MicrobeWorld

A proposal by a team of UC Davis scientists to develop the world’s first electron microscope capable of filming live biological processes has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The team’s plan is to extend the capabilities of a powerful new imaging tool ca... Read More

I wonder if this could replace Lipitor?

A novel species of bacteria with cholesterol-busting properties has been discovered by scientists at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Dr Oliver Drzyzga and colleagues isolated the new bug, called Gordonia cholesterolivorans, from sewage slu... Read More

Press release from MIT - An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs - snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in these sin... Read More

This is a great look at how traditional media and new media have impacted the public perception of swine flu/H1N1. Well worth watching. Read More

A goal in fighting influenza is a universal vaccine, one that works on many strains of the pathogen [see “Beating the Flu in a Single Shot”; Scientific American, June 2008]. But the virus’s outer coat, consisting mainly of proteins called hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, frequently mutate, forci... Read More

An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs — snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in these single-celled creatures.

... Read More

Put your tinfoil hat on people! Virologist Adrian Gibbs, a developer of Tamiflu, suspects swine flu may have escaped from a lab. His effort to trace the virus's origins by decoding its genetic blueprint has led him to consider the possibility. In fact, the World Health Organization is taking his... Read More

If your toupe or wig is not feeling so fresh, finally there is a product for you. This has got to be one of the cheesiest commercials I have ever seen for a sanitizing product. Thankfully I still have a full head of hair! Read More