CDC, DEBORA CARTAGENAGut microbes appeared to influence the efficacy of the seasonal flu vaccine in mice through a Toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5)-mediated interaction, a team led by investigators at Emory University in Atlanta showed in Immunity this week (September 12). Patrick Wilson, an immunologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the work, said the results point to a natural adjuvant effect of the microbiome.
“It’s a surprise that the gut microbiota, and TLR5 in particular, can modulate the immune response to influenza and unrelated pathogens,” Wilson told The Scientist.
FLICKR, EMMANUEL DYANResearchers at Columbia University and their colleagues have sequenced the genomes of 128 healthy Ashkenazi Jewish people, providing reference sequences for further studies on disease-causing variants and the population’s history. The work was published in Nature Communications this week (September 9).
“With sufficient numbers of samples, parent population information, and computational analytic power, we can expect important and surprising utilities for personal genomics and insights in terms of human demographic history from whole genomes,” Karl Skorecki of the Rambam Healthcare Campus in Israel told The Scientist in an e-mail.
DANIEL KARPCosta Rican forests support more phylogenetically diverse bird populations than do farms in the country, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues showed in Science this week (September 11), although some farms support more diversity than others. While not entirely surprising, the results suggest that the diversification of agricultural land should be encouraged, said Berkeley’s Daniel Karp, who led the study.
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