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The Battle of the Ugliest Organisms

Aug 06, 2008

Researchers at Swansea University in Wales are developing an antibiotic from maggot secretions of the common green bottle fly, according to an article in the BBC. They will use mass spec to identify the substance, which they've named Seraticin, to treat common hospital-acquired infections like MRSA, E. coli, and C. difficile.

Breaking News
The Scan

Gone, But Now Reconstructed SARS-CoV-2 Genomes

In a preprint, a researcher describes his recovery of viral sequences that had been removed from a common database.

Rare Heart Inflammation Warning

The Food and Drug Administration is adding a warning about links between a rare inflammatory heart condition and two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, Reuters reports.

Sandwich Sampling

The New York Times sent tuna sandwiches for PCR analysis.

Nature Papers Describe Gut Viruses, New Format for Storing Quantitative Genomic Data, More

In Nature this week: catalog of DNA viruses of the human gut microbiome, new dense depth data dump format to store quantitative genomic data, and more.