You Make Me Sick! Podcast

What happens in a hospital when there's a patient outside of the ICU in need of immediate attention? In our latest episode we dive into the role of the Rapid Response RN, who provide interventions to those outside of the ICU in need of urgent and often life saving support! #nursing #healthcare open.spotify.com/episode/32qyFP…

According to a new study, RSV is associated with high rates of complications and death among older adults hospitalized with the condition, and older RSV patients may have worse health outcomes than older adults hospitalized for influenza. Read more: ow.ly/esaT50YIpwp

Increase in chikungunya cases in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, with 4281 cases and 10 deaths reported by epidemiological week 13 of 2026 Read more at: beaconbio.org/en/report/?rep…

$RVMD The news of the day, of the year, is the pancreatic cancer pill [Daraxonrasib] nearly doubled the survival in a second line phase 3. I’m genuinely old enough to remember when progress was measured in weeks, in two months at a time.

Valonia ventricosa, or “sea grape,” is the largest single-celled organism on Earth. It’s three-to-four orders-of-magnitude larger than most “normal” microbes. (Yes, the green ball in the image below is a single cell.) More than 95% of the cell’s volume is taken up by a vacuole. This vacuole is not like cytoplasm; it’s acidic and packed with ions. It’s also filled with big sugar chains, which the cell uses to repair damage on its cell extremities. Each cell has dozens or hundreds of nuclei, pressed tightly against the walls. One cool thing about sea grapes is that (because they are so huge, and visible to the naked eye) you can directly inject them with chemicals. I gave a $1,000 microgrant (courtesy of Astera) to a team of six working on scaling up Valonia cells as "living bioreactors." They are based out of SPLAT, a community lab in Durham, North Carolina. Today, when scientists want to “design” a new metabolic pathway, they often use E. coli. The microbes are engineered to express each gene in the pathway, and then these genes are swapped and replaced until the metabolic network starts working. This takes a lot of work and usually requires months of genetic engineering. But with Valonia, what if we could instead test out metabolic pathways by injecting molecules straight into their vacuole? Perhaps sea grapes could become a sort of self-replicating, cell-free system for prototyping ideas. That's the SPLAT team's idea. I think it's really cool, even though I’m skeptical that Valonia will become a model organism anytime soon. Nobody has ever engineered these cells, for a few reasons: - They have hundreds of nuclei, each sharing a common cytoplasm pool extending as a thin layer around the whole cell. (Perhaps an extrachromosal plasmid would work?) - Their cell walls are thick, so electroporation is unlikely to work. - Nobody knows their genome sequence! - Even if you get DNA inside, you need to make sure that DNA matches the cells’ abnormal genetic code. After millions of years of evolution, Valonia has reassigned its TAG and TAA stop codons to glutamine. There are also issues with injecting chemicals into the vacuole. The vacuole is *not* like cytoplasm; it is acidic and packed with molecules that would likely interfere with proteins. So you’d need to find some way to engineer the vacuole environment, and maintain that environment, before you turn Valonia into a prototyping platform. Not an easy problem to solve! If this idea did pan out, though, the SPLAT team told me that they could transform sea grapes in bulk (”potentially hundreds of thousands at once”) and then grow them to the size of cherries. It’d be a totally new way to prototype metabolic pathways and manufacture chemicals. And despite the barriers, I’m surprised more people are not studying these organisms. At the very least, we should have better microscopy images and a complete genome sequence. So best of luck to the SPLAT team. I’m glad they are working on hard problems!

MIT engineers show they can accurately measure blood glucose by shining near-infrared light on the skin. news.mit.edu/2025/noninvasi…

For Timo, a volunteer electrician from Austria, no two days are the same on board the #GlobalMercy. But what stays constant is the impact, lives being changed right in front of him! Find your place on board at bit.ly/4aJnogh! #MercyShips #HopeandHealing #Volunteer

@healthmap HSV (1&2)!!

This common viral infection can cause painful blisters or sores around the mouth or genitals and can be spread even when no symptoms are visible. What is this disease? #MysteryMonday

HPAI (H5N1) expands to eighth region with detection in wild birds in Los Ríos and Valparaíso regions, Chile Read more at: beaconbio.org/en/report/?rep…

New Asgard paper dropped yesterday. This is only the third Asgard archaeon to be cultured in the laboratory (the first took 10+ years of work.) Many microbiologists think that the Asgard archaea are the closest living relatives of the ancestor that gave rise to eukaryotic cells. They have cellular features that "bridge" bacterial and eukaryotic cells. And this new Asgard species, found off the coast of Western Australia, is interesting for a couple reasons: 1. The Asgard buds off extracellular vesicles, like many other organisms. But these vesicles remain "tethered" to the main cell via a thin fiber. You can see this clearly in the cryotomography images below. I've never seen other examples of this (but maybe microbiologists on Twitter have.) 2. Asgards cannot be cultured on their own. All of the species cultured thus far can only be grown in the presence of a syntroph. This Asgard can only be cultured with a microbe, called S. nilemahensis. The Asgard makes acetate, formate, and lactate for the bacterium; the bacterium, in exchange, makes amino acids and vitamins for the Asgard. (The archaeon seems to entirely lack metabolic pathways for arginine, proline, phenylalanine, and tryptophan.) These nutrients are exchanged via hollow tubes that physically context the Asgard --> bacterium. (See the images below.)

One of the many ways that @BU_Tweets is interconnected with our home city is CEID's partnership with the @museumofscience, offering engaging events about our work fighting infectious disease threats around the world. spr.ly/6019B6IXGX

Rabies deaths reach five-year high amid surge in stray dog attacks in Kerala, India Read more at: beaconbio.org/en/report/?rep…

We have identified many factors that increase the risk of long COVID, but there are others I'm sure that will still be identified with continued research and monitoring. The bottom line is we still have a lot of work to do to better understand this very issue.

Few people realize how fast AI is already revolutionizing surgery! Medivis's SurgicalAR platform for assisting neurosurgeons during surgery just received FDA clearance in Dec 2025. We keep debating whether AI will replace doctors. Meanwhile surgeons are literally seeing through patients with AR navigation in real-time. The right question was never replacement. It was always: what does a surgeon become when they have superhuman perception? We will share a lot more projects in AI & surgery soon from @UHN ! Stay tuned

Hantavirus death in a 15-year-old patient in Chubut Province, Argentina; third case in a family cluster Read more at: beaconbio.org/en/report/?rep…

🩺 🌐 What role does AI have to play in the public health sphere? We asked @AIHealthMIT Public Health Liaison and @MITmedical pediatrician Ed Levy to share his perspective on what he thinks everyone should know during #PublicHealthWeek.

Shionogi secures BARDA contract for cefiderocol for resistant infections & bioterror threats. 💊 The $119 million contract seeks to establish a US manufacturing site for the antibiotic & assess its potential as a treatment for plague & melioidosis. ow.ly/K3Bh50YGuCN

@TrackYourHeart Just had one of our attending physicians educate me on this waveform related to a patient with a SAH. Pretty crazy

1. What is the name of the sign? 2. What condition is it clinically associated with

Biology is built on patterns too complex for us to easily interpret. AI can help bridge the gap, but it’s a two-way exchange: biology inspires AI, and AI delivers back. Here are 7 key takeaways from a recent EMBO | EMBL symposium on AI in life sciences: embl.org/news/science-t…

Stay up to date w/ the latest in chronic wasting disease (CWD). This progressive, fatal neurodegenerative disease affects cervids such as mule deer, black-tailed deer, white-tailed deer, Rocky Mountain elk, sika deer, moose, & wild reindeer. Newsletter: cidrap.umn.edu/newsletter

@bostonradio Marie Fredriksson is one of the most underrated vocalists of that era , and also fought cancer for close to two decades before she passed. Solid band and their songs were staples at my junior high dances.

37 years ago today, April 8, 1989, Sweden’s 🇸🇪Roxette began 1-week run at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 💯 with 'The Look’. It was the band’s first of four #1’s in the US. Roxette was the first non English speaking band that was invited to play on “MTV Unplugged” series. They recorded their show in Stockholm in January 1993.