The path to history is through the stomach
Friday, January 23, 2009 - 12:42
in Biology & Nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- Helicobacter pylori can cause stomach ulcers and cancers. Over half of the world`s inhabitants carrys this bacterium, but different variants are present on different continents. Up to now, biologists have differentiated between five populations of these bacteria. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin and at the University of Cork in Ireland have now discovered a new population of Helicobacter pylori bacteria that attests to the shared origin of the earliest inhabitants of Australia and New Guinea. (Science, January 23rd, 2009)