How some gut microbes awaken 'zombie' viruses in their neighbors

Mar 05, 2022

Humans have long sought out the potent compounds that microbes produce. "We know a lot about their chemical properties, we purify them in the lab, and we use them as medicine, including antibiotics," says Breck Duerkop, who studies bacterial viruses at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

But why bacteria make these compounds and what effects they have on neighboring organisms are open-ended questions, says Duerkop, who was not involved in this research. He calls Balskus's teams new work "one step in the right direction."

COVID-19 genetic risk variant protects against HIV

Mar 01, 2022

In the autumn of 2020, Hugo Zeberg at Karolinska Institutet and MPI-EVAand Svante Pääbo at MPI-EVA showed that we inherited the major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 from Neandertals. In the spring of 2021, the same researcher duo studied this variant in ancient human DNA and observed that its frequency has increased significantly since the last ice age. In fact, it has become unexpectedly common for a genetic variant inherited from Neandertals. Hence, it may have had a favourable impact on its carriers in the past. "This major genetic risk factor for COVID-19 is so common that I started wondering whether it might actually be good for something, such as providing protection against another infectious disease," says Hugo Zeberg, who is the sole author of the new study in PNAS.