Microbiology

We haven't had a widespread flu problem since 2018. Yet despite it only being 2020, some insist this year's coronavirus must be the product of government scientists, though some also suggest it was the result of 5G cellular service in Wuhan. Then China claimed it might be the U.S. What is the truth? The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan is the product of natural evolution, finds an analysis of genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses published today. If a government were going to create something, it wouldn't be this. Though the virus is easy…

Once coronavirus made its way into the news cycle, it was only a matter of time before aromatherapy, supplements, miracle food sellers, or some business with "holistic" in its name claimed to treat, prevent, or cure it. And that has happened, to an extent FDA sent warning letters to GuruNanda LLC, Herbal Amy LLC, Quinessence Aromatherapy Ltd., The Jim Bakker Show, Vital Silver, Vivify Holistic Clinic, and Xephyr(dba N-Ergetics) telling those companies to stop claiming their teas, essential oils, tinctures and colloidal silver can stop any virus, much less COVID-19. There are no drugs or…

While 2020 looked to be another year when corporate media journalists would provide the same old Product X "linked to" Disease Y "a new study finds" articles as they have for the entire century, the latest coronavirus, COV-19, has saved us from all that. While in the past people were willing to pretend concern about what diseases the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences was willing to correlate to useful products on a spreadsheet, those days are gone. Chemophobia is a luxury for the idle rich, much like organic food or the anti-vaccine movement. When people do have something to…

Christmas and mistletoe: have you ever simply asked yourself … why? I have studied plant parasites like mistletoe for almost ten years, and I’m here to tell you that the answer is absolutely fascinating. In Norse mythology, Baldur (younger brother to magic-hammer-wielding Thor), was the subject of a premonition from his mother Frigg, who could see the future: he would be killed. Frigg tackled this head on, extracting an oath from every object on Earth, to avoid harming her son. This was agreeable to all … except mistletoe, which was overlooked. Loki, the god of mischief, exploited this…

Zombies have lurched to the center of Halloween culture, with costumes proliferating as fast as the monsters themselves. This year, you can dress as a zombie prom queen, a zombie doctor – even a zombie rabbit or banana. The rise of the living dead, though, has a surprising link to another recurring October visitor: the influenza virus. One hundred years ago, 1919 saw the end of one of the worst plagues in human history: the deadly 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. The pandemic was a true horror show, with 50-100 million people dying and millions more infected. The United States alone lost more…

String Theory, stem cells, epigenetics, antioxidants, they've all been important basic research that got exaggerated beyond recognition, which got media attention, which got people rushing into the fields and led to even more papers making increasingly cosmic claims until the public stopped believing any of the hype, which is where they should have been all along. Make way for the microbiome. What was once a goofy yogurt claim - as if your trillions of bacteria were going to be impacted by a half cup of overpriced dairy goop - became mainstream supplement gold. Though someone dying from a…

Cardiac surgeon and television personality Dr. Oz was on The Today Show this week talking about cold remedies, and as usual he was a mix of evidence and shamanism. It's easy for the pro-science community to know when he's talking about magic potions and when he has a modicum of science. It's easy to be fooled. When Science 2.0 began, I quickly learned cancer was going to be cured, antioxidants and red wine would make us live forever, and NASA was about to find life on other planets. Then six months later we had university and government writing those same press releases all over again and…

Microbial communities living in deep aquatic sediments have adapted to survive on really old food, according to a new study. Learning how these microorganisms function on old, poor-quality food at a very slow pace could have future uses in biomedical applications such as a technology that could slow down cell metabolism in human organs so they can survive longer during a transplant process. To better understand how these microorganisms access this food, researchers tested different types of peptidases—digestive enzymes that work to degrade proteins—in sediment cores from the White Oak River…

Raw dairy is diarrhea and vomiting waiting to happen, there is a reason heat pasteurization is credited with saving a billion lives, but a company in Australia has used a legal loophole to milk raw believers into buying their un-pasteurized product. They can do a wink-wink at the raw milk market while noting it can stay on shelves for 6 weeks because it's not raw, it's still processed.  It is just a different process than heat pasteurization. Instead of embracing the French scientist Louis Pasteur, they embrace the French scientist Blaise Pascal, who did fundamental work on fluid flow…

People are rushing to buy supplements because of (correct) claims that the microbiome is important. While the science on helpful microbes is correct it does not mean yogurt or any other food - even organic, try as their trade groups try to claim that - is helping any more than that redox science in mitochondria means you should spend your money on antioxidant supplements. There is no compelling evidence any of that has an impact and if it did, that it would be beneficial. Yet the microbiome fad has meant some researchers are scrambling to test claims, some want to jump on the bandwagon, and…