Microbial Cocktails Are More Than a Gut Feeling
[ad_1] In 2023, our understanding of the microbes that live inside the human gut will lead to new ideas for medicine. Today, we know that gut microbes help develop and…
In the Next Pandemic, Let’s Pay People to Get Vaccinated
[ad_1] It’s a truth universally acknowledged that people like money. If you show them the cash, they’re generally more likely to do what you want, whether that be to stop smoking, work…
The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing
[ad_1] The Covid-19 crisis highlighted certain economic and welfare issues associated with using animals for research. Pandemic-related closures meant that many labs had to halt experiments and euthanize animals. Then the…
Why Do You Get Sick in the Winter? Blame Your Nose
[ad_1] To figure out what exactly was causing this antiviral capability, the scientists then incubated the vesicles with the viruses and imaged them under a microscope. They found that the…
A Drug to Treat Aging May Not Be a Pipe Dream
[ad_1] Life expectancy in the best-performing countries has been increasing by three months per year every year since the early 1800s. Throughout most of human history, you had a roughly…
The Magic of mRNA Will Push Medical Advances for Everyone
[ad_1] mRNA is one of the first molecules of life. While identified six decades ago as the carrier of the blueprint for proteins in living cells, its pharmaceutical potential was…
Get Ready to Play ‘Guess the Viral Variant’
[ad_1] 2020 was the year of Covid lockdowns, 2021 the year of vaccines, and 2022 the year of worldwide reopening. 2023 will be the year of variant prediction. The first…
The Crispr Baby Scientist Is Back. Here’s What He’s Doing Next
[ad_1] Some scientists and ethicists think He deserves a chance to prove that he’s capable of producing scientifically valid and ethically sound work. “His case is publicly known enough that…
It’s Time to Focus on Reproductive Longevity Research
[ad_1] Women’s ovaries age prematurely, at more than twice the rate of other organs. Why that is remains a mystery to scientists, making it one of the most important unanswered…
The UK Is Enduring an Onslaught of Scarlet Fever. Is the US Next?
[ad_1] It’s that backdrop of cases—rising to historic heights with no clear explanation why—that reinforces the alarm over scarlet fever now. The World Health Organization said last week that the health…
A Smart Way to Get Ahead of the Next Flu Surge
[ad_1] Singh says a smart thermometer reading is particularly useful for people who have only mild symptoms and can be spared a visit to the doctor, as well as those…
A Proactive Way to Detect Cancer at Its Earliest Stages
[ad_1] In November 2016, German-American entrepreneur Cyriac Roeding read a profile of Sam Gambhir, a physician and scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine, in a magazine. In the article,…
Why China Is Still Stuck in a Zero-Covid Nightmare
[ad_1] Scott Kennedy, senior adviser with the Washington, DC, think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, visited China in October. “When I was there, it seemed clear to me…
Turns Out Fighting Mosquitoes With Mosquitoes Actually Works
[ad_1] The Aedes aegypti mosquito is not just a nuisance—it’s a known carrier of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika viruses. Distinguished by the black and white stripes on its legs, the…
The $6 Billion Shot at Making New Antibiotics
[ad_1] Dustin Brown, a slight, dark-haired guy who lives in southwest Indiana, is 36, married, and a stay-at-home dad. He never expected to achieve any of those milestones: wife, toddler…
This Gulp of Engineered Bacteria Is Meant to Treat Disease
[ad_1] In the muddy trenches of World War I, thousands of soldiers on both sides fell ill with dysentery, a diarrheal disease often spread by contaminated water. Curiously, one German…
How to Detect a Man-Made Biothreat
[ad_1] But even if the platforms’ accuracy improves, it’s hard to know whether they would be able to detect a completely new organism that scientists have never seen before. Richard…
The Spooky Science of How Undead Spores Reanimate
[ad_1] Here’s a spooky conundrum: Is a spore alive or dead? Gürol Süel, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, wouldn’t blame you if you voted for dead:…
Where Did Omicron Come From? Maybe Its First Host Was Mice
[ad_1] It’s one of the perplexing mysteries of the Covid pandemic: Where did Omicron emerge from, almost one year ago? The fast-moving, extremely contagious variant arrived just after Thanksgiving 2021,…
After Hurricane Ian’s Floods, the Flesh-Eating Bacteria
[ad_1] In September, Hurricane Ian smashed into the southwest coast of Florida, bringing with it a storm surge that reached 13 feet in the coastal town of Fort Myers. Warm,…
The Pandemic Uncovered Ways to Speed Up Science
[ad_1] The pandemic highlighted broad problems in research: that many studies were hyped, error-ridden, or even fraudulent, and that misinformation could spread rapidly. But it also demonstrated what was possible.…
Ebola Is Back—and Vaccines Don’t Work Against It
[ad_1] The candidate that’s farthest along is the single-dose ChAd3 Ebola Sudan vaccine, which is being developed by the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC. By working…
A Bold Effort to Cure HIV—Using Crispr
[ad_1] Dornbusch thinks this strategy will spare patients from serious side effects and “off-target” edits—unintentional cuts elsewhere in the genome that could cause problems such as cancer. The regions targeted…
There’s New Proof Crispr Can Edit Genes Inside Human Bodies
[ad_1] The Crispr components can’t naturally get into cells on their own, so Intellia uses a delivery system called lipid nanoparticles—essentially tiny fat bubbles—to ferry them to the liver. In…
How a ‘Living Drug’ Could Treat Autoimmune Disease
[ad_1] In lupus, a type of autoimmune disease, the body’s natural defense system can’t tell the difference between its own cells and foreign ones, so it mistakenly attacks its own…