Biology | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

Jörg Blech, writing for Der Spiegel:

There are up to a billion viruses in our intestines alone – per gram of content.

Turns out those viruses are bacteriophages.

Ed Yong (who wrote the amazing article about Giraffes) in The Atlantic:

This isn’t an infection in any meaningful way. The phages aren’t hijacking human cells to make more copies of themselves, as viruses like influenza, Zika, or Ebola might. Instead, Barr thinks that the cells are in control. They’re actively engulfing phages, and shuttling them from one end to the other. Why?

They might help our immune system fight bacteria.

A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.