MicrobeWorld

The norovirus (NoV) season in Denmark in late 2012 was characterised by an increase in the number of NoV infections caused mainly by the 2012 Sydney variant, but also by the 2009 New Orleans variant. Analysis of approximately 85% of the capsid gene from 10 Sydney 2012 and 9 New Orleans 2009 isol... Read More

Norman R. Pace, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, pioneered the use of DNA to study microbes. He has searched for extremophiles (organisms that can exist in extreme environments) in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park and once descended in the submersible Alvin to ... Read More

Glowing bacteria inside squids use light and chemical signals to control circadian-like rhythms in the animals, according to a study to be published on April 2 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, houses... Read More

Pharmaceutical experts NSF DBA have created an interactive guide to hand washing.
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In the days following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, methane-eating bacteria bloomed in the Gulf of Mexico, feasting on the methane that gushed, along with oil, from the damaged well. The sudden influx of microbes was a scientific curiosity: Prior to the oil spill, scientists had observed... Read More

Because of their central importance to biology, proteins have been the focus of intense research, particularly the manner in which they are produced from genetically coded templates -- a process commonly known as translation. While the general mechanism of translation has been understood for som... Read More

Hong Kong (CNN) -- Two people in China have died and another remains critical after falling ill with a strain of bird flu not detected before in humans, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. Both of those who died, men aged 27 and 87, lived in Shanghai, while a 35-year-old woman in C... Read More

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a medical instrument that will be able to quickly detect a suite of biothreat agents, including anthrax, ricin, botulinum, shiga and SEB toxin.

The device, once developed, approved by the Food and Drug Administration and commercialize... Read More

The head of the World Health Organization warned the world this week of a new virus, awkwardly dubbed MERS-CoV, found in Saudi Arabia.

"Looking at the overall global situation, my greatest concern right now is the novel coronavirus," Margaret Chan said, calling it "a threat to the entire worl... Read More

As much as dog owners love their children, they tend to share more of themselves, at least in terms of bacteria, with their canine cohorts rather than their kids.

That is just one finding of a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder that looked at the types and transfer modes of m... Read More

A new research project involving researchers from Bath aims to develop novel self-healing concrete that uses an inbuilt immune system to close its own wounds and prevent deterioration.

The life of concrete structures is reduced when the material cracks and water is able to get at the steel re... Read More

Four more people have died from the MERS virus in Saudi Arabia, bringing the death toll from the SARS-like virus in the kingdom to 32, the health ministry has said.

A statement on the ministry's website said on Monday two people had died in the western city of Taif and the other two were pron... Read More

Scientists have combined MRI and imaging mass spectrometry to visualize the body’s inflammatory response to a bacterial infection in 3D. The techniques, described in Cell Host & Microbe, offer opportunities for discovering proteins not previously implicated in the inflammatory response.

Eric ... Read More

Health officials say they still don't understand how a lesser-known bird flu virus was able to kill two men and seriously sicken a woman in China, but that it's unlikely that it can spread easily among humans.

Two men in Shanghai became the first known human fatalities from the H7N9 bird flu ... Read More

Scientists are great at growing E. coli in the lab. They know exactly under which conditions various strains thrive. Unfortunately, there is only so much that can be learned from the bacteria’s behavior in an ideal, isolated and ultimately unrealistic environment. That is why a group of research... Read More

For a fifth-grade science fair, Evie Sobczak found that the acid in fruit could power clocks; she connected a cut-up orange to a clock with wire and watched it tick. In seventh grade, she generated power by engineering paddles that could harness wind. And in eighth grade, she started a project t... Read More

A method that promises to reduce by more than half the time it takes health officials to identify Salmonella strains has been developed by researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

The finding is important because it promises to significantly speed up the response to many ... Read More

Bathing all patients daily with a germ-killing soap and swabbing antibiotic ointment in their noses may be the best way to reduce the spread of deadly infections, including MRSA.

In a new study, these measures reduced the bloodstream infections caused by dangerous pathogens, including the dru... Read More

The word 'unnatural' is often used to describe what's considered weird or unusual. But is anything weirder than nature?

Just look at 17-year cicadas, poised to flood the U.S. East Coast after having stayed underground since Bill Clinton was President. And cicadas are just the start: Biology a... Read More

Researchers and physicians in the field could soon run on-the-spot tests for environmental toxins, medical diagnostics, food safety and more with their smartphones.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the phone's buil... Read More