The paper, titled, Expanding the human gut microbiome atlas of Africa, was published today in Nature, the world’s leading scientific journal.

The gut microbiome has a significant impact on human health, and the lack of knowledge of the diversity of microbiomes in Africa has been a barrier to future health interventions and research. 

The study is a critical development in gut health research globally as much more can now be learned, particularly about diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and obesity, and their relationship to gut microbiota. 

The European project PROMICON issues five policy recommendations to support a new method for the production of sustainable bioplastics from microorganisms.

Petrol-based plastics are present in many aspects of our daily lives, from clothing to food packaging. They are often left behind in the environment, where they degrade, breaking into thousands of tiny pieces that harm ecosystems and human health. While biodegradable plastics are seen as a potential solution, their production remains limited, accounting for just 1.3 million tons in 2022 compared to 400 million tons of petrol-based plastics. Many biodegradable plastics also fail to biodegrade efficiently under all environmental conditions such as soil, rivers, and oceans. In this context, researchers from the Horizon 2020 project PROMICON have developed an innovative method that leverages photosynthetic microorganisms (cyanobacteria) to produce polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) – a type of bioplastic that fully degrades in soil, water, and marine environments.

Two new PET radiotracers have outperformed the only currently Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved radiotracer for detecting tau tangles in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. In a head-to-head comparison of the three imaging agents, the next-generation radiotracers exhibited higher binding to Alzheimer’s disease brain tissue and a greater selectivity for identifying the tangles. This research, which was published in the January issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, could play a key role in measuring outcomes of clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease treatments.