Tag Archives: Bacteria

Skin bacteria regulate the immune response

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Bacteria, Disease, Mammals

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E. coli (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The skin is one of our body’s first lines of defense, but it’s also home to a rich community of microbes — the skin microbiome.  These bacteria are important in protecting us from pathogens; changes in the skin microbiome are linked with conditions ranging from dermatitis to psoriasis.  In a paper published this month in the journal PNAS, a team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania showed that these bacteria don’t just live on our skin, but also play a role in regulating our immune response. Continue reading →

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Sex, hormones, and the microbiome

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Bacteria, Development, Mammals

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The microbiome — the kilogram of microbes that each of us carries around — has been shown to be involved in everything from obesity and type 2 diabetes to behaviour and sexual preferences.  The composition and effects of the microbiome are very active areas of research, producing results which have challenged the way we think about the evolution and interactions of organisms, including ourselves.  In a paper recently published in the journal Science, researchers showed for the first time that the make up of the microbiome differs between the sexes, linking these differences to changes in hormone levels and disease resistance.
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Found while foraging (January 28, 2013)

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Foraging

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January has been a busy month.  In addition to writing here, I worked on some websites for my family and submitted entries to a couple of science writing competitions for the first time!  I’ve also optimistically nominated Inspiring Science for the annual “Bloggies” awards; if you think it deserves a chance, why not head on over and add your voice? I’ve really enjoyed working on this blog for the past year and I’m looking forward to writing being an even bigger part of my life in 2013!  Anyway, here’s another batch of tidbits I found during my wanderings.  As always, feel free to add more links in the comments.
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One year on!

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Blog

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Today officially marks the first anniversary of Inspiring Science, and it’s been a great year!  I think I managed to make some progress towards the goals I outlined in my first post.  Over the course of the past year, I’ve learned how to make my writing more accessible and become better at engaging with non-scientists, though unfortunately I haven’t managed to write as frequently as I would have liked.  I hope I can rectify that and continue to improve those skills, but I’m also going to try to do a better job of fostering discussion over the next 12 months.  I have a few ideas about how to do that; we’ll see how well they pan out.  (If you have a suggestion, let me know!)

If you’re one of the newer readers, why not take a romp through the archives?  There’s some good stuff buried on there that doesn’t often make it  onto the “What’s popular now?” list in the sidebar.  I’ve also picked five posts from the past year which I wish had received more attention and listed them below; I hope you’ll enjoy them.

With that said, I look forward to another year of writing about science; thanks for reading, commenting and generally keeping me company on this adventure!  If you have any suggestions about what I could do differently or better (or what I’m doing well) please leave a comment so I can learn and improve. 🙂

Flying bacteria: the chemists of the clouds

22 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Bacteria, Climate

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Tufts of textureA while ago I wrote about how bacteria make their way into clouds, where they act as seeds around which raindrops condense. Now, a team of scientists in France has shown that the microbes floating around in the clouds do more than just make it rain to bring them back down to the surface; they also carry out chemistry while they’re up there.
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The viruses that infect the bacteria that live in your gut

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Bacteria, Humans

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Electron micrograph of Bacteriophages (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Your body has ten times more bacterial cells than human cells containing 150 times as much genetic material.  I’ve written several posts about how our gut bacteria, the microbiome, can influence the development of allergies, obesity and type-2 diabetes.  We’ve only recently started studying the microbiome and there’s still a lot to learn; it’s quite an active area of research.  For example, just last year scientists discovered that individuals could be divided into three groups based on the composition of their microbiome, but new research has cast doubt on that idea.  And yet, like a matryoshka doll, our biology has still another surprise in store for us: wherever bacteria are found, there are viruses which infect them.  As we learn more about the microbiome and its implications, some scientists have turned their attention to the the viral microbiome, the viruses that prey on our gut bacteria and shape their community. Continue reading →