs. And now new evidence […]
Heads up! A new technology is transforming gene editing. It gets my vote for top science news of last year. It will affect us all more than we can imagine. And the most surprising news may be its inventor. Many things can change the code of DNA. Chemicals, X-rays, ultraviolet, cosmic rays, and mistakes during […]
New science is using genetic analysis to discover more of who we are. We now know most of our cells are bacteria. Until recently we knew little about what they do. Mostly we get rid of them as best we can. This turns out to be a major oops. In a previous post I reviewed […]
How about a multi-billion-dollar good-news story? Science may have found a way to grow more food. It’s a source of nitrogen: bacteria that live in leaves. It may be worth a mint in new ecosystem services, which is a name for what Earth does for us by being there. Here’s the scene you need to […]
Here is a story that can save you money. It might even save your life. If we could see all of the organisms that surround us, we would see microbes, billions of them, many kinds of viruses, bacteria, fungi and archaea. Most of them do nothing to us. Some could help us. Others, if they […]
You likely do not often think about how you are put together on a microscopic scale. You are a conspiracy of cells. Roughly a hundred trillion of them, each one more or less autonomous. Each shapes its environment (you) by talking to co-conspirators. Cells do this instinctively. Their ancestors survived by doing it for millions […]