26 Quotes by Ed Yong

So, here’s the irony: toilets that are cleaned too often are more likely to be covered in faecal bacteria. Jessica.

We now know that gut microbes are part of this axis, in both directions. Since the 1970s, a trickle of studies have shown that any kind of stress – starvation, sleeplessness, being separated from one’s mother, the sudden arrival of an aggressive individual, uncomfortable temperatures, overcrowding, even loud noises – can change a mouse’s gut microbiome. The opposite is also true: the microbiome can affect a host’s behaviour, including its social attitudes and its ability to deal with stress.40.

Each animal is an ecosystem with legs,” says John Rawls.

The team also worked out how the microbes were affecting the brain. Their main suspect was the vagus nerve. It’s a long branching nerve that carries signals between the brain and visceral organs like the gut-a physical embodiment of the gut-brain axis. The team severed it, and found that the mind-altering JB-1 lost all its influence.

The mere presence of a guitar in someone’s bedroom doesn’t make them Slash.

It allows the team to culture the many gut bacteria that are extremely intolerant of the gas. “If you write the word oxygen on a piece of paper and show it to these bugs, they’ll die,” jokes Gordon.

Rebellious, and contemptuous of dogma, she was the consummate scientific iconoclast. “I don’t consider my ideas controversial,” she once said. “I consider them right.

When a langur or human gets sick, its problems are akin to a lake that’s smothered by algae or a meadow that’s overrun with weeds – ecosystems gone awry.