Go Make Your Bed!

Don’t get annoyed that you have to make your bed every morning. Chimpanzees have to make their bed every night, literally! They weave a new bed each evening out of sticks and leaves, 30 feet up in a tree. Researchers found that chimp beds have very few parasites or microbes, unlike human beds. Ours are full of microbes!

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Shy Bacterium Lives in Hostile Environment

Researchers are studying an unusual bacterium to understand the possiblity of extraterrestrial life. Alien life forms might have something in common with the Desulforudis audaxviator, which lives nearly 2 miles underground in 140 degree Fahrenheit water in South Africa. Living without oxygen, sunlight, or organic materials, it gets its energy from radioactive uranium. It’s nuclear powered!

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CRISPR Turns E.Coli into Tape Recorder

Do you know what CRISPR is? It’s not how you like your potato chips! It’s an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which is a family of DNA sequences in bacteria. Scientists just used CRISPR to turn E-coli bacteria into miniature tape recorders! This method of recording information is a new way to use bacteria to diagnose diseases!
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Caterpillars helping to protect our planet

Plastic bags and other polyethylene based materials have been a menace when being disposed of, often taking decades to breakdown.  Scientists identified several species of caterpillars that eat and digest the plastic. The bacteria in their gut was breaking it down. So, by using that same bacteria on plastics, you humans can reduce this pollutant and help save your planet.
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