Sugary Camouflage on Coronavirus Offers Vaccine Clues
In the fight against viruses and other pathogens, scientists are looking beyond genes and proteins to the complex sugars, or glycans, on cell surfaces.
How Wisdom and Loneliness May Be Connected to Gut Health
Better intestinal health may mean more wisdom and less loneliness, study finds.
Researchers Read the Sugary ‘Language’ on Cell Surfaces
Glycans, the complex sugars that stud cellular surfaces, are like a language that life uses to mediate vital interactions. Researchers are learning how to read their meaning.
Sewage Sampling Robots Speed SARS-CoV-2 Detection
An automated wastewater monitoring technique could enable researchers to predict outbreaks of the virus up to a week in advance.
Why Rewilding the Gut Might Not Help Fight the Diseases of Industrialization
A new article challenges the idea that turning back the clock of our bodies’ bacterial microbiome could fight non-communicable disease.
Scientists hustle to create new tests, drugs and expand telemedicine to battle COVID-19 over the long term
San Diego’s Scripps Health created a customized telemedicine conferencing system last March. It took just three weeks. Since then more than 510,000 patients have had “virtual visits” with doctors, helping minimize the spread of COVID-19.
The coronavirus variants experts are most concerned about
New, mutated strains of the coronavirus are causing worry around the world as health officials race to vaccinate as many people as possible. Dr. Jon LaPook reports on why the new strains are popping up.
Sewage-testing robots process wastewater faster to predict COVID-19 outbreaks sooner
By using a sewage-handling robot, our laboratory has been able to detect coronavirus in wastewater 30 times faster than nonautomated large-scale systems. This advance, published in the microbiology journal mSystems, provides even more lead time to communities monitoring their wastewater for early warning about local cases of COVID-19.
Behind the Gordon Bell Prize-Winning Spike Protein Simulations
Four months ago, Rommie Amaro and her colleagues were accepting the first-ever Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research. At the time, cases were slowly ramping up in advance of what we now know was to become a devastating winter surge.
NASA Will Map Every Living Thing on the International Space Station
Surveying the billions of tiny microbial astronauts that dwell within the orbital laboratory could help us prepare for human voyages to Mars
