Erin Garcia de Jesús

Staff Writer

Erin Garcia de Jesús is a staff writer at Science News. She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington, where she studied virus/host co-evolution. After deciding science as a whole was too fascinating to spend a career studying one topic, she went on to earn a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her writing has appeared in Nature News, Science, Eos, Smithsonian Voices and more, and she was the winter 2019 science writing intern at Science News.

All Stories by Erin Garcia de Jesús

  1. Health & Medicine

    Can humans get chronic wasting disease from deer?

    Tests on brain organoids suggest the disease-causing prions face a tough barrier to infect people, but ruling out transmission is a difficult task.

  2. Life

    This protist unfolds its ‘neck’ up to 30 times its body length to scout prey

    With geometry’s help, 'Lacrymaria olor' can extend its long, necklike protrusion in less than 30 seconds.

  3. Health & Medicine

    50 years ago, margarine’s ‘healthy’ reputation began to melt away

    In the 1970s, scientists began to suspect that margarine was bad for heart health. A key component, artificial trans fat, was a major factor.

  4. Health & Medicine

    A protein found in sweat may protect people from Lyme disease

    The protein stopped Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterium that is transmitted by ticks, from growing in dishes or infecting mice.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Bird flu has infected a person after spreading to cows. Here’s what to know

    H5N1 has wreaked havoc on birds around the globe and occasionally made the jump to mammals, including cows. The risk to people remains low.

  6. Animals

    See 3-D models of animal anatomy from openVertebrate’s public collection

    Over six years, researchers took CT scans of over 13,000 vertebrates to make museum collections more easily accessible to researchers and the public.

  7. Genetics

    A genetic parasite may explain why humans and other apes lack tails

    Around 25 million years ago, a stretch of DNA inserted itself into an ancestral ape’s genome, an event that might have taken our tails away.

  8. Animals

    The Brazilian flea toad may be the world’s smallest vertebrate

    Brazilian flea toads are neither a flea nor a toad, but they are almost flea-sized. The frogs are small enough to fit on a pinkie fingernail.

  9. Health & Medicine

    50 years ago, computers helped speed up drug discovery

    In 1974, a computer program helped researchers search for promising cancer drugs. Today, AI is helping speed up drug discovery.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Taking a weight-loss drug reduced a craving for opioids

    Early results from 20 people with opioid use disorder raise hopes that popular weight-loss drugs like Wegovy can tackle opioid addiction, too.

  11. Plants

    Here’s why blueberries are blue

    Nanostructures in a blueberry’s waxy coating make it look blue, despite having dark red pigments — and no blue ones — in its skin, a new study reports.

  12. Animals

    Explore the expected life spans of different dog breeds

    An analysis of dogs in the United Kingdom found that breeds like miniature dachshunds have the longest life spans while bulldogs have the shortest.