Latest news with #Yersiniapestis
Daily Mirror
19-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Egyptian mummy's 'horrifying fate' changes everything experts know about plague
The oldest confirmed case of the illness shows the bubonic plague circulated in North Africa thousands of years before the Black Death The unearthing of an ancient Egyptian mummy has revealed a terrifying bubonic plague that wreaked havoc on humanity before the infamous Black Death swept across Europe. The earliest confirmed case of the disease indicates the bubonic plague was present in North Africa thousands of years prior to the emergence of the Black Death. The infection, scientifically known as Yersinia pestis, decimated large parts of Europe. However, this new discovery has allowed scientists to gain a deeper understanding of the disease's presence in North Africa and its gradual global spread, according to The Sun. Recent studies have detected traces of Yersinia pestis DNA in prehistoric remains, suggesting the pathogen existed and was circulating thousands of years before the historic pandemic. Until this latest discovery, all ancient examples had been found in Europe and Asia, with some evidence of infection visible in 5,000 year old skeletons in Russia. However, the ancient Egyptian mummy, housed at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, has now shown the plague was also prevalent in North Africa during the early Bronze Age, reports the Mirror US. The mummy contained traces of Yersinia pestis DNA in both the bone tissue and intestines, indicating that the ancient plague had reached advanced stages at the time of the individual's death. The study's researchers stated: "This is the first reported prehistoric Y pestis genome outside Eurasia providing molecular evidence for the presence of plague in ancient Egypt, although we cannot infer how widespread the disease was during this time." Earlier research had hinted at potential outbreaks along the Nile in ancient Egypt. Two decades ago, archaeologists unearthed fleas - the primary carriers of the plague - in Amarna, a village inhabited by the workers who constructed Tutankhamun's tomb. Given that fleas were the main vectors of the plague, experts began to speculate that the disease might have been present in ancient Egypt. Indeed, the Ebers Papyrus, a 3,500 year old medical text, described a disease that "produced a bubo, and the pus has petrified". Some scientists theorise that the disease originated from fleas living on Nile rats, which then transferred to black rats that stowed away on ancient ships, thereby spreading the dreaded Black Death worldwide. However, until this recent discovery, there was little evidence to support this theory. Alarmingly, the bubonic plague has not been entirely eradicated, with a case reported in the US last year. Officials in Pueblo County, Colorado, confirmed in July that an individual had tested positive for the plague. The CDC has recorded 67 confirmed instances of plague in Colorado from 1970 to 2022. The World Health Organisation logged 3,248 cases of the human plague globally between 2010 and 2015, with the bulk of these cases cropping up in Madagascar, Peru, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
News18
05-06-2025
- Health
- News18
What Is Yersinia Pestis, The Plague Bacteria That Has Infected Humans For 5,000 Years?
Last Updated: Though most associate plague with a singular moment in medieval Europe, researchers say the bacteria has been infecting humans for at least 5,000 years The plague that once wiped out millions in Europe hasn't truly vanished, and now scientists are beginning to understand why. A new study published in the journal Science reveals how the deadly bacterium behind the infamous Black Death, Yersinia pestis, evolved over centuries to become less lethal but more persistent, allowing it to survive, spread, and silently persist in the background of human and animal populations for millennia. Though most associate plague with a singular moment in medieval Europe, researchers say the bacteria has been infecting humans for at least 5,000 years, flaring up in three major pandemics, i.e. the Justinian Plague in the 6th century, the Black Death in the 14th century, and a third outbreak that began in 19th-century China. The Black Death alone is estimated to have killed between 30% and 50% of Europe's population in just five years, roughly 25 million people. The answer, scientists believe, lies in its ability to adapt, specifically through changes in a single gene called pla, which produces an enzyme that allows the bacteria to spread through the body by breaking down blood clots. At the height of the Black Death, Yersinia pestis strains were highly lethal, killing victims within days. But as the outbreak continued, researchers have found that the bacteria began to evolve. Mutations in the pla gene led to the emergence of less aggressive strains, ones that killed more slowly, giving the infection more time to move from host to host before the host died. When scientists compared ancient DNA from plague victims with more recent samples, they discovered that the older, weaker strains had fewer copies of the pla gene. Mice infected with this variant took two days longer to die and showed a 10-20% lower mortality rate. That's a small biological shift, but one with enormous implications. By becoming less deadly, the plague became more dangerous in a different way; it spread farther, infected more people, and embedded itself more deeply in human and animal ecosystems. The Plague Hasn't Disappeared While modern medicine has made plague treatable with antibiotics, the disease hasn't been eradicated. Today, it still appears sporadically in remote areas of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and even the western United States. Rodents like prairie dogs and ground squirrels continue to harbour the bacterium, and over 300 rodent species are capable of carrying and spreading it. Dr Deborah Anderson, a researcher involved in the study, said her team is now focusing on how Yersinia pestis cycles between fleas and rodents, especially how changes in the pla gene could determine how outbreaks emerge or fizzle out in animal populations. One of the study's more striking findings relates to how epidemics behave over time. Using mathematical models, scientists observed that during the early phases of an outbreak, both humans and rats die rapidly. But when rodent hosts start dying in large numbers, the bacteria 'learns" to moderate its aggression. In evolutionary terms, a dead host is a dead end, so the plague weakens just enough to keep its hosts alive a little longer, giving itself a better chance to jump to a new one. This self-limiting behaviour can lead to an 'epidemic burnout," where the disease appears to die out, but actually persists, lying dormant in new hosts or new environments. That's likely why weaker strains of the bacterium, with muted pla activity, are still being discovered in modern samples, including a human and two black rats in Vietnam. Lessons from the Plague The tale of the plague isn't just a relic of medieval history. Scientists say it offers valuable lessons for understanding modern pandemics, including Covid-19. Like the plague, the coronavirus has evolved into forms that are less fatal but more transmissible, allowing it to quietly circulate in populations worldwide. The key difference is that we now have the tools to track these changes in real time. What makes Yersinia pestis so scientifically important is the sheer amount of historical genetic data available, spanning thousands of years, an unrivaled resource in the study of infectious disease. In a world where new pathogens can emerge and mutate rapidly, the ancient plague may hold the keys to anticipating what comes next. Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: June 05, 2025, 13:57 IST News world What Is Yersinia Pestis, The Plague Bacteria That Has Infected Humans For 5,000 Years?
7NEWS
03-06-2025
- Health
- 7NEWS
Gene mutation found in the bacterium behind the Black Death helped plague conquer the world, scientists say
One of the bleakest periods in medieval Europe was the plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed at least 25 million people in just five years. But the disease didn't stop there. The plague adapted to keep its hosts alive longer, so it could spread farther and keep infecting people for centuries, and researchers now say they've discovered how. The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which has been circulating among human populations for at least 5000 years. The pathogen has fueled three major plague pandemics since the first century AD, and though its deadliest years appear to be behind us, plague hasn't disappeared. Cases still occur a few times a year in Asia, South America and the United States and more commonly in parts of Africa, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and can be treated with antibiotics. Scientists are still searching for answers about how Y. pestis evolved and dispersed, but recent analysis of ancient and modern Y. pestis samples revealed how plague managed to persist among humans for hundreds of years after pandemic waves petered out. After an initial period of high infection rates and rapid mortality — killing infected people within three days — changes to just one gene in the bacterium produced new strains that were less deadly and more transmissible, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science. Those weakened strains eventually went extinct; the dominant lineage of today's Y. pestis is the deadlier variety, the study authors reported. However, these findings about historic instances of Y. pestis adaptation could provide important clues to help scientists and physicians manage modern plague outbreaks. Trio of outbreaks Plague's most common form is bubonic plague, which causes painful swelling in lymph nodes and spreads among people through bites from fleas hitchhiking on infected rats. An outbreak of bubonic plague from 1347 to 1352 in Europe famously killed about 30 to 50 per cent of the continent's population. But the earliest known bubonic plague outbreak — the Plague of Justinian — took hold in the Mediterranean Basin and lasted from AD 541 to AD 544. Another plague outbreak emerged in China in the 1850s and sparked a major epidemic in 1894. Scientists view modern plague cases as part of this third pandemic. For the new study, scientists collected ancient samples of Y. pestis from human remains dating back to about 100 years after the appearance of the first and second plague pandemics, sampling remains from Denmark, Europe and Russia. After reconstructing the genomes of these plague strains, they compared them with older, ancient strains that dated back to the start of plague pandemics. The researchers also examined more than 2700 genomes of modern plague samples from Asia, Africa, and North and South America. One of the study coauthors, Jennifer Klunk, is a product scientist at Daciel Arbor Biosciences, a biotechnology company in Michigan that provided synthetically created molecules for the experiments, but there was no financial gain associated with the research. The researchers found that their newly reconstructed genomes from 100 years into the first two plague pandemics had fewer copies of a gene called pla, which has been recognised for decades as one of the factors that made plague so deadly, according to the study's co-lead author Ravneet Sidhu, a doctoral student in the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Pla encodes an enzyme that interacts with host proteins, 'and one of the functions that it carries out is in breaking down blood clots,' Sidhu told CNN. This ability helps Y. pestis spread into the host's lymph nodes, where it replicates before attacking the rest of the body. 'Not every function of this gene is fully known,' Sidhu added. However, prior studies by other researchers linked pla to severity of illness caused by both bubonic and pneumonic plague — an airborne form of the disease that affects the lungs, she said. While the reconstructed strains showed fewer copies of the pla gene, the scientists were still uncertain whether that would directly affect how deadly the disease could be. So they tested strains of reduced-pla bubonic plague on mice, and found that survival rates for this type of plague were 10 to 20 per cent higher in those experiment subjects than in mice infected with Y. pestis that had a normal amount of the pla gene. It also took the reconstructed bubonic strain about two days longer to kill its hosts. 'The paper presents a strong argument that depletion, but not total loss, of Pla (the enzyme produced by the pla gene) is part of the evolution of the plague pathogen and may help explain the decline of plague in the second pandemic commonly known as the Black Death,' said Deborah Anderson, a professor of veterinary pathobiology at the University of Missouri's College of Veterinary Medicine. Anderson, who was not involved in the new research, investigates the virulence of plague, and these findings could shed light on transmission patterns in modern cases, she told CNN in an email. 'Our laboratory studies the flea-rodent cycle and we have collaborators who conduct field research in areas that experience annual or occasional plague outbreaks in the wild,' Anderson said. 'There are nearly 300 rodent species that can transmit Yersinia pestis, and today, burrowing rodents such as prairie dogs or ground squirrels are considered key animal hosts that experience outbreaks of disease,' she added. 'After reading this paper, we will pay closer attention to Pla in the future to see if there continues to be a role for its expression in driving the explosive outbreaks of plague in the animal populations.' 'Epidemic burnout' Mathematical models suggested how this might have played out in human populations centuries ago, leading to an 'epidemic burnout' about 100 years after a bubonic plague outbreak. In a pandemic's early stages, infections were swift, and death came quickly for both rats and humans. Over time, as dense rat populations thinned out, selective pressures favoured the emergence of a less deadly strain of Y. pestis, with fewer copies of the pla gene. Rat hosts infected with this new strain would have a little more time to carry the disease, potentially enabling them to infect more rats — and more people. 'They suggest a model that can be readily pursued in the laboratory that may help explain the spread of plague today in the wild,' Anderson said. These weaker strains of the disease eventually sputtered out and went extinct. In the modern samples, the researchers found just three examples of strains with reduced pla genes, from Vietnam: one from a human subject and two from black rats (Rattus rattus). 'We've been able to do this really cool interdisciplinary study between the modern and ancient data and marry these things that have been happening throughout (the plague's) long evolutionary history,' Sidhu said. 'It could be interesting to see how future researchers continue to try and bridge that gap between the modern third pandemic and those first and second ancient pandemics, to see other similarities. Because there aren't a lot of ancient pathogens that we have as much data on, as we do for Yersinia pestis.' One of the unusual features of plague pandemics is their persistence, and understanding how Y. pestis changed its infection patterns and survived over time could shed light on the adaptive patterns of modern pandemics such as COVID-19, she added. 'Even if we aren't experiencing it to the amount that we were in 2020 or 2021, the pathogen is in the background — still evolving and persisting.'
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Gene mutation found in the bacterium behind the Black Death helped plague conquer the world, scientists say
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. One of the bleakest periods in medieval Europe was the plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed at least 25 million people in just five years. But the disease didn't stop there. The plague adapted to keep its hosts alive longer, so it could spread farther and keep infecting people for centuries, and researchers now say they've discovered how. The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which has been circulating among human populations for at least 5,000 years. The pathogen has fueled three major plague pandemics since the first century AD, and though its deadliest years appear to be behind us, plague hasn't disappeared. Cases still occur a few times a year in Asia, South America and the United States and more commonly in parts of Africa, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and can be treated with antibiotics. Scientists are still searching for answers about how Y. pestis evolved and dispersed, but recent analysis of ancient and modern Y. pestis samples revealed how plague managed to persist among humans for hundreds of years after pandemic waves petered out. After an initial period of high infection rates and rapid mortality — killing infected people within three days — changes to just one gene in the bacterium produced new strains that were less deadly and more transmissible, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science. Those weakened strains eventually went extinct; the dominant lineage of today's Y. pestis is the deadlier variety, the study authors reported. However, these findings about historic instances of Y. pestis adaptation could provide important clues to help scientists and physicians manage modern plague outbreaks. Plague's most common form is bubonic plague, which causes painful swelling in lymph nodes and spreads among people through bites from fleas hitchhiking on infected rats. An outbreak of bubonic plague from 1347 to 1352 in Europe famously killed about 30% to 50% of the continent's population. But the earliest known bubonic plague outbreak — the Plague of Justinian — took hold in the Mediterranean Basin and lasted from AD 541 to AD 544. Another plague outbreak emerged in China in the 1850s and sparked a major epidemic in 1894. Scientists view modern plague cases as part of this third pandemic. For the new study, scientists collected ancient samples of Y. pestis from human remains dating back to about 100 years after the appearance of the first and second plague pandemics, sampling remains from Denmark, Europe and Russia. After reconstructing the genomes of these plague strains, they compared them with older, ancient strains that dated back to the start of plague pandemics. The researchers also examined more than 2,700 genomes of modern plague samples from Asia, Africa, and North and South America. One of the study coauthors, Jennifer Klunk, is a product scientist at Daciel Arbor Biosciences, a biotechnology company in Michigan that provided synthetically created molecules for the experiments, but there was no financial gain associated with the research. The researchers found that their newly reconstructed genomes from 100 years into the first two plague pandemics had fewer copies of a gene called pla, which has been recognized for decades as one of the factors that made plague so deadly, according to the study's co-lead author Ravneet Sidhu, a doctoral student in the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Pla encodes an enzyme that interacts with host proteins, 'and one of the functions that it carries out is in breaking down blood clots,' Sidhu told CNN. This ability helps Y. pestis spread into the host's lymph nodes, where it replicates before attacking the rest of the body. 'Not every function of this gene is fully known,' Sidhu added. However, prior studies by other researchers linked pla to severity of illness caused by both bubonic and pneumonic plague — an airborne form of the disease that affects the lungs, she said. While the reconstructed strains showed fewer copies of the pla gene, the scientists were still uncertain whether that would directly affect how deadly the disease could be. So they tested strains of reduced-pla bubonic plague on mice, and found that survival rates for this type of plague were 10 to 20 percent higher in those experiment subjects than in mice infected with Y. pestis that had a normal amount of the pla gene. It also took the reconstructed bubonic strain about two days longer to kill its hosts. 'The paper presents a strong argument that depletion, but not total loss, of Pla (the enzyme produced by the pla gene) is part of the evolution of the plague pathogen and may help explain the decline of plague in the second pandemic commonly known as the Black Death,' said Dr. Deborah Anderson, a professor of veterinary pathobiology at the University of Missouri's College of Veterinary Medicine. Anderson, who was not involved in the new research, investigates the virulence of plague, and these findings could shed light on transmission patterns in modern cases, she told CNN in an email. 'Our laboratory studies the flea-rodent cycle and we have collaborators who conduct field research in areas that experience annual or occasional plague outbreaks in the wild,' Anderson said. 'There are nearly 300 rodent species that can transmit Yersinia pestis, and today, burrowing rodents such as prairie dogs or ground squirrels are considered key animal hosts that experience outbreaks of disease,' she added. 'After reading this paper, we will pay closer attention to Pla in the future to see if there continues to be a role for its expression in driving the explosive outbreaks of plague in the animal populations.' Mathematical models suggested how this might have played out in human populations centuries ago, leading to an 'epidemic burnout' about 100 years after a bubonic plague outbreak. In a pandemic's early stages, infections were swift, and death came quickly for both rats and humans. Over time, as dense rat populations thinned out, selective pressures favored the emergence of a less deadly strain of Y. pestis, with fewer copies of the pla gene. Rat hosts infected with this new strain would have a little more time to carry the disease, potentially enabling them to infect more rats — and more people. 'They suggest a model that can be readily pursued in the laboratory that may help explain the spread of plague today in the wild,' Anderson said. These weaker strains of the disease eventually sputtered out and went extinct. In the modern samples, the researchers found just three examples of strains with reduced pla genes, from Vietnam: one from a human subject and two from black rats (Rattus rattus). 'We've been able to do this really cool interdisciplinary study between the modern and ancient data and marry these things that have been happening throughout (the plague's) long evolutionary history,' Sidhu said. 'It could be interesting to see how future researchers continue to try and bridge that gap between the modern third pandemic and those first and second ancient pandemics, to see other similarities. Because there aren't a lot of ancient pathogens that we have as much data on, as we do for Yersinia pestis.' One of the unusual features of plague pandemics is their persistence, and understanding how Y. pestis changed its infection patterns and survived over time could shed light on the adaptive patterns of modern pandemics such as Covid-19, she added. 'Even if we aren't experiencing it to the amount that we were in 2020 or 2021, the pathogen is in the background — still evolving and persisting.' Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine. She is the author of 'Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind Control' (Hopkins Press).
CNN
03-06-2025
- Health
- CNN
Gene mutation found in the bacterium behind the Black Death helped plague conquer the world, scientists say
One of the bleakest periods in medieval Europe was the plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which killed at least 25 million people in just five years. But the disease didn't stop there. The plague adapted to keep its hosts alive longer, so it could spread farther and keep infecting people for centuries, and researchers now say they've discovered how. The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which has been circulating among human populations for at least 5,000 years. The pathogen has fueled three major plague pandemics since the first century AD, and though its deadliest years appear to be behind us, plague hasn't disappeared. Cases still occur a few times a year in Asia, South America and the United States and more commonly in parts of Africa, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and can be treated with antibiotics. Scientists are still searching for answers about how Y. pestis evolved and dispersed, but recent analysis of ancient and modern Y. pestis samples revealed how plague managed to persist among humans for hundreds of years after pandemic waves petered out. After an initial period of high infection rates and rapid mortality — killing infected people within three days — changes to just one gene in the bacterium produced new strains that were less deadly and more transmissible, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science. Those weakened strains eventually went extinct; the dominant lineage of today's Y. pestis is the deadlier variety, the study authors reported. However, these findings about historic instances of Y. pestis adaptation could provide important clues to help scientists and physicians manage modern plague outbreaks. Plague's most common form is bubonic plague, which causes painful swelling in lymph nodes and spreads among people through bites from fleas hitchhiking on infected rats. An outbreak of bubonic plague from 1347 to 1352 in Europe famously killed about 30% to 50% of the continent's population. But the earliest known bubonic plague outbreak — the Plague of Justinian — took hold in the Mediterranean Basin and lasted from AD 541 to AD 544. Another plague outbreak emerged in China in the 1850s and sparked a major epidemic in 1894. Scientists view modern plague cases as part of this third pandemic. For the new study, scientists collected ancient samples of Y. pestis from human remains dating back to about 100 years after the appearance of the first and second plague pandemics, sampling remains from Denmark, Europe and Russia. After reconstructing the genomes of these plague strains, they compared them with older, ancient strains that dated back to the start of plague pandemics. The researchers also examined more than 2,700 genomes of modern plague samples from Asia, Africa, and North and South America. One of the study coauthors, Jennifer Klunk, is a product scientist at Daciel Arbor Biosciences, a biotechnology company in Michigan that provided synthetically created molecules for the experiments, but there was no financial gain associated with the research. The researchers found that their newly reconstructed genomes from 100 years into the first two plague pandemics had fewer copies of a gene called pla, which has been recognized for decades as one of the factors that made plague so deadly, according to the study's co-lead author Ravneet Sidhu, a doctoral student in the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. Pla encodes an enzyme that interacts with host proteins, 'and one of the functions that it carries out is in breaking down blood clots,' Sidhu told CNN. This ability helps Y. pestis spread into the host's lymph nodes, where it replicates before attacking the rest of the body. 'Not every function of this gene is fully known,' Sidhu added. However, prior studies by other researchers linked pla to severity of illness caused by both bubonic and pneumonic plague — an airborne form of the disease that affects the lungs, she said. While the reconstructed strains showed fewer copies of the pla gene, the scientists were still uncertain whether that would directly affect how deadly the disease could be. So they tested strains of reduced-pla bubonic plague on mice, and found that survival rates for this type of plague were 10 to 20 percent higher in those experiment subjects than in mice infected with Y. pestis that had a normal amount of the pla gene. It also took the reconstructed bubonic strain about two days longer to kill its hosts. 'The paper presents a strong argument that depletion, but not total loss, of Pla (the enzyme produced by the pla gene) is part of the evolution of the plague pathogen and may help explain the decline of plague in the second pandemic commonly known as the Black Death,' said Dr. Deborah Anderson, a professor of veterinary pathobiology at the University of Missouri's College of Veterinary Medicine. Anderson, who was not involved in the new research, investigates the virulence of plague, and these findings could shed light on transmission patterns in modern cases, she told CNN in an email. 'Our laboratory studies the flea-rodent cycle and we have collaborators who conduct field research in areas that experience annual or occasional plague outbreaks in the wild,' Anderson said. 'There are nearly 300 rodent species that can transmit Yersinia pestis, and today, burrowing rodents such as prairie dogs or ground squirrels are considered key animal hosts that experience outbreaks of disease,' she added. 'After reading this paper, we will pay closer attention to Pla in the future to see if there continues to be a role for its expression in driving the explosive outbreaks of plague in the animal populations.' Mathematical models suggested how this might have played out in human populations centuries ago, leading to an 'epidemic burnout' about 100 years after a bubonic plague outbreak. In a pandemic's early stages, infections were swift, and death came quickly for both rats and humans. Over time, as dense rat populations thinned out, selective pressures favored the emergence of a less deadly strain of Y. pestis, with fewer copies of the pla gene. Rat hosts infected with this new strain would have a little more time to carry the disease, potentially enabling them to infect more rats — and more people. 'They suggest a model that can be readily pursued in the laboratory that may help explain the spread of plague today in the wild,' Anderson said. These weaker strains of the disease eventually sputtered out and went extinct. In the modern samples, the researchers found just three examples of strains with reduced pla genes, from Vietnam: one from a human subject and two from black rats (Rattus rattus). 'We've been able to do this really cool interdisciplinary study between the modern and ancient data and marry these things that have been happening throughout (the plague's) long evolutionary history,' Sidhu said. 'It could be interesting to see how future researchers continue to try and bridge that gap between the modern third pandemic and those first and second ancient pandemics, to see other similarities. Because there aren't a lot of ancient pathogens that we have as much data on, as we do for Yersinia pestis.' One of the unusual features of plague pandemics is their persistence, and understanding how Y. pestis changed its infection patterns and survived over time could shed light on the adaptive patterns of modern pandemics such as Covid-19, she added. 'Even if we aren't experiencing it to the amount that we were in 2020 or 2021, the pathogen is in the background — still evolving and persisting.' Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine. She is the author of 'Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind Control' (Hopkins Press).
