Bacteria

“The function of xylem's filtration formed the basis of a paper published this week by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” Jason Tetro writes of Rohit Karnik’s work with water filtration in the Huffington Post. “The premise was that xylem could help to filter water and make it safe to drink.”

The New York Times examines the work of MIT startup OpenBiome, which is aimed at providing doctors with, “safe, inexpensive fecal material from screened donors to treat patients with Clostridium difficile.”