LECHUGUILLA CAVE. WIKIPEDIA

“We’re in a medical crisis, as bacteria that can resist antibiotics become more common. But, as I write in my new New York Times column, antibiotic resistance isn’t just limited to the doctor’s office. Bacteria all over the world have genes that make them resistant to our best drugs–bacteria living in caves, in ice, in the ocean floor, and in the dirt outside your door. And they probably had those genes long before doctors started using antibiotics.

Continue reading “Our Planet Seethes With Antibiotic Resistance–And Has For A Long Time”

The New York Times, May 8, 2014

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The Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico is a network of chambers stretching 1,600 feet underground. The bacteria that grow on the walls of its most remote recesses have been living in complete isolation for more than four million years.

In 2010, Gerry Wright, a microbiologist at McMaster University in Ontario, ran an experiment on those long-lost bacteria. He and his colleagues doused them with antibiotics, the drugs that doctors have used for the past 70 years to wipe out bacterial infections.

But many of the Lechuguilla bacteria would not die.

Continue reading “Antibiotic-Resistant Germs, Lying in Wait Everywhere”

EBOLA VIRUS. MICROGRAPH FROM CDC/CYNTHIA GOLDSMITH

As viruses go, Ebola has a grim star power. When a new outbreak hits, Ebola kills a high fraction of its victims, causing horrific bleeding along the way. The latest outbreak started in March in Guinea. As of today, the World Health Organization reported 231 cases and 155 deaths.

In order to better treat Ebola, Pardis Sabeti of Harvard and her colleagues have been analyzing the virus’s evolution. It turns out that Ebola is not some freakish new plague, but rather old. If that seems puzzling, a research scientist in Sabeti’s lab, Stephen Gire, has created this animation, which I’ve embedded below, to explain it. Continue reading “Ebola: New or Old?”

Allow me to direct your attention to three stories of mine that have come out in the past few days:

1. In Popular Mechanics, I take a look at the convergence of the old and the new. Paleontologists are using the latest laser-scanning technology and 3D-printing devices to visualize and replicate fossils. When you are faced with a graveyard of forty fossil whales, this kind of thing is a really big help. Continue reading “More Stories! Laser Cowboys, Killer Flu, and the Bloody Fountain of Youth”