A Poop Transplant Gave Old Mice Their Young Brains Back
Lazy eye treatment only works on brains still able to rewire themselves. So how did a gut microbiome switch that ability back on in animals long past it?
Vitals
Jersey City born and raised. Daughter of a pediatrician. YGBFKM virtual contributor. Grew up around medical journals, doctors, and hospitals but still finds the human body, what it can do, and what can happen to it weird, wild, and wonderful.
Your Skin Cells Fire Electrical Spikes When You're Injured. They Work Nothing Like a Nerve.
A wound sets off a wave of activity that races across nearby tissue for over an hour, using signaling biology assumed reserved for neurons. What it's actually communicating is still unclear.
A Bat Sat on a Sleeping Boy's Face. He Had No Bite Marks. He Died of Rabies.
A bat lands on a sleeping kid's face. No bite. No scratch. No reason to worry. The family was wrong, and the reason why is something most people still don't know.
The Squirrel Monkey Has Entered the Chat on Human Childbirth
The obstetrical dilemma assumed our species faced the tightest squeeze in the primate order. Then researchers re-measured a much smaller mammal correctly, and the ranking changed.
The Sleeping Pandemic That Shadowed the Spanish Flu
A second pandemic shadowed the Spanish Flu, stranger, quieter, and just as deadly. A century of science still can't explain what it was or whether it could come back.
Humans Have a Third Set of Teeth. A New Drug Could Make Them Grow.
Your mouth has been keeping a secret: dormant tooth buds, a latent third set, held in reserve. A Japanese drug trial is asking whether they can finally be switched on.
Your Brain Is 99.5% Brain. The Rest Is Plastic.
A new study found microplastics in human brain tissue at concentrations 7 to 30 times higher than in other organs, and the levels are still rising.
Walking Sharks Gain a Cousin: Lazy Shark
Scientists confirmed a tenth reef-walking shark off Papua New Guinea, but surveys at a nearby island where it was once common turned up nothing.
Sharks Use Manta Rays as Back Scratchers
Galapagos sharks were caught on video using manta rays as scratch posts for sea lice.
Seafloor Footprints Point to Earliest Evidence of Sight
You can't fossilize a sense. But 231 trails pressed into ancient seafloor mud turn out to be close enough.
You Can't Help Veering Left
Scientists tested 573 people across multiple countries and kept ruling out explanations. Culture? No. Handedness? No. Dominant eye? No. So why does almost everyone walk the same direction?
A Human Body Ran on a Pig's Liver and Kidneys
The pig liver produced bile. The kidneys cleared creatinine. The body's metabolism shifted toward human baselines. The borrowed organs acted like they belonged.
Your Cells' Powerhouses Have a Secret Extension Cord
Your cells don't just drift energy toward the nucleus and hope for the best. They run a dedicated line. What happens when the line snaps?
A Ruptoblast Is an Immune Cell. It Does Exactly What That Sounds Like.
A Stanford discovery in planarian flatworms reveals an immune cell that detonates itself, destroying up to 70 surrounding cells in minutes and leaving no trace.
Your Brain Has a Read Receipt Now
A blood draw that reads your brain's gene activity in real time; no surgery, no tissue samples. The tool is called INTACT.
Cats Unlock Answers About Breast Cancer
Researchers mapped the cancer genome of nearly 500 of our feline friends and found mutations that mirror human breast cancer.
The Brain Cells That Learned Pong Just Cleared a New Level. This Time It's Doom.
They started by walking into walls and shooting at nothing. Then something shifted. Lab-grown neurons, 200,000 of them, are learning on their own.
Scrambled Gene Caused Deafness. One Injection Restored Hearing.
One gene. One injection. Silence, gone. Half of these patients now hear at normal levels.