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Using bacteria to ferry radioisotopes commonly used in cancer therapy directly into pancreatic cancer cells in mice, researchers in the US were able dramatically to reduce the number of secondary tumors that arise when the cancer spreads to other parts of the body (metastases).
Claudia Gravek... Read More 
Bacteria can be friends and foes—causing infection and disease, but also helping us slim down and even combating acne. Now, a new study reveals that viruses have a dual nature as well. For the first time, researchers have shown that they can help our bodies fight off invading microbes.
"This ... Read More 
A team of researchers has captured images of green alga consuming bacteria, offering a glimpse at how early organisms dating back more than 1 billion years may have acquired free-living photosynthetic cells. This acquisition is thought to have been a critical first step in the evolution of photo...
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday that it would help Saudi Arabia dig deeper into deadly outbreaks of a new SARS-like virus to draw up advice ahead of the annual haj pilgrimage, which attracts millions of Muslims.
The U.N. agency, which is not currently recommending any restr... Read More
One of the things that makes it extremely hard for life to flourish in foreboding places like Mars and the moons of Saturn is the punishing cold. Without the benefit of a blanket-like atmosphere, these celestial bodies have average temperatures well below freezing. Now, researchers from McGill U...
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I went to the General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, in Denver, Colorado, and I wanted to share some of the fascinating science that I experienced. So here's my summary of the first day! {joomp3_ext}http://traffic.libsyn.com/bacteriofiles/BFspecialASM2013-May18.mp3{... Read More Host Vincent Racaniello, co-hosts Moselio Schaechter and Michael Schmidt, and guests highlight research on a phage s... Read More Microbiology is poised to make significant inroads towards reducing dependence on crude oil and petroleum-based products. Join us at ASM headquarters to learn how we can harness the immense metabolic diversity of microbes to generate biofuels and other commodity chemicals from digesti... Read More 
There have been 131 confirmed human infections with avian influenza H7N9 virus in China, but so far there is little evidence for human to human transmission. Three out of four patients report exposure to animals, ‘mostly chickens‘, suggesting that most of the infections are zoonoses. Whether or ...
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Tommy writes: Hi Vincent and Dickson, I was listening to the new episode of TWiP (episode 52) and one of your listeners wrote in asking about tree parasites. While plant parasite is not my main field of research, I have written about one such pa... Read More
Whether the microorganisms routinely inhabit the upper troposphere -- perhaps living on carbon compounds also found there -- or whether they were simply lofted there from the Earth's surface isn't yet known. Airborne microbes are of interest to atmospheric scientists, because they could play a r...
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Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is bad enough, but what if drug resistance also gives bacteria the ability to fend off attacks by the immune system? In a study in mBio this week scientists identify a lose-lose situation with colistin and Acinetobacter baumannii: bacteria resistant to colisti...
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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. ... 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...
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Michael Pollan, food author, activist and journalism professor, wrote this week’s cover story about the organisms with which we share our bodies — and how we’re dependent on them. His book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation” came out last month. His last article for the magazine was ab...
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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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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...
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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...
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