Author: Lori Jia

A New Approach to Spotting Tumors: Look for Their Microbes

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, September 29, 2022

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Look up an image of a tumor on Google, and you’ll probably end up with a brightly colored cluster of cancer cells on a drab background of healthy tissue. But for Lian Narunsky Haziza, a cancer biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, the picture looks very different. A tumor may also contain millions of microbes, representing dozens of species.

“I think this is an ecosystem,” she said. “It means the cancer cells are not alone.”

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Why Omicron Might Stick Around

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, September 22, 2022

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Where is Pi?

Last year, the World Health Organization began assigning Greek letters to worrying new variants of the coronavirus. The organization started with Alpha and swiftly worked its way through the Greek alphabet in the months that followed. When Omicron arrived in November, it was the 13th named variant in less than a year.

But 10 months have passed since Omicron’s debut, and the next letter in line, Pi, has yet to arrive.

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What Makes Your Brain Different From a Neanderthal’s?

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The New York Times, September 8, 2022

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Scientists have discovered a glitch in our DNA that may have helped set the minds of our ancestors apart from those of Neanderthals and other extinct relatives.

The mutation, which arose in the past few hundred thousand years, spurs the development of more neurons in the part of the brain that we use for our most complex forms of thought, according to a new study published in Science on Thursday.

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Scientists Have Made a Human Microbiome From Scratch

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The New York Times, September 6, 2022

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Our bodies are home to hundreds or thousands of species of microbes — nobody is sure quite how many. That’s just one of many mysteries about the so-called human microbiome.

Our inner ecosystem fends off pathogens, helps digest food and may even influence behavior. But scientists have yet to figure out exactly which microbes do what or how. Many studies suggest that many species have to work together to do each of the microbiome’s jobs.

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How the Search for Covid-19 Treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, January 30, 2021

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Nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, as thousands of patients are dying every day in the United States and widespread vaccination is still months away, doctors have precious few drugs to fight the virus.

A handful of therapies — remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies and the steroid dexamethasone — have improved the care of Covid patients, putting doctors in a better position than they were when the virus surged last spring. But these drugs are not cure-alls and they’re not for everyone, and efforts to repurpose other drugs, or discover new ones, have not had much success.

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