Featured series 
Tag: Microbes
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Nation & World
2 very different microbes immune to the same viruses? Scientists were puzzled.
Genomic analysis suggests host diversity is far greater than previously thought.
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Nation & World
Emily Balskus wins $1M Waterman Award
Emily Balskus has won the Alan T. Waterman Award, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious prize for scientists under 40 in the United States.
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Nation & World
Microbes might manage your cholesterol
Researchers discover mysterious bacteria that break it down in the gut.
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Nation & World
The ‘right’ diet
Professor Emily Balskus and her team have identified an entirely new class of enzymes that degrade chemicals essential for neurological health, but also help digest foods like nuts, berries, and tea, releasing nutrients that may impact human health.
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Nation & World
Harvard microbe hunter wins Blavatnik Award
Emily Balskus will be honored on Sept. 23 with the Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists for her work in tracking never-before-seen chemistry to specific bacteria in the human gut.
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Nation & World
Probiotic hydrogels heal gut wounds that other treatments can’t reach
Harvard researchers have developed hydrogels that can be produced from bacterial cultures and applied to intestinal surfaces for faster wound healing.
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Nation & World
Spreading seeds of life
Scientists at the Institute for Theory and Computation have made a comprehensive calculation suggesting that panspermia could happen, and have found that as many as 10 trillion asteroid-sized objects might exist that carry life.
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Nation & World
Carbon consumers
Natural lab holds promise to transform understanding of deep-ocean carbon cycling, says Professor Peter Girguis.
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Nation & World
Microbes by the mile
Exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History shows the beauty and utility of microbes.
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Nation & World
Microbial menace
A new study has shown that — under certain conditions — gut microbes can consume enough of a key nutrient to cause a deficiency in their hosts.
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Nation & World
Life of the party
A festival at the Harvard Museum of Natural History will feature these photos capturing an “invisible” world in all its glory.
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Nation & World
Invisible world comes to light
Harvard Museum of Natural History brings art and science together as two Harvard scientists capture the “invisible,” and stunningly beautiful, life force that is everywhere: microbes.
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Nation & World
Gut details
New findings have the potential to help researchers more accurately identify microbiome enzymes and quantify their relative abundance.
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Nation & World
Cheese-based research
Bauer Fellow Rachel Dutton has identified three general types of microbial communities that live on cheese, opening the door to using each as a “model” community for the study of whether and how various microbes and fungi compete or cooperate as they form communities, as well as what molecules and mechanisms are involved in the…
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Nation & World
Going forward, a look back
The Harvard Campaign, milestones in the arts, and scientific breakthroughs marked 2013-14 at Harvard.
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Nation & World
Getting to the source
A team of Harvard researchers has demonstrated that the bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris can use natural conductivity to pull electrons from minerals located remotely in soil and sediment while remaining at the surface, where it absorbs the sunlight needed to produce energy.
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Nation & World
Your gut’s what you eat, too
A new Harvard study shows that, in as little as a day, diet can alter the population of microbes in the gut – particularly those that tolerate bile – as well as the types of genes expressed by gut bacteria.
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Nation & World
Bacterial blockade
Harvard researchers have identified a pair of genes that appear to be responsible for allowing a specific strain of bacteria in the human gut to break down Lanoxin — a widely prescribed cardiac drug — into an inactive compound, as well as a possible way to turn the process off.
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Nation & World
Major weight loss tied to microbes
In a study conducted by Harvard and MGH researchers, gut microbes of mice underwent drastic changes following gastric bypass surgery, and transfer of the microbes into sterile mice resulted in rapid weight loss.
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Nation & World
Synthetic future
In the synthetic biology lab of Professor Pamela Silver, researchers are looking for ways to make biological engineering faster, cheaper, and more predictable.
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Nation & World
When microbes make the food
A Harvard Summer School class spurs learning through food, by examining how microbes — bacteria and fungi — can help as well as harm when they get into food, doing much of the work preparing cheeses, beer, soy sauce, and even chocolate.
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Nation & World
My microbes
A new study reports that the superabundance of microbial life lining our GI tracts has co-evolved with us. These bacteria, which are essential for a healthy immune system, are ultimately our evolutionary partners.
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Nation & World
Gauging the effects of the BP spill
Research into the effects of last year’s massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico highlights the flexibility of the community of microbes living in the ocean’s depths.
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Nation & World
Tut, tut!
Ralph Mitchell, a Harvard professor and authority on cultural heritage microbiology, investigates “fingerprints” left on the walls of Egyptian King Tutankhamen’s tomb by ancient microbes.
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Nation & World
Earthly extremes hint to life elsewhere
Scientists are examining single-celled organisms in extreme environments for clues to what life might look like on the myriad planets being discovered in the universe.
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Nation & World
Microbes to the rescue
Study says microbes may consume far more gaseous waste from gulf oil spill than previously believed.
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Nation & World
Surrendering their secrets
Ann Pearson, professor of biogeochemistry, uses chemistry to understand ancient biology.
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Nation & World
Earth’s ‘Boring Billion’ Years Blamed on Sulfur-Loving Microbes
“If we really want to understand what’s happed in the history of Earth, we really have to understand this cross talk between the physical and biological processes,” says study coauthor Andrew Knoll of Harvard University.