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Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have genetically sequenced the whipworm, one of the oldest human parasites, using stool samples from Viking latrines. The mapping depicts the parasite's global distribution and its complex interactions with people, which can both make us healthy and ill. Researchers from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of Copenhagen and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK) have performed the largest and most thorough genetic analysis of the whipworm, one of the oldest parasites found in humans, using fossilized eggs in up to 2500-year-old feces from Viking settlements in Denmark and other nations. The research, which was published in Nature Communications, offers brand-new information regarding the parasite's evolution and early dispersal. This information can be used to make efforts to stop the parasite's proliferation and development of drug resistance. According to the study, over thousands of years, the paras...

Female mosquitoes detect a distinctive concoction of body scents humans release into the atmosphere while they are searching for a human to bite. The mosquitoes' antennae are then stimulated by these scents. To make people invisible to mosquitoes, researchers have attempted eliminating these receptors. However, mosquitoes still manage to bite us despite having an entire family of odor-sensing receptors removed from their genome. Now, a team of researchers revealed that mosquitoes have evolved redundant fail-safes in their olfactory system that make sure they can always perceive our odors, according to a study published in the journal Cell on August 18. According to main author of the study Margo Herre, a professor at Rockefeller University, "mosquitoes are defying all of our beloved norms of how animals sense things." An olfactory neuron in the majority of animals can only recognize one kind of odor. Leslie Vosshall, a professor at Rockefeller University and senior author...