MicrobeWorld

Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said Friday it has successfully produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of expectations.

The vaccine was made in cells, rather than grown in eggs as is usually the case with vaccines, the company said.

The announcement comes a day a... Read More

Al Gore's interactive, old school broadcasting meets new media, website Current.tv has highlighted a recent interview on deliatheartist.com with science comedian Brian Malow.

Two years ago, MicrobeWorld actually caught up with Malow at an event at the Koshland Museum in DC in which he present... Read More

Neisseria meningitidis. Differential sugar reactions. (1-8) Read More

Some disease-causing bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics because they have peculiar sex lives, say researchers publishing new results in the journal Science. The new study helps scientists understand how bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, which is a major challenge for those ... Read More

A letter to Nature by researchers from the Universities of Hong Kong, Edinburgh, Arizona, and Oxford claims "a phylogenetic estimate of the gaps in genetic surveillance indicates a long period of unsampled ancestry before the S-OIV [H1N1] outbreak, suggesting that the reassortment of swine linea... Read More

A press release via EurekAlert issued by Howard Hughes Medical Institute:

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers are reporting the first detailed molecular snapshots of a deadly gastrointestinal virus as it is caught in the grasp of an immune system molecule with the capacity to destroy ... Read More

"Bacteria have very peculiar sex lives. When humans have kids they mix up their DNA with that of their partner, but bacteria can pick up DNA from all sorts of places, even other species. Our research shows that bacteria which do this, that is undergo sex, with their own and other species are mor... Read More

The Secretary of Health and Human Services issued this video statement in response to the WHOs decision to raise the pandemic threat level on the novel H1N1 virus. Read More

Just when you thought that everything conceivable has been written about Charles Darwin on his bicentennial, a revealing perspective on his wife, Emma, appeared in the journal International Microbiology. Written by the distinguished science writer Mercé Piqueras, the article sheds light on many ... Read More

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued the following statements today in response to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision to raise the pandemic threat level on the novel H1N1 vi... Read More

A government report on food hygiene and safety said that many vegetables and fruits contain pesticides and chemicals, meats and meat products contain bacteria and over 60 million Vietnamese people have parasitic worms in their bodies.

Random tests of fruits and vegetables in Hanoi and Vinh Ph... Read More

Sick but still going to work? You'll probably end up taking more sick days in the future than colleagues who stay at home when unwell, according to a Swedish study.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet of Stockholm found that employees who often go to work feeling sick -- termed "sickness... Read More

Scientists have used genetic engineering to tame one of the most deadly food poisoning microbes and turn it into a potential new way of giving patients medicine and vaccines in pills rather than injections. The study is in the current issue of ACS’ Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal.
... Read More

A soil microbe that uses chemical warfare to fight off competitors employs an unusual chemical pathway in the manufacture of its arsenal, researchers report, making use of an enzyme that can do what no other enzyme is known to do: break a non-activated carbon-carbon bond in a single step.

The... Read More

Bioremediation of industrial sites and petrochemical spillages often involves finding microbes that can gorge themselves on the toxic chemicals. This leaves behind a non-toxic residue or mineralized material. Writing in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution, researchers in China... Read More

Here's a collection of presentations from Princeton's 2009 Spring Biosecurity Seminar Lectures. Presentations include:

Feb. 20 - George Hughes Senior Advisor, Counterterrorism and Intelligence FDA Office of Criminal Investigations
Title: " Read More

This is an amazing story:

"For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.

Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, cou... Read More

The San Francisco Chronicle has published a light-hearted interview with J. Craig Venter, "one of the leading scientists of the 21st century, a man who has rattled the establishment, turned biology into a high-stakes race and was the first human being to have his entire genome sequenced." I say ... Read More

PPPPAAAAANNNNNDDDDDEEEEMMMMMIIIIIICCCCCCC!!!!

The World Health Organization told its member nations it was declaring a swine flu pandemic Thursday — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years — as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.

In a ... Read More

Breaking News from the WHO via SkyNews:

In a statement to member countries, the WHO said it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase five to six, meaning that a global outbreak of swine flu has begun.

The decision was made after the UN health agency held an emergency meeting on... Read More