Our Microbes and Our Health

It's a rare thing to encounter a medical specialist who has experience of his field from the expert and the patient perspective - but not unheard of...Jim Ashworth-Beaumont is an orthotist and prosthetist who spent years helping people adapt to life with artificial limbs and musc ...  Show more

“I shall largely speak of mice,” the paper begins “but my thoughts are on man.”So begins a truly extraordinary scientific paper, and an equally extraordinary story.“Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population.” was published in 1973 by John Calhoun, and i ...  Show more

Inside our gut lives an entire ecosystem of bacteria and microbes, called the microbiome. In fact, the human body contains trillions of microorganisms, which outnumber our cells by ten to one. This means that technically we are more microbe than human. But not only do these mi ...

Microbiomes are a multi-million-pound industry. Every week, many people send off poop samples to be examined so we can learn about our own ecosystems of bacteria, virus and fungi that live in our guts, with a view to improving health. But how accurate are these tests? Microbiolog ...  Show more

DNA has revealed potential animal COVID carriers at the Wuhan market, but what does that tell us about the start of the pandemic? Roland talks to two of the experts behind the new analysis: Dr Florence Débarre and Professor Eddie Holmes.Also, we look into Europe’s grand new space ...  Show more

Researchers have discovered a species of bacteria which dwarfs all others by thousands of times. Normally you need a microscope to see single-celled bacteria, but Thiomargarita magnifica is the length and width of an eyelash. It's been found growing in mangrove swamps in the Cari ...  Show more