Love and health

Love is essential for a healthy life. Without it we feel empty and alone. Recently researcher Steven Cole at UCLA together with other scientists at various institutions found genetic evidence that loneliness triggers genes leading to inflammation and depressed immune function. Can love be the antidote?

(more…)

Can’t live without them

What does it mean to be human? Many people are surprised that, in co-evolving with microbes, we have emerged as nature’s most complex composite organism. Humans are a mosaic of human cells, beneficial bacteria, other microbes living in and on us, and pathogens. We have about a trillion “human” cells yet 10 trillion other organisms representing five of the six kingdoms of life also reside on or in us. Without many of them we could not live. Every second of our lives Star Wars like battles are waging between beneficial and potentially pathogenic microbes which inhabit us. Many diseases are the result of the dark forces winning battles. Who are these creatures and what are they doing?

(more…)

Programed suicide

Death. It is guaranteed. We are programmed to die. Scientist Paul Falkowski discovered 20 years ago that microbes commit suicide under certain conditions and suggested that evolution may have preserved this feature in plants and animals. But why? For the health and survival of creatures big and small.

(more…)