MicrobeWorld

Lecture by C. Erec Stebbins, Associate Professor, The Rockefeller University

When it comes to the evolution of life on earth, those who have been here longest have seniority. And after four billion years, bacteria reign supreme. Unfortunately for us, some of them have been using that time to ... Read More

Like humans, mice can become infected with Borrelia. However, not all mice that come into contact with these bacteria contract the dreaded Lyme disease: Animals with a particular gene variant are immune to the bacteria, as scientists from the universities of Zurich and Lund demonstrate. Wild mic... Read More

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have found an effective method to infect house flies with a virus that stops the flies from reproducing.

House flies can transmit hundreds of animal and human pathogens like Salmonella, Escherichia coli and Shigella bacteria, which cause foodbo... Read More

Microbes turn nutrient in beef into an artery-clogging menace. Lean steak is low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein — qualities normally considered healthy. But eating a lot of it can still cause heart disease. Researchers have now laid the blame on bacteria in the human gut that convert... Read More

Few people check into a hospital expecting to come down with a severe case of diarrhea while undergoing care for an entirely unrelated problem. And even fewer expect to die of the hospital-acquired intestinal infection that causes the watery stools. Yet for approximately 14,000 Americans each ye... Read More

In a recent study published in PNAS, Houry and collaborators used time-lapse microscopy to monitor the biofilms formed by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis and noted that a small subset (0.1 to 1%) of all the cells in the biofilm were motile. The rest of the cells were sessile and immobile ex... Read More

Without the awesome power of microbes, these wonders of the ancient world would never have been built! Everyone knows about the awesome number of stone blocks and huge manpower requirements, but few know the important role that yeast had to play in building the pyramids. Read More

So far there have only been isolated cases of bird flu in humans, and no widespread transmission as the H5N1 virus can’t replicate efficiently in the nose. The new study, using weakened viruses in the lab, supports the conclusions of controversial research published in 2012 which demonstrated th... Read More

This episode: A virus has borrowed a bacterium's defenses to infect better!

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Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More

Jane Lanhee Lee reports on a new spate of bird flu cases in China that has alarmed citizens grappling with earlier livestock-related health scares and reticent authorities.

(Click source to watch) Read More

Chinese authorities slaughtered over 20,000 birds at a poultry market in Shanghai on Friday as the death toll from a new strain of bird flu mounted to six, spreading concern overseas and sparking a sell-off in airline shares in Europe and Hong Kong.

The local government in Shanghai said th... Read More

National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have developed a model of infection in rhesus macaques that will help scientists around the world better understand how an emerging coronavirus, first identified in September 2012, affects people. The virus has so far infected at least 17 people in... Read More

Thousands of women suffer from overactive bladder (OAB) or the sudden need to urinate, yet many don’t get relief from medication. Researchers at Loyola University Health System believe certain bacteria may be to blame.

Loyola has launched a clinical trial to determine if the bacteria present ... Read More

Viruses have historically been classified into one of two types – those with an outer lipid-containing envelope and those without an envelope. For the first time, researchers at the University of North Carolina have discovered that hepatitis A virus, a common cause of enterically-transmitted hep... Read More

THE WORLD witnessed only 223 polio cases last year, the lowest level in history and an impressive advance from the hundreds of thousands of children afflicted as recently as the 1980s. However, the eradication quest is not over, and the next steps look difficult. The Global Polio Eradication Ini... Read More

Seeing the mosquito-transmitted chikungunya virus pathogen at very high resolution while it’s bound to antibodies could lead to vaccines for the disease. The infection causes symptoms similar to dengue fever, followed by a prolonged disease that affects the joints and causes severe arthritis. In... Read More

A new study which was performed jointly at Umeå university and the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, discovered that bacteria can degrade the cell membrane of bacterial competitors with enzymes that do not harm their own membrane. This exciting finding opens the way for the development o... Read More

Microbiologist parents of newborns or expecting microbiologists now have a way to indoctrinate their wee little ones with an exciting new book for infants entitled "Baby's First Microbiology Book." Help baby learn about all the important little creatures! The pictures are: a microscope, bacteria... Read More

China said it was mobilizing resources nationwide to combat a new strain of deadly bird flu that has killed four people, as Japan and Hong Kong stepped up vigilance against the virus and Vietnam banned imports of Chinese poultry.

The H7N9 bird flu strain does not appear to be transmitted fro... Read More