MicrobeWorld

Be part of the studio audience for the 2012 General Meeting's live internet talk show, ASM Live. Host Stanley Maloy, Chair of the Communications Committee for the American Society for Microbiology will discuss hot topics at the meeting with presenters and will take questions from audience and... Read More

Researchers have discovered that the pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine can generate antibodies that protect against a variety of flu strains.

The discovery brings scientists closer to designing a “universal” influenza vaccine that reliably induces broadly cross-reactive antibodies at sufficiently hi... Read More

Herpes and other viruses that attack the nervous system may thrive by disrupting cell function in order to hijack a neuron's internal transportation network and spread to other cells.

Princeton University researchers made the first observation in neurons that common strains of the herpes viru... Read More

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a novel approach for eradicating drug-resistant bacteria from wounds and skin infections, using light to trigger the controlled release of nitric oxide. The UCSC team developed a photoactive compound that releases nitric oxide when exposed to light, an... Read More

Microscopic pathogens have been causing mass coral die-offs around the world. But now researchers are using high-speed video to spy on the behavior of killer microbes and potentially learn how to better manage coral disease.

“We finally have the tools to watch how bacteria behave in the ocean... Read More

For 50 years scientists have been unsure how the bacteria that gives humans cholera manages to resist one of our basic innate immune responses. That mystery has now been solved, thanks to research from biologists at The University of Texas at Austin.

The answers may help clear the way for a n... Read More

El podcast del Microbio Nº 284 summarize the paper by Tong et al published in PNAS about the finding of a distinct lineage of in... Read More

In a fjord in Canada scientists have found a landscape similar to one of Jupiter's icy moons: Europa. It consists of a frozen and sulphurous environment, where sulphur associated with Arctic bacteria offer clues for the upcoming missions in the search for traces of life on Europa.

It is not e... Read More

Doctors can now get a peek behind the eardrum to better diagnose and treat chronic ear infections, thanks to a new medical imaging device invented by University of Illinois researchers. The device could usher in a new suite of non-invasive, 3-D diagnostic imaging tools for primary-care physician... Read More

One year on from Europe’s worst recorded outbreak of Escherichia coli infection, governments have made little progress towards improving the monitoring and reporting systems that allowed the crisis to drag on for weeks. The disease, which was spread by contaminated fenugreek sprouts, swept acros... Read More

The discovery of a mummified Korean child with relatively preserved organs enabled an Israeli-South Korean scientific team to conduct a genetic analysis on a liver biopsy which revealed a unique hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotype C2 sequence common in Southeast Asia.

Additional analysis of the ... Read More

Mice and monkeys don't develop diseases in the same way that humans do. Nevertheless, after medical researchers have studied human cells in a Petri dish, they have little choice but to move on to study mice and primates.

University of Washington bioengineers have developed the first structure... Read More

New software combines ancient Chinese practices and modern medicine to measure health by analyzing images of the tongue.

For 5,000 years, the Chinese have used a system of medicine based on the flow and balance of positive and negative energies in the body. In this system, the appearance of t... Read More

Bruce Walker, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard, talks about his article in the July issue of Scientific American magazine called Controlling HIV, about rare individuals who never develop AIDS af... Read More

In the search for technology by which economically competitive biofuels can be produced from cellulosic biomass, the combination of sugar-fermenting microbes and ionic liquid solvents looks to be a winner save for one major problem: The ionic liquids used to make cellulosic biomass more digestib... Read More

Buried under the seafloor for 86 million years, a bacterial community lives so slowly it's still surviving on a "lunch box" from dinosaur days, a new study says. (See marine-microbe pictures.)

It's been known since the 1990s that microbes can live trapped in ocean sediments for millions of ye... Read More

A spice used in curry dishes helps to prevent infection and now scientists think they've got a lead on how.

Curcumin is a compound found in turmeric, a flavourful, orange and yellow spice that is a key ingredient in South Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine. The spice has also been used in India... Read More

Although the vast majority of sinus infections are caused by viruses, bacteria are likely to be the culprits in specific circumstances, and in those instances, antibiotics should be used.


This information comes from a new guideline issued by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) ... Read More

Last March, there was a measles outbreak in the Spanish town of Alicante due to the lack of effective vaccination as a result of... Read More

Giving the flu vaccine to pregnant women may bring significant benefits to their babies even before birth, a new study has found.

Canadian researchers studied the records of 55,570 mothers of singletons, of whom 23,340 were vaccinated during pregnancy from November 2009 through April 2010. Co... Read More