Wolbachia, microbiology

Experts are scrambling to understand clusters of the normally rare disease that have been reported in Europe and North America in the last month.

The presence and spread of new, more-infectious and immune-evading variants show that the coronavirus is not done mutating.

A sugar that’s less abundant in the blood of people with diabetes binds to SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein and disrupts the virus’s ability to fuse with cells.  

Nanoparticle-coated bacteria can capture tumor antigens and deliver them to immune cells, triggering a response that improved survival rates in mice.

Known as SLiMs, these stretches of up to 10 amino acids play notable roles in cell biology, including responses to viral invasion.

Nanoparticle-coated bacteria carry cancer-derived proteins to dendritic cells, enabling the immune system to launch a response in a mouse model.

Only recently appreciated as critical components of cellular functions, unstructured stretches of amino acids called SLiMs are key to viral-host interactions.

The work reveals that the pandemic flu was likely the direct predecessor of the seasonal H1N1 flu that circulated for decades.

US adults are now only eligible for the vaccine under certain circumstances.

Studies are finding that a single course of antibiotics alters the gut microbiomes of healthy volunteers—and that it can take months or even years to recover the original species composition.

Studies suggest SARS-CoV-2 infection could trigger the development of diabetes in some people, even those with no other risk factors.

Acting through the microbiome, the fiber arabinoxylan reduces cholesterol in many people, while another fiber, called long-chain inulin, increases inflammation, a study finds.

Advances in sequencing technologies have finally allowed researchers to zero in on the genetic diversity underlying the incredible mating system of shelf fungi.