4+ hour, 16+ min ago   (899+ words) The bacterium at the center of this experiment is one that people already swallow on purpose. Bifidobacterium longum turns up in infant guts, in supplements, and on the ingredient panel of yogurt drinks. A team at the University of Chicago…...

3+ hour, 28+ min ago   (695+ words) The bacteria that give cheese its flavor and those marketed in probiotic capsules are, in several cases, the same organisms. That overlap is not new information. What has not been done is to watch which of them are actually present…...

3+ hour, 57+ min ago   (644+ words) Eighty-five percent of the human proteome already has at least one monoclonal antibody built against it. Decades of biomedical research produced that library. Almost none of it works where a large share of the disease actually occurs, inside the cell....

11+ hour, 37+ min ago   (914+ words) For people with rare diseases, finding the right diagnosis can become a medical mystery that lasts for years. Symptoms may resemble more common illnesses, while doctors may have limited experience recognizing conditions that affect relatively few people. Researchers in Abu…...

18+ hour, 51+ min ago   (799+ words) Two people who had lost nearly all ability to understand or produce language sat down with a set of number puzzles. They had to work out the hidden rule that turned one list into another, then apply it to new…...

19+ hour, 14+ min ago   (666+ words) For decades, RNA molecules stitched together from two different genes were treated as evidence that something had gone wrong. Cancer is a disease of copying errors, and these hybrid transcripts looked like copying errors, so the field largely filed them…...

19+ hour, 20+ min ago   (636+ words) The plastic bag that has kept donated blood safe since the 1970s may be leaving something behind. In a study published in the American Chemical Society journal Environment & Health, researchers in China reported finding polyvinyl chloride microplastics in both the preservation…...

4+ day, 1+ min ago   (782+ words) Laboratories on several continents are growing three-dimensional clusters of human brain tissue, fusing them into multi-region structures that form circuits, and transplanting them into rodent brains. Outside of animal cruelty statutes, which apply only once tissue is inside an animal,…...

4+ day, 9+ hour ago   (860+ words) Constipation has been an unglamorous constant of human spaceflight, and nobody could say exactly why. An analysis of 488 blood samples drawn from 52 astronauts before, during, and after long stays aboard the International Space Station now offers a biochemical answer, and…...

4+ day, 21+ hour ago   (781+ words) A professor in Yunnan ate stir-fried mushrooms, lifted the tablecloth, and saw hundreds of tiny people marching underneath it like soldiers. When he raised the cloth higher, he reported, their heads came off and stuck to the fabric while the…...