Friday, April 13, 2007
Watch Out for Coughing Cowboys!
This ain't your grandfather's gonorrhea. Due to careless antibiotic use and of course to careless sexual practices, the US is seeing a ginormous rise in proportion of drug-resistant strains of this STD. Currently only one class of antibiotic seems to remain effective, and how long that will last no one can guess.
Speaking of making babies, a UK group claims to have grown immature sperm from bone marrow stem cells, potentially hinting at future fertility treatment advances. Gives new meaning to the concept of "boning" somebody...
But what genes get passed on? Hopefully not a faulty copy of FTO, which greatly increases risk of obesity. We may also soon know a good bit more about how genes evolve and change over time from the newly sequenced macaque genome.
Finally, if you thought bird flu and monkey pox were bad, wait till you hear about cow tuberculosis! It appears that this potentially lethal infection is, contrary to previous thought, transmissable from human to human. D'oh!
Speaking of making babies, a UK group claims to have grown immature sperm from bone marrow stem cells, potentially hinting at future fertility treatment advances. Gives new meaning to the concept of "boning" somebody...
But what genes get passed on? Hopefully not a faulty copy of FTO, which greatly increases risk of obesity. We may also soon know a good bit more about how genes evolve and change over time from the newly sequenced macaque genome.
Finally, if you thought bird flu and monkey pox were bad, wait till you hear about cow tuberculosis! It appears that this potentially lethal infection is, contrary to previous thought, transmissable from human to human. D'oh!
Labels: antibiotic resistance, bacteria, bird flu, bone marrow, bovine, cowboys, cows, evolution, fertility, genes, genome, gonorrhea, macaque, obesity, sex, sperm, STDs, stem cells, TB, tuberculosis
