Microbes
- Agriculture
How does a crop’s environment shape a food’s smell and taste?
Scientific explorations of terroir — the soil, climate and orientation in which crops grow — hint at influences on flavors and aromas.
- Microbes
If bacteria band together, they can survive for years in space
Tiny clumps of bacteria can survive at least three years in outer space, raising the prospect of interplanetary travel by microbial life.
- Microbes
Scientists stumbled across the first known manganese-fueled bacteria
A jar left soaking in an office sink helped scientists answer a century-old question of whether bacteria can use manganese for energy.
- 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.
- Animals
Earthy funk lures tiny creatures to eat and spread bacterial spores
Genes that cue spore growth also kick up a scent that draws in springtails.
- Life
Algae use flagella to trot, gallop and move with gaits all their own
Single-celled microalgae, with no brains, can coordinate their “limbs” into a trot or fancier gait.
- Life
Microbiologists 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.
- Life
How bacteria create flower art
Different types of microbes growing in lab dishes can push each other to make floral patterns.
- Microbes
Microbes 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.
- Health & Medicine
Injecting 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.
- Microbes
Airplane 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.
- Archaeology
DNA 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.
