Words about science and hiking
The short answer is no. Although nearly all plants contain antimicrobial compounds, these compounds are present only at low concentrations. Diet certainly influences microbiome composition. But this influence works through the availability of foods that different bacteria prefer. “Food antibiotics” are not a thing. Sloppy health journalists are responsible for the confusion. They often call Read More …
Once in a while you see an idea that is both so brilliant and so obvious that you just have to smack your head and ask “Why has no one thought of this before? Why didn’t I think of it?”. There’s a general consensus that broad-spectrum antibiotics are over-used. The consequences are many and egregious: Read More …
Giant viruses are cool. Their genomes are bigger than those of many bacteria (especially endosymbionts), and they encode many housekeeping functions that are not obviously necessary for the viral lifestyle. They blur boundaries between the neat little categories we use to describe biological entities and thus remind us that those categories are conveniences, not reality. Read More …
I promised that rather than just bitching about crappy phage therapy papers I would offer some thoughts about applications where PT could be successful and have an impact. None of my suggestions will have the drama of PT swooping in to rescue a dying patient for whom doctors had given up all hope. But they Read More …
I’m always glad whenever I see a microbiology theme breach the moat of the NYT and make it on to their opinion page. But I usually end up disappointed once I actually read it. That’s the case with this call to biobank the world’s human gut microbiome. It’s far from the worst idea published this Read More …
I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, microbiomics is the new hotness in biology. It’s so easy now to fish out bacterial nucleic acids and sequence them that of course someone has found something suggestive. But seeing, as the saying goes, is believing. Electron microscopy has been around for about eighty years. Scientists have Read More …
Maryn McKenna – one of the better science journalists out there – is the culprit this time. One might argue in her defense that she is simply relaying the views of a top expert, in this case Kevin Outterson of CARB-X who said “…every antibiotic we count on now will be destroyed…antibiotics will be crushed.” Read More …
Another paper about another phage protein isn’t usually cause for notice. There are lots of phage, and they have lots of proteins, and figuring out what they all do could occupy the efforts of scientists for several millennia. Which is precisely my point. What’s sometimes lost in all the excitement about genomics is that it Read More …
Every new discipline goes through an arc of development. First there are the easy discoveries made possible by new technologies or new understandings. Alfred Hershey, who with Martha Chase helped prove that DNA is the carrier of genetic information, once remarked that scientific happiness is “…to have one experiment that works, and keep doing it all Read More …
There is an abundance of terrible science journalism out there. It usually takes the form of credulous hype that hails incremental advances as game-changing breakthroughs. Articles that are just plain misleading are more rare. And they are especially rare in quality outlets like the New York Times. But rare is not the same as nonexistent. Read More …