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Bacterial infection is resurging as one of the most dangerous challenges facing the medical establishment. Americans spend about 55 to 70 billion dollars per year on antibiotics, yet these antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective as illness-causing bacteria gain resistance to the prescribed drugs. We tested if 11 commonly-used spices could inhibit growth of the gram-negative bacteria, E. coli, the main takeaway from these experiments is that certain spices and herbs have antibacterial effects that inhibit growth of E.coli , and these spices could show similarly promising activity towards other bacteria.

Excess sucrose consumption has been associated with several health problems, including inflammation and potential negative effects on immune function. However, the exact relationship between sucrose intake and immunity remains unclear, especially during bacterial infections. This study examined how sucrose intake affected the survival of fruit flies following oral infection with the bacterial pathogen Serratia marcescens.

Here the authors investigated the natural recovery of stress-induced dopamine-related gene deficits in C. elegans by measuring the expression of cat-2 (dopamine biosynthesis) and sod-2 (oxidative stress) following exposure to starvation or hydrocortisone. They found that the reversibility of sod-2 and the expression of cat-2 were highly dependent on the type and severity of the stressor, suggesting that the body's natural ability to recover from dopamine dysfunction has biological limitations.

Aquaponics (the combination of aquatic plant farming with fish production) is an innovative farming practice, but the fish that are typically used, like tilapia, are expensive and space-consuming to cultivate. Medina and Alvarez explore other options test if mosquitofish are a viable option in the aquaponic cultivation of herbs and microgreens.

Here the authors performed a comparative analysis to investigate the viability of using PLAY® instead of fetal bovine serum (FBS) as a growth medium to culture cells with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

The authors looked at whether traditional Chinese medicine remedies that target the lungs and liver would reduce inflammation in a planaria model. They found that the two active compounds they tested were able to decrease induced inflammation by 97-98%.

The authors looked at phytoremediation, the process by which plants are used to remove pollutants from our environment, and the ability of Lemna minor to perform phytoremediation in various simulated polluted environments. The authors found that L. minor could remove pollutants from the environment and that the addition of bacteria increased this removal.

Quorum sensing (QS) is the process in which bacteria recognize and respond to the surrounding cell density, and it can be inhibited by certain antimicrobial substances. This study showed that illumination intensity data is insufficient for evaluating QS activity without proper statistical modeling. It concluded that modeling illumination intensity through time provides a more accurate evaluation of QS activity than conventional cross-sectional analysis.

The authors set out to develop an electrochemical device that would have efficient and sustained carbon dioxide capture.

In this study, the authors investigate the suitability of using bacterial cellulose as a scaffold for cell transplants. Interestingly, this cellulose is a can be found in the discard from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) used to make kombucha.