Christine Burillo-Kirch

Many of us are lucky enough to live in a society where we can, at many times, eat whatever food we would like, whenever we would like. Not so for the Hadza community, that lives near the Serengeti. They are one of the last hunter/gatherers that live solely off what they can find or kill all year round. Scientists have been studying this community of foragers for quite some time for everything from sleeping patterns to how they find their food, as this gives some clues as to

What started out by examining how different microbial colonies "talk to one another" when in close proximity, has developed into a larger scale mapping of microbes and related chemicals on the human body. If today's technology been available in 1928 when Dr. Alexander Fleming observed mold overtaking his petri plates, penicillin would have been discovered and manufactured much more quickly. While it is fun to get a glimpse of which area of the skin is more likely to "house" c

Microbes Monthly Did you know that your intestine contains somewhere between 100-1,000 bacterial species, and that the type of bacteria that are present in your intestine is considered as unique as a fingerprint? #microbiology

The Tree of Life The “Tree of Life” has been redesigned! What is the tree of life? The tree of life was first developed by a large number of scientists, including Carl Woese, to categorize all living organisms and their relative genomic similarity to one another. Fast forward to 2016: a large group of scientists have evaluated a lot of unknown microbiological species from samples obtained in different environments. After evaluating vast amounts of genomic data, they were able

Viruses definitely know how to throw a party in a host cell, but it has recently been observed that host cells seem to leave some viruses a parting gift. Upon infecting a host cell, viruses will hijack machinery inside the cell to make copies of themselves. When they are all done, viruses will leave the first host cell to find another host cell to “infect” and yada yada yada, the process will start all over again. Usually that first host cell is left in sad shape but will di

Photo source: J.L. Olsen et. “The genome of the seagrass Zostera marina reveals angiosperm adaptation to the sea.” Nature 530:331–5, 2016. Eelgrass, a member of the seagrass family, is a major component of coastal ecosystems on all continents except Antarctica. While this humble plant might not seem formidable, it has faced some daunting evolutionary challenges that have just recently come to light after an 8 year, multi-scientist genomic study published in Nature. Originall