Research published today in Nature Microbiology has identified 54,118 species of virus living in the human gut – 92 percent of which were previously unknown. But as we and our colleagues from the Joint Genome Institute and Stanford University in California found, the great majority of these were bacteriophages, or “phages” for short. These viruses
Life currently has a sample size of just one. Without an alien or two to expand the boundaries of biology, Earth’s evolutionary history sets the limits on whether we can expect other planets to spawn complex critters like, well, us. Given many life forms owe a great debt to the oxygen in our atmosphere,
Dinosaur species large and small made the Arctic their year-round home and probably developed wintering strategies like hibernation or growing insulating feathers, according to a new study. The paper, published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, is the result of more than a decade’s worth of painstaking fossil excavations, and puts to rest the
Through evolution, we’ve gained an entire arsenal for fighting off potentially harmful microbes of all sorts. — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com Source link Mark KleinmanMark Kleinman is city editor, breaking major business stories and analysing what they mean for the financial sector. He has revealed some of the biggest stories in the city in the
The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on the importance of having a well-functioning immune system. — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com Source link Mark KleinmanMark Kleinman is city editor, breaking major business stories and analysing what they mean for the financial sector. He has revealed some of the biggest stories in the city in the past
More than 120,000 years ago in the Levant, Homo sapiens lived side-by-side with a type of ancient human we didn’t know about – until now. That’s according to new fossil evidence of this human uncovered by archaeologists – fragments of ancient skull and jaw bones, and teeth, which seem to fit both Neanderthal and Homo
