The Ed's Up #67

A New Antibiotic That Resists Resistance

"Teixobactin appears resistant to resistance. Bacteria will eventually develop ways of beating it—remember Orgel—but the team are optimistic that it will take decades rather than years for this to happen. That buys us time. Teixobactin isn’t even the most promising part of its own story. That honour falls on the iChip—the tool that the team used to discover the compound. Teixobactin is a fish; the iChip is the rod. Having the rod guarantees that we’ll get more fish—and we desperately need more". (Image: Nicholas Tonelli)
 

There’s More Than One Way to Decapitate An Ant

"There are some 4,400 species of phorids. Although their lifestyles are diverse, a surprising number of them specialise in decapitating ants. The females lay their eggs inside their victims. When the maggots hatch, they move towards the ant’s head and eat its brain and other tissues. The brainless ant stumbles about in a fugue for weeks until its head eventually falls off. Sometimes, that’s because the fly has inflicted so much damage. In other cases, the maggot deliberately releases an enzyme that dissolves the connection between the ant’s head and body." (Image: Brian Brown)

Our Own Friendly Neighbourhood Yeast-Breakers

"There are food chains in your gut that mirror those in, say, the Serengeti. Lions and cheetahs will kill bigger prey, allowing jackals and vultures to pick off the scraps. Similarly, some gut bacteria break down the biggest and hardiest carbohydrates, and release smaller fragments that others can mop up. But B-theta seems to ignore these food chains. It hoards alpha-mannans for itself and devours every last crumb, leaving nothing to scavengers." (Image: Stacy)

More good reads

• "Those weren’t noisy pixels. Those were freaking stars." Phil Plait on an incredible image of Andromeda
• Deepest Fish Features Angel Wings, Tentacles and Amazing Ability to Perform Under Pressure. By Jennifer Frazer.
• Robin Henig on the origins and purpose of play
• Nice piece on the "strange inevitability of evolution" and the source of biological innovations. By Philip Ball.
• “People with autism, who often have trouble describing discomfort, could benefit from alternative methods of measurement. But there are so many to choose from it can be hard to know which to use.” Rose Eveleth on alternatives to the smiley-face pain scale.
• Emily Graslie meets a pregnant bat and the world's largest spider. “Got to let it get closer to her face.”
• Matthew Herper on the $60M deal between 23andMe and Genentech
• "And though these are known as the pillars of creation... they’re also regions of destruction." Nadia Drake on a new version of a classic image.
• Why fighter cockpit designers have to predict the future 40yrs in advance. By Angus Batey.
• How a surgeon general got saddled with a notorious quote he never said. Michael Specter on how lie becomes fact, and how journalist can deal with getting it wrong.
• "The under-reaction to NDM is as misguided as the over-reaction to the global movement of Ebola." Maryn McKenna on typical incisive form.

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed