The types of microbes residing in your gut can affect your mental and physical health. Home microbiome tests promise to help consumers improve the composition of their gut microbes.
Flooding from hurricanes like Irma in Florida can overwhelm sewer systems and spread pathogens in other ways.
Brian Blanco/Getty Images
It’s not just mosquitos. Flooding, extreme heat and other climate-related hazards are bringing people into contact with pathogens more often, and affecting people’s ability to fight off disease.
Without obvious signs of contamination like the mold in this jam, consumers use expiration dates to decide whether to keep or throw away food.
Ralf Geithe via iStock/Getty Images
Current expiration date system leads to confused consumers and wasted food.
Sepsis begins with infection by bacteria or a virus. This panoramic ilustration inside a blood vessel shows rod-shaped bacteria, red blood cells and immune cells called leukocytes.
Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Sepsis onset can be difficult to recognize, in part because its symptoms can mimic those of many other conditions. A treatment delay of even a few hours can make the difference between life and death.
Limpets had the highest concentrations of chemical compounds compared to other marine organisms studied.
A. Mertens/Shutterstock
A billion-year-old ‘hydrogen economy’ in the frozen soil of Antarctica provides bacteria with energy, water, and the carbon that makes up their bodies.
Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria and play a potential role in the evolution of life.
NANOCLUSTERING/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Ivan Erill, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Viruses have gotten a bad rap for the many illnesses and pandemics they’ve caused. But viruses are also genetic innovators – and possibly the pioneers of using DNA as the genetic blueprint of life.
People who lost weight had higher levels of certain beneficial bacteria in their gut.
New Africa/ Shutterstock
Wes Mountain, The Conversation e Chynthia Wijaya-Kovac, The Conversation
Watch Lotti Tajouri explain how mobile phones are vectors for bacteria and viruses, why this is a problem in our hospitals, and how you can sanitise your phone to help stop the spread of disease.
For centuries, sailors have told tales of milky seas – huge swaths of ocean glowing on dark nights, seen in blue in this false–color satellite image.
Steven D. Miller/NOAA
When conditions are just right in some parts of the Indian Ocean, a type of bacteria will multiply and start to glow. Satellites are helping scientists study these milky seas for the first time.
In late summer the snow banks on these mountains turn pink, known as “watermelon snow”, thanks to blooming extremophiles.
Bryant Olsen/Flickr
How do organisms survive extreme conditions – and how can their adaptations help us develop better technology?
Effective delivery of PNA therapies may offer a way to treat multidrug-resistant infections and other diseases.
sorbetto/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images
Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest public health threats in the world. New research, however, may have found a way to keep up with rapidly evolving bacteria.
Crystal jellyfish contain glowing proteins that scientists repurpose for an endless array of studies.
Weili Li/Moment via Getty Images
Three pioneering technologies have forever altered how researchers do their work and promise to revolutionize medicine, from correcting genetic disorders to treating degenerative brain diseases.