Using City Sewage to Survey a City's Microbiome

The team gathered samples over the course of a year from sewage treatment plants in 71 different cities in 31 states, chosen for their geographic spread and range of obesity rates. The leanest city sampled was Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with an obesity rate of 13.5 percent, while the heaviest was St. Joseph, Missouri, with a rate of 37.4 percent. Bacteria from human waste make up just a small proportion of the bacteria found in sewage. But using DNA sequencing, the researchers could identi...

 Humans Are Shmoo's to Bacteria

Remember the shmoo? The shmoo w^as invented by Al Capp in the comic strip "Li'l Abner": a wobbly, tenpin-with legs sort of creature with the misfortune (or good fortune) of being almost totally consumable. Broiled shmoo tasted like steak; fried, like chicken. Shmoos gave eggs, butter, and Grade A milk. The shmoo's skin was a versatile fabric, the eyes made perfect buttons, and even the whiskers served as toothpicks. Most important, shmoos reproduced in prodigious numbers and delivered themsel...

 Are There Bacteria Species?

It may very properly be asked whether the attempt to define distinct species, of a more or less permanent nature, such as we are accustomed to deal with amongst the higher plants and animals, is not altogether illusory amongst such lowly organised forms of life as the bacteria. No biologist nowadays believes in the absolute fixity of species ... but there are two circumstances which here render the problem of specificity even more difficult of solution. The bacteriologist is deprived of the t...