Free Republic

Researchers at the University of Warwick have recovered tuberculosis (TB) genomes from the lung tissue of a 215-year old mummy using a technique known as metagenomics. The team, led by Professor Mark Pallen, Professor of Microbial Genomics at Warwick Medical School, working with Helen Donoghue at University College London and collaborators in Birmingham and Budapest, sought to use the technique to identify TB DNA in a historical specimen. The term 'metagenomics' is used to describe the open-ended sequencing of DNA from samples without the need for culture or target-specific amplification or enrichment. This approach avoids the complex and unreliable workflows...

Sequencing project finds that Europeans share a surprising number of bacteria. Researchers have unveiled a catalogue of genes from microbes found in the human gut. The information could reveal how 'friendly' gut bacteria interact with the body to influence nutrition and disease. "This is the most powerful microscope that's been used so far to describe microbial communities," says George Weinstock, a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the study. The human body contains about ten times as many microbes as human cells, and most of them live in the gut. The new study, published...