In high school, our teachers showed us that every living organism can be classified into two categories: prokaryotes — small, simple cells without nuclei — and eukaryotes — the bigger, denser cells with nuclei. Life felt much simpler then. Nonetheless, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that these distinctions aren’t sufficient to truly capture the...

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“History is written by the victors.” Or so the saying goes. I personally prefer, “The truth shall set you free”. The true story behind Robert Koch’s discovery of bacteria brings this truth to light. For over a century, we have attributed the culturing of bacteria to Robert Koch, who eventually coined his famous postulates. Those...

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Let me begin by saying I love classical music. Brahms’s and Dvorak’s symphonies (here and here respectively) are to die for. I have also played piano and violin for almost two decades. And I performed full concerts on the piano, both as a soloist and with orchestras. In my experience, any successful orchestral performance comprises...

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Think of a time you enjoyed a day at the beach. What was the first thing you thought of? Perhaps you heard the gentle waves of the waters beyond. Maybe you grabbed a conch shell and placed it in your ear. You may have even grabbed an ice cream and taken a bite while you...

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Scientific innovation has played a crucial role in advancing human health. As we better understand how our bodies work, we have seen great leaps forward in how we study disease. Such efforts have led us to zoom in on the microscopic world. Studying disease pathologies in this way has let us see cells that attack...

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The human body is filled with microorganisms of many kinds. Although many microorganisms drive disease as pathogens, many more provide plentiful health benefits. To maximize these benefits, companies have isolated microbes from our bodies and formulated them as pills or supplemented foods with them. These efforts led to LGG being the first robust probiotic developed...

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When word of the gut microbiome first emerged, scientists focused on profiling the bacterial species that inhabited the gut. These efforts helped us unearth an extraordinarily diverse group of bacteria, down to the species level in not just the gut, but organs across the body as well. Since then, we have uncovered even more genetic...

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The Microbiome Movement — Human Nutrition Summit (Download the full agenda here!) is filled with amazing talks covering the latest in biotic research. Genetic engineering stands tall among the many discussions about making probiotics safe and effective. The two-word term often brings about feelings of skepticism and fear. Discussions abound about genetically modified organisms (GMO),...

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Another article, and another summit to cover for Microbe Musings! Earlier this year, we covered Hanson Wade’s Microbiome Movement – Drug Development Summit in Boston through interviews such as this one on drug-microbiome interactions and lyophilizing bacterial cultures when developing drugs. Now, I am delighted to announce that I will represent GenoWrite as a media...

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The advent of the gut microbiome as a field of research has driven new efforts to harness microbes for treating and preventing disease. Known as microbiome therapeutics, these medications come in many forms, such as live biotherapeutics (LBPs). Whether through a group of different microbes or a single microbe, the possibilities of developing these microbes...

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