Some of the scenes in Mark Honigsbaum’s “The Pandemic Century” were so vivid they had me drafting movie treatments in my head. Midway through the book, I was picturing a doctor climbing the front steps of a rowhouse in Annapolis, Md., in the winter of 1930. His knock on the door goes unanswered, so he makes his way inside. An auto mechanic is sprawled in a living room chair, muttering in a feverish sleep. His wife wanders in from the bedroom, shouting gibberish. From the kitchen, her mother emerges unsteadily, a rattling cough rising up from deep in her lungs.

Continue reading “Ebola, H.I.V., Spanish Flu, SARS — the 20th Century’s Deadliest Hits” →

Scientists reported on Wednesday that they have discovered the oldest known fossils of fungi, a finding that may reshape our understanding of how life first arrived on land from the oceans.

Fungi are the invisible giants of the natural world, even if most people are only dimly aware of them as toadstools along a hiking trail, or mushrooms sprinkled across a pizza.

Scientists have identified about 120,000 species of fungi so far, but  estimate there are as many as 3.3 million species in all. By comparison, all living mammals comprise fewer than 6,400 species.

Continue reading “A Billion-Year-Old Fungus May Hold Clues to Life’s Arrival on Land” →

Scientists have created a living organism whose DNA is entirely human-made — perhaps a new form of life, experts said, and a milestone in the field of synthetic biology.

Researchers at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain reported on Wednesday that they had rewritten the DNA of the bacteria Escherichia coli, fashioning a synthetic genome four times larger and far more complex than any previously created.

The bacteria are alive, though unusually shaped and reproducing slowly.

Continue reading “Scientists Created Bacteria With a Synthetic Genome. Is This Artificial Life?” →

To scientists like Michael Snyder, chair of the genetics department at Stanford University, the future of medicine is data — lots and lots of data.

He and others predict that one day doctors won’t just take your blood pressure and check your temperature. They will scrutinize your genome for risk factors and track tens of thousands of molecules active in your body.

By doing so, the doctors of the future will identify diseases, and treat them, long before symptoms appear.

Continue reading “In This Doctor’s Office, a Physical Exam Like No Other” →