Microbiology & Immunology

Jan

2023

What Is Smallpox?

Verywell Health, January 26, 2023.

Smallpox is a deadly infectious disease caused by a virus. It hasn’t caused an infection in the wild since the 1970s. No one has had smallpox in the United States since 1949. The last death from smallpox was in the United Kingdom in 1978.

Though you’re not likely to encounter smallpox in the wild, it still exists in two labs. These two labs are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States and the Vector Institute in Russia. These samples are kept to test drugs and conduct other experiments. Read More >

Jan

2023

What Is Toxoplasmosis?

Verywell Health, January 24, 2023.

Toxoplasmosis is a disease caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. This parasite is a tiny single-celled organism called a protozoan. People can acquire it from undercooked meat and exposure to cat feces.

In healthy individuals, this infection doesn’t usually do lasting damage and often shows no symptoms. But, pregnant people, their fetuses, and people with a weakened immune system are at risk of more dangerous infections. Read More >

May

2022

Hugh McDevitt, whose work unraveled genetic controls of immune system, dies at 91

Stanford Medicine, May 20 2022.

Hugh McDevitt, MD, a professor emeritus of microbiology and immunology at the Stanford School of Medicine who unraveled the genetic controls of the immune system, died April 28 in Stanford, California, from pneumonia and sepsis. He was 91.

McDevitt was a dynamic leader and a pillar of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, according to his colleagues, who added that he was generous with his time and intellect. He was a smart and effective negotiator who fought for his department, said GreteSønderstrup, his wife of 38 years and a senior research scientist in the department. Read More >

Jan

2011

Humans Now Look to Well-Known Worm for Virus Advice

LiveScience, January 25 2011.

The worms in microbiologist Marie-Anne Felix’s lab are feeling a little under the weather. It seems they’ve picked up a stomach virus. The virus is actually the first ever found to infect the nematode C. elegans, a carefully studied worm that scientists use for basic research.

Studying the sick worms will teach researchers how viruses interact with their hosts — which, in some cases such as HIV and influenza, are humans. Read More >

Jan

2011

River Blindness Parasite Relies on Bacteria to Fool Host

LiveScience, January 19 2011.

Even in the strange world of symbiosis, in which a pair of organisms can depend on each other to live, this one’s a whopper: Bacteria living inside a parasitic worm help create a cloak, shielding the worm from the immune system of its hosts (which, in this case, turn out to be us).

The worm in question is Onchocerca volvus, a parasitic nematode that causes river blindness. The worm is transmitted to humans by blackfly bites, and it has infected about 18 million people, most of them in Africa. It causes an itchy rash, nodules and, in some 270,000 cases, blindness. Read More >

Jan

2011

To Overcome Obesity, Trust Your Gut (Bacteria)

LiveScience, January 18 2011.

Bacteria living in our intestines may be a key to fighting obesity. Now, researchers have found one protein on the surface of white blood cells that plays an important role in controlling these bacteria.

It may sound disgusting and unsanitary, but the guts of mammals are teeming with bacteria. These gut-bugs help us digest food, provide us with nutrients and keep harmful bacteria away — actually playing an integral part in our health. Read More >

Nov

2010

Sexy Black Truffle Porn: Not as Exciting as You Hoped

Discover, November 1 2010.

Scientists are starting to unravel the sex secrets of the black truffle, that rare and expensive delicacy, in hopes of making its cultivation easier. It turns out the fungus has two different sex-like states, and both must be present to reproduce. One truffle can only be one of the sexes, and while that may not sound odd to us humans, it’s very out of place in the fungus world. Fungi are usually able to reproduce asexually and self-fertilize, lead author of the paper Francesco Paolocci told The Telegraph:

“It was long assumed that the truffle was like other fungi, but we know now that it needs the help of a partner. It has members of two different sexualities, a bit like male and female.” Read More >

Oct

2010

How & Why to Write a Bacterial Opera for the Ig Nobel Awards

Discover, October 12 2010.

Marc Abrahams enjoys writing operas, but until a few years ago had never even been to one. Abrahams is the editor and co-creator of the Annals of Improbable Research, the science humor magazine that gave birth to the Ig Nobel awards, a marvelous celebration of quirky but intelligent scientific breakthroughs.

For the last 15 years Abrahams has been tasked with writing a scientific opera for the ceremony. This year’s theme was bacteria, so naturally Abrahams wrote an opera about the bacteria living on a woman’s tooth, and their (eventually tragic) efforts to escape. The video of this year’s Ig Nobel ceremony is below (skip to the following times to view the four acts of the bacterial opera: Act I at 54:30, Act II at 1:07:20, Act III at 1:29:10, and Act IV at 1:52:00). Discoblog talked with Abrahams to get the scoop on the bacterial-opera-writing business. Read More >

Sep

2010

Video: Fast plants

The Scientist, September 9 2010.

Marvels of evolution and adaptation, plants and fungi have developed myriad methods of spreading their seeds or spores. Some of these dispersal events happen with blinding speed, and researchers are exploring these dramatic behaviors in the world’s fastest plants and fungi using ultra-high speed video cameras. Feast your eyes on our smorgasbord of fast-moving, spore-shooting, seed-spreading organisms. Read More >

Jun

2010

Immunology 2.0: brain, gut?

The Scientist (blog), June 17, 2010.

In order to progress, should the field of immunology look to other organ systems such as the brain and gut, or should it focus its efforts on all that remains unknown about the immune system itself?

“The major advancements in any field come when branches of science collide,” said Kevin Tracey, an immunologist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, one of the researchers asked to write their opinion about the future of immunology for the tenth-anniversary issue of Nature Immunology.

Tracey’s interests lie in the intersection of neurophysiology and immunology, which took the spotlight after the discovery that action potentials of the vagus nerve regulate the release of cytokines from the spleen and other organs. “That’s just the beginning. I think there is going to be a lot of nerves and a lot of circuits that control the immune system,” Tracey told The Scientist. Read More >