Researchers build model of human colon and feed it to learn how disease spreads

A researcher at the University of California Riverside spent a year building a model of a human colon out of commonplace materials, then "fed" it with real food, to study how bacteria spreads from feces into the water supply. "I hadn't seen any research done that used a model colon to find out what happened downstream" said Ian Marcus, the recently graduated UC Riverside PhD student who built the system, told The Verge. What Marcus and his colleagues found out is worrisome: when mixed with human...