Tag: guts

The gut is an unusually noisy place, where hundreds of species of bacteria live alongside whatever microbes happen to have hitched a ride in on your lunch. Scientists have long suspected that the gut’s immune system, in the face of so many stimuli, takes an uncharacteristically blunt approach to population control and protection from foreign

In Central America, Chagas disease, or American trypanosomiasis, is spread by the “kissing bug” Triatoma dimidiata. By collecting DNA from the guts of these bugs, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have described patterns in the behavior of the bugs, the strain of parasite, and the communities of microbes that interact with the parasite.