MicrobeWorld

On a recent episode of TWiV, we posed the question, 'Can computer viruses evolve'? and asked listeners to weigh in. The author of the blog nostacktrace spent some time thinking about this issue and concludes that the evolution of real computer programs doesn't really work. Software instructions ... Read More

Medical experts will be watching closely Monday when a scientist who says she has been intermittently paralyzed by a virus designed at the Pfizer laboratory where she worked in Groton opens a much anticipated trial that could raise questions about safety practices in the dynamic field of genetic... Read More

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Scott Yates is studying how oxytetracycline (OTC), an antibiotic that is administered to animals, breaks down in cattle manure.

Livestock producers in the United States often use antibiotics to control disease in their animals, and confined U.S. l... Read More

Changes to the 2010 Canadian Federal Budget will be deleterious to current and prospective Canadian Post Doctoral Fellows. Please sign this petition to help us recruit and retain these promising new scientists and maintain our status as a country that values its scientists and is a significant c... Read More

On episode #73 of the podcast This Week in Virology, Vincent, Dickson, and Rich discuss multipotent progenitor bone marrow cells as a reservoir of HIV-1, integration of HHV-6 into telomeres, a... Read More

Year after year, legislation intended to preserve the effectiveness of available antibiotics by limiting their use in livestock is shot down. The latest bills introduced in both houses of Congress have been stalled for close to a year.

Banning the use of antibiotics in perfectly healthy anima... Read More

While astronomers scour the skies for signs of life in outer space, biologists are exploring an enormous living world buried below the surface of the Earth.

Scientists estimate that nearly half the living material on our planet is hidden in or beneath the ocean or in rocks, soil, tree roots, ... Read More

In an on-going study at the University of Rochester Medical Center, scientists have come across a new form of inheritance which would probably astonish Mendel himself. Research has shown that parents pass on the human herpes virus 6 “HHV-6″ to their offspring because the virus has integrated its... Read More

Selective losses of human-associated microorganisms may be responsible for a wide range of modern ailments, including esophageal diseases, obesity, asthma, and the epidemic spread of high-grade pathogens, according to Martin Blaser from New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City... Read More

Have you been following the strange story of the heroin addicts in Scotland who have been contracting anthrax infections? Two more addicts are being treated, according to a report we picked up on Promed, a clearinghouse for infectious disease news. Since December, 10 people have died in Scotlan... Read More

Once upon a time, in 2003, a French team discovered a giant virus infects amoeba. It was isolated from a cooling tower in the UK. They were so excited because it was so huge with a genome contains 900 protein-encoding genes (The words giant/ huge are totally hilarious. It’s not “Hulk”, it’s just... Read More

Today's decision by a federal court that the preservative thimerosal does not cause autism has sparked a lot of comment in the autism community, most of it negative. Many saw it as a government conspiracy to protect the vaccine industry, a claim that has also been made about the swine flu vacci... Read More

The weird world of quantum mechanics describes the strange, often contradictory, behaviour of small inanimate objects such as atoms. Researchers have now started looking for ways to detect quantum properties in more complex and larger entities, possibly even living organisms.

A German-Spanish... Read More

To help average Americans do something to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, several foundations and travel companies, in cooperation with the United Nations, are starting a campaign to allow travelers to donate $2 every time they pay for a flight, a rental car or a hotel room.

The campai... Read More

Ginger Campbell, M.D., emergency room physician and host of the popular Brain Science Podcast, has created a site that highlights over 40 science-related podcasts. While all of MicrobeWorld's podcasts are represented on the site there are also some other great offerings, including:

* ACS ... Read More

The second RNA segment of some influenza virus strains encodes a protein called PB1-F2 that might contribute to virulence. Speaking about the 2009 pandemic H1N1 strain, Peter Palese noted that “If this virulence marker is necessary for an influenza virus to become highly pathogenic in humans or ... Read More

Texas-based Glycos Biotechnologies Inc. is producing lactic acid and advanced ethanol in a pilot commercial-size facility with the capacity to produce 150,000 liters of chemicals. It’s a major benchmark in the company’s quest to commercialize its microbial technology.

The biochemical company ... Read More

Did you know that ASM International Fellows may now travel anywhere in the world to perform research?

These Fellowships are offered to promising young investigators in Africa, Asia (including Eastern Europe and Russia) and Latin America and the Caribbean who are within five years of obtainin... Read More

The common idiom states that pigs cannot fly. I don’t think this statement can be easily debated. However, the swine flu viruses now seem to have flown around the globe quickly... Read More

Scientists studying the Anopheles gambiae mosquito -- the main vector of malaria -- have found that when the mosquito takes a blood meal, that act triggers two enzymes to form a network of crisscrossing proteins around the ingested blood. The formation of this protein barrier, the researchers f... Read More