Bacteria have mostly been portrayed as villains that make us sick, but the Human Microbiome Project showed that we share our body with an astounding number of bacteria.

Kate Adamala is a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota. She works on engineering synthetic cells in the lab and on synthetic biology biosafety and security at her desk. View Full Profile ...

Immune cells that eat bacteria in the body don't stash them in specialized compartments as once thought, but turn them into critical nutrients that build proteins, create energy and keep the cells ...