Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

Happy Monday listeners. For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Thman. Let's kick off the week by catching up on some of the science news you may have missed.

First, a quick bird flu update. If you're a regular listener, you already know that H5N1 bird flu has been circulating

in U.S. cattle for almost a year. That's been thanks to a type called B3.13. Now, a different

variant of H5N1 that had been circulating in birds, known as the D1.1 genotype, has shown up in

six herds in Nevada. This suggests that our current outbreak involved more than one spillover event,

or an instance when a bird transmitted H5N1 to a cow.

We don't know when the D1.1 variant hopped over to cattle or how widely it's circulating.

People have previously been infected with D1.1, including two severe cases, and NPR reports that scientists have speculated that this genotype might be more dangerous to humans.

D1.1 was also responsible for the first U.S. death from H5N1 flu, when someone in Louisiana caught it from backyard flocks.

Let's move on to some other health news.

Last Monday, a study in nature medicine reported surprisingly high amounts of

microplastic in human brain tissue.

Researchers looked at tissue samples from the brains, kidneys, and livers of 52 cadavers,

and found that the brains contained

7 to 30 times higher concentrations of microplastics than those other organs. They also noted

that the average concentration of microplastics in the brain rose by 50% from 2016 to

2024. The scientists found that the average amount of microplastics in the brains of individuals who died last year

...