Microbiology

Coronavirus, Now In Its 21,000th Year Of Causing Pandemics

Coronavirus may only have been identified as distinct from the common cold in the 1960s, and it may have only had two pandemics (SARS and MERS) in this century prior to COVID-19, but there is a reason it is called COVID-19 and not just COVID. There have be ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 2 2021 - 1:21pm

Anthrax Just Killed 3 Cheetahs And A Zebra In The Namib Desert

In 2019, three free-ranging cheetahs in the Namib Desert died within 24 hours of each other. Scholars set out to determine why. On October 5th 2019, the carcass of a GPS-collared cheetah in the Namib desert was found dead from the air. After they went in o ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 27 2021 - 4:05pm

Do Mennonite Kids Have Fewer Allergies? If So, Pathogens In Breast Milk May Be Why

It used to be that allergies were somewhat rare but if you go to an allergist today, you are almost certain to be declared allergic, or at least sensitive, to something. How much of that is actual biological change versus how much is that the country that ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 11 2021 - 6:40am

Your Pet Cat Is Spreading The Toxoplasma Parasite To Wildlife

A recent paper examined 45,079 cases of toxoplasmosis in wild mammals—a disease that has been linked to nervous system disorders, cancers and other debilitating chronic conditions—using data from 202 global studies and found wildlife living near dense urb ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 11 2021 - 4:20pm

How Antibodies Navigate Pathogen Surfaces

A new mode of how antibodies navigate the surface of pathogens like coronaviruses compares the migration of these pathogen hunters to the random movements of a child on stepping stones. Antibodies are often thought of as Y-shaped proteins but perhaps a mor ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 24 2022 - 7:54pm

Would More Vegetarian Food Have Prevented COVID-19? Philosophers Do Science, Hilarity Ensues

Animals can cause diseases in humans. That won't surprise you. What may surprise you is to read that these diseases can be prevented by eating less meat.  ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Mar 27 2022 - 12:44am

Kyrgyzstan Was Ground Zero For The 14th Century Black Plague

In 1347, the Bubonic or Black Plague first entered the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from the territories of the Golden Horde in the Black Sea. The disease tore through Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, in some cases claiming ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 16 2022 - 10:08am

Lost Hammer And A Blueprint For Life On Mars

Some areas on Mars are extremely salty, very cold, and have only a hint of oxygen- just like Earth. Yet even in the permafrost of Lost Hammer Spring in the Nunavut territory of Canada’s High Arctic, researchers have found microbes that have never been iden ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 22 2022 - 9:33am

Odin Tubulin May Be A Missing Link Beween Single-Celled Organisms And Humans

Eukaryogenesis is the point at which animal and plant cells separate from bacteria. In animal and plant cells, tubulin forms microtubules which are critical to their internal organization, because they support the cell, giving it structure, shape, and inte ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 28 2022 - 10:35am

How The COVID-19 Omicron Subvariant BA.5 Became A Deadly Master Of Disguise

The omicron subvariant known as BA.5 was first detected in South Africa in February 2022 and spread rapidly throughout the world. As of the second week of July 2022, BA.5 constituted nearly 80% of COVID-19 variants in the United States. ...

Article - The Conversation - Jul 26 2022 - 10:19am