Persistence — it’s what keeps us all surviving. If it weren’t for this lovely quality, we’d just give up and crawl under a rock somewhere because it’s all just so darn difficult out there in the world. Same’s true for every bacterial infection we know of, the chronic ones in particular. Persistence is paramount. Think ...
In the last fifty years, pharmaceutical companies have spent tens of billions of dollars trying to find new classes of antibiotic drugs. Only one has made it into clinical practice. Seem surprising to you? Yeah, me too. At the same time, antibacterial resistance has been rising, meaning the pathogens that infect us are getting better ...
Ed Yong might be my favorite blogger. He’s certainly the most prolific one I’m aware of (don’t sign up for his twitter feed if you don’t want to be inundated all day long — how do people keep up with that sort of thing?!). But more importantly he’s entertaining and good at what he does. ...
Anthony D’Onofrio studies dirt…or the bacteria that grow on dirt, to be more specific. He is a post-doctoral researcher in the Antimicrobial Discovery Center led by Professor Kim Lewis in the biology department and has started a non-profit educational organization, along with Professor Lewis, called Sample America to help him with a somewhat impossible task: ...