How dogs are helping us understand human allergies
If your dog has allergies, chances are you do too. Thanks, microbes
Iโm a PhD student in Biological Engineering at MIT. Around two billion people in the world are infected with a microscopic bug called Mycobacterium Tuberculosis. Despite this, only a fraction develop tuberculosis. And a fraction of those infected โ almost 5,000 a day โ die. I put on Stranger Things-esque protection equipment and probe these bacteria to ask, what allows them bacteria to win this tug-of-war? To understand this variation, I look at how both human and bacteria cells change on a genetic level in response to each other, as a member of the Blainey Lab, located in the Broad Institute, and Bryson Lab, located in the Ragon Institute and MIT.
If your dog has allergies, chances are you do too. Thanks, microbes
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