MicrobeWorld

UK microbiologist Mark Pallen has commissioned a rap version of Darwin's theory of evolution by Baba Brinkman, a former English literature student and Canadian hip hop artist. The idea is that the music can serve as a pedagogical tool for students. There is also a nice video of it on YouTube her... Read More

Take 1 part brewer's yeast, add a gene from a salt marsh plant, grow it with an obscure microbe from a French landfil and viola! Biofuel. Christopher Voigt, a synthetic biologist at UCSF, "and colleagues had assembled the perfect microbial team – A. fermentans converts cellulose into acetate, w... Read More

In just about every major contaminated food scare, Minnesotans become sick by the dozens while few people in Kentucky and other states are counted among the ill. Contaminated peanuts? Forty-two Minnesotans were reported sick compared with three Kentuckians. Jalapeño peppers last year? Thirty-on... Read More

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Scientists in South Dakota are reporting development of the first broad-spectrum antimicrobial paint, a material that can simultaneously kill not just disease-causing bacteria but mold, fungi, and viruses. Designed to both decorate and disinfect homes, businesses, and health-care settings, the p... Read More

Freshwater algae can dance around each other in stable groups, held together only by fluid flows in the surrounding water. In fact they have two dances, the waltz and the minuet. There is a nice video that accompanies this article as well.

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Clostridium botulinum from food 1000x Read More

Scientists at the Cambridge University have discovered that freshwater algae can form stable groupings in which they dance around each other, miraculously held together only by the fluid flows they create. The researchers studied the multicellular organism Volvox, which consists of approximately... Read More

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Another great science music video find. An amusing take on We are the World from Bio Rad who manufactures PCR machines. This is what I would call a viral science video. Obviously they have the money to make this a stellar production. Best lyric "PCR... When You Wanna Know Who Your Daddy is." Read More

This is a very fun video about regulating genes done hip hop style. Read More

I am always skeptical about products that claim to be antibacterial because even though they may have antimicrobial compounds in them, their efficacy is often questionable. Mainly, because their shelf life is limited and no one has really proved how these compounds get out to fight the microbes.... Read More

Goats are tough, spirited animals, but they're no match for scrapie, a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. Now, with a "helping hand" from science, the animals' plight could take a turn for the better. Toward that end, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their collabo... Read More

A researcher from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science has found that transmission of bateriophage between bacteria can occur, and that in the case of E. coli it can transform a harmless bacterium into one capable of causing disease in man. Read More

Eating broccoli sprouts may be an effective way to control the germ that causes most peptic ulcers and is strongly associated with stomach cancer, a small study has found. In the study, published in the April issue of Cancer Prevention Research, researchers examined 50 people who were infected w... Read More

Researchers from ETH Zurich have built E.coli sized robots that they hope will be used for various biomedical applications. "They look like spirals with tiny heads, and screw through the liquid like miniature corkscrews. When moving, they resemble rather ungainly bacteria with long whip-like ta... Read More

Beneficial bacteria, aided by a "cocktail" of potent natural compounds, may offer a way to biologically control soybean cyst nematodes and other crop-damaging roundworms. That's the implication of ongoing studies by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Donald Danforth ... Read More

Earlier this year, Harold and Freda Mitchell of Como, Miss., both came down with a serious stomach bug. At first, doctors did not know what was wrong, but the gastrointestinal symptoms became so severe that Mrs. Mitchell, 66, was hospitalized for two weeks. Her husband, a manufacturing superviso... Read More

We are constantly hearing suggestions to make all data gathered in biology experiments available online. This is an appealing idea because most data that we collect from experiments never sees the light of day. A smattering of our data appears in papers, of course, but we all recognize that this... Read More

Researchers have determined the structure of a key genetic mechanism at work in bacteria, including some that are deadly to humans, in an important step toward the design of a new class of antibiotics, according to an accelerated publication that appeared online April 17 as a "paper of the week"... Read More