A big part of what makes me happy is that this seems quite niche to me, but it's getting a ton of attention which suggests people care about this more than I realized. That feels good! This is a huge deal for biodiversity in a huge swath of the Pacific Ocean.
Gehman's colleague Melanie Prentice, also with the Hakai Institute and UBC, had begun reviewing the sequencing analysis. Scrolling through data on her laptop, an unmistakable pattern jumped out. Of the hundreds of microorganisms in the samples, enormous quantities of bacteria from the genus Vibrio seemed present in sick stars. The pattern was so strong, Prentice tells me, that she assumed she'd bungled the analysis.
[0] Trying to make sense of the hype around some of these: https://fortune.com/2025/07/06/deepmind-isomorphic-labs-cure...
Some are able to easily overpower our immune systems.
sans_souse•2d ago