MicrobeWorld

Be part of the studio audience for the American Society for Microbiology 2013 General Meeting's live internet talk show, ASM Live. Host Stanley Maloy, Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology and Dean of th... Read More

Could the bacterial populations in your intestines predict the onset of colon cancer? Participants will discuss new research in mouse models that suggests a major shift in microbial population dynamic prior to the onset of tumors as well as the general promise microbiome research holds for the ... Read More

Trypanosome Lytic Factor (TLF) has emerged as a novel arm of innate immunity that is only present in humans and select non-human primates. TLF was originally discovered in human blood as a minor form of High-density lipoprotein (HDL), also known as a good cholesterol, that rapidly kills the Afri... Read More

TEM picture of HEK 293 cells with clatherin coated vesicles

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Robert Koch is one of the key figures in early bacteriology, helping develop culture techniques (e.g. solid media), critical reasoning (e.g. Koch’s postulates), and disease etiology (e.g. cholera and tuberculosis). He also published the first photomicrographs of bacteria (Figure 1A) in his 1877 ... Read More

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, is the process of drilling and injecting fluid into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside. What effect does this process have on the microorganisms that naturally exist in the water in this process?

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The phrase "gut bacteria" might sound icky and repulsive, but modern science may have you soon thinking differently about the bugs that live in your intestinal system. Top researchers around the globe are exploring the bacteria that naturally reside in the bowels of both people and animals, and ... Read More

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are part of the innate immune system that is widely distributed in nature, acting as a defense mechanism against invading microorganisms. AMPs have potent antimicrobial activity against a range of microorganisms including fungi, bacteria and viruses. In view of grow... Read More

There was much written concerning the research published earlier this month in Science, where researchers from China’s Harbin Veterinary Research Institute reported creating an avian H5N1 (highly pathogenic) and pandemic 2009 H1N1 (easily transmissible) hybrid, that according to them, achieved ... Read More

The swine flu virus that caused a 2009 pandemic has been found in elephant seals off the central California coast, according to new research. The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the first report of the virus H1N1 in any marine mammal. Researchers are now being advised to wear protec... Read More

Gram stained slide from oil enrichment culture, samples enriched from soil. I would love to know what the HUGE bacilli are - can anyone help? Read More

Plants associated bacteria play a key role in host productivity and health. These bacteria are phylogenetically diverse and form interactions considered neutral, beneficial or detrimental. A better understanding of these interactions will have a direct impact in agriculture by promoting sustaina... Read More

The emergence of human infections with avian influenza viruses (H7N9 and H5N1) have raised concerns about the virus gaining the ability to spread person-to-person, potentially causing a deadly pandemic. So far the number of human cases has been limited but the mortality rates have been high. In ... Read More

Bacteria that glide together… make art together? This contender in the Art of Science competition run by Princeton University in New Jersey, entitled The history of gliding, depicts the squiggly gliding paths of the bacteria Myxococcus xanthus.

M. xanthus are social bacteria that move in coor... Read More

A cocktail of non-pathogenic bacteria naturally occurring in the digestive tract of healthy humans can protect against a potentially lethal E. coli infection in animal models according to research presented today at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. The researc... Read More

Another major goal of synthetic biology is to engineer unnatural molecules and compounds into systems and tools that mimic those found in biology. For instance, Joanna Aizenberg and her laboratory have pioneered using self-assembling synthetic nanofibers to generate capture-and-release devices t... Read More

Researchers from CNRS, Université Toulouse III -- Paul Sabatier and IRD have elucidated new molecular mechanisms involved in resistance to visceral leishmaniasis, a serious parasitic infection. They have shown that dectin-1 and mannose receptors participate in the protection against the parasite... Read More

I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a labo... Read More

Scientists at the University of California, Davis have engineered a strain of photosynthetic cyanobacteria to grow without the need for light. They report their findings today at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

“In this work, we used synthetic biology appr... Read More

Norovirus is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis in the United States. Each year, it causes about 21 million illnesses and contributes to about 70,000 hospitalizations and 800 deaths. Norovirus is also the most common cause of foodborne-disease outbreaks in the United States. Research... Read More