Prehistoric Weaponry, The Museum of London, 20.4.19.

Prehistoric Weaponry, The Museum of London, 20.4.19.

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Healthy Competition From assisting digestion to supporting…

Healthy Competition

From assisting digestion to supporting immunity, the bacteria inside our guts are critical to our health. In these diverse communities, pinpointing which specific bacteria are beneficial is difficult, but recent research on Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, a strain of bacteria responsible for gastroenteritis, is providing new insights. Gut bacteria provide some protection from this form of Salmonella, so ingesting it only occasionally leads to disease. Yet, in mice, individuals lacking the bacterium Mucispirillum schaedleri in their intestines were more susceptible to infection, suggesting that Mucispirillum is especially important to their defences. In fact, when they co-exist in the gut, Mucispirillum (pictured, in green, with the gut lining in red) outcompetes Salmonella (in pink) to extract limited resources, such as nitrate, which Salmonella needs to synthesise major components of its weaponry. As we begin to understand microbial interactions in the gut, such competitive effects could suggest new ways of tackling pathogens.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

• Image from B. Stecher, LMU Munich


• Max-von-Pettenkofer Institute, LMU Munich, Germany


• Image copyright held by the original authors


• Research published in Cell Host & Microbe, May 2019

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Phantom Quartz With Lepidocrocite | #Geology #GeologyPage…

Phantom Quartz With Lepidocrocite | #Geology #GeologyPage #Mineral

Locality: Karur District, Tamil Nadu, India

Size: 1.9 × 2.3 × 3 cm

Photo Copyright © Mineral Decor /e-rocks. com

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2019 May 20 Planets of the Solar System: Tilts and Spins Video…

2019 May 20

Planets of the Solar System: Tilts and Spins
Video Credit: NASA, Animation: James O’Donoghue (JAXA)

Explanation: How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth – one Earth rotation – takes just a few seconds. Jupiter rotates the fastest, while Venus spins not only the slowest (can you see it?), but backwards. The inner rocky planets, across the top, most certainly underwent dramatic spin-altering collisions during the early days of the Solar System. The reasons why planets spin and tilt as they do remains a topic of research with much insight gained from modern computer modeling and the recent discovery and analysis of hundreds of exoplanets: planets orbiting other stars.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190520.html

Ariana Grande got some space at N-A-S-A. Get yours too.Make sure…

Ariana Grande got some space at N-A-S-A. Get yours too.

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Strong Roots We hear sounds thanks to specialist hair cells in…

Strong Roots

We hear sounds thanks to specialist hair cells in our inner ear: vibrations bend microscopic hair-like stereocilia attached to these cells, triggering chemical changes and ultimately producing electrical signals, forwarded to the brain. Stereocilia are anchored to hair cells by rootlets, structures that support them so they can bend repeatedly without breaking. Using sophisticated imaging techniques, scientists recently identified an essential protein, known as spectrin, which encircles the rootlets, providing strength and flexibility. Without spectrin in their inner hair cells, mice have seriously impaired hearing. At the cellular level (pictured, in healthy inner hair cells above, and ones lacking spectrin below), the organisation of other crucial proteins is disrupted, including actin (in blue), of which stereocilia are made, and taperin (in purple). Mice with poor hearing due to ageing or sound damage also display depleted spectrin rings, suggesting that this protein is involved in many forms of hearing loss.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

• Image adapted from work by Yan Liu, Jieyu Qi, Xin Chen and Mingliang Tang, and colleagues/a>


• ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China


• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY-NC 4.0)


• Published in Science Advances, April 2019

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