Microbes
- Health & Medicine
Bird flu can infect cats. What does that mean for their people?
Pet owners can take precautions to avoid H5N1, such as keeping cats indoors and making sure they don’t eat raw meat or milk.
- Health & Medicine
Malnutrition’s effects on the body don’t end when food arrives
Children may struggle with inflammation, a weakened immune system and gut problems. New treatments may repair some damage.
- Health & Medicine
Human body lice could harbor the plague and spread it through biting
Rats and fleas previously got all the blame, but humans’ own parasites could be involved.
- Health & Medicine
Genetic analyses of the bird flu virus unveil its evolution and potential
The H5N1 outbreak in cattle is giving flashbacks to the COVID pandemic. But this time is different.
- Health & Medicine
Cows might host both human and bird flus
Both kinds of influenza viruses may break into cattle cells using receptors similar to those in people, wild birds and poultry.
- Health & Medicine
Traces of bird flu are showing up in cow milk. Here’s what to know
We asked the experts: Should people be worried? Pasteurization and the H5N1 virus’s route to infection suggests risks to people remains low.
- Life
This marine alga is the first known eukaryote to pull nitrogen from air
An alga’s bacterial symbiote has evolved into an organelle that turns atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, making the alga unique among eukaryotes.
- Agriculture
Mixing up root microbes can boost tea’s flavor
Inoculating tea plant roots with nitrogen-metabolizing bacteria enhances synthesis of theanine, an amino acid that gives tea its savoriness.
- Planetary Science
Bacteria that can make humans sick could survive on Mars
Experiments suggest that common illness-causing microbes could not only survive on the Red Planet but also might be able to thrive.
- Microbes
Bird flu viruses may pack tools that help them infect human cells
Bringing along their own ANP32 proteins may give avian flu viruses a jump-start on copying themselves to adapt to and infect humans and other animals.
- Life
How disease-causing microbes load their tiny syringes to prep an attack
Tracking individual proteins in bacterial cells reveals a shuttle-bus system to load tiny syringes that inject our cells with havoc-wreaking proteins.
- Life
Bacteria fossils hold the oldest signs of machinery needed for photosynthesis
Microfossils from Australia suggest that cyanobacteria evolved structures for oxygen-producing photosynthesis by 1.78 billion years ago.
