MicrobeWorld

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today is the world's largest biomedical research institution, but back in 1887 it began its existence as a one-man immigrant quarantine station on Staten Island. The authors of a Minireview in mBio today tell the story of NIH's early growth with a biograph... Read More

Have you ever forgotten to buy milk when you go to the grocery store? How about missing someone’s birthday? Because of the fast-paced world we live in, there are always going to be things that we forget to do. Some of them are more important than others. Bills need to be paid on time or we get f... Read More

Lack of exposure to amniotic fluid could be the reason that preterm infants are more susceptible to a serious gastrointestinal inflammatory disease.

In an early online report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and Uni... Read More

University of Georgia scientists have discovered a new flu-fighting role for a well-known component of the immune system. Kimberly Klonowski, assistant professor of cellular biology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and her colleagues found that administering a cell-signaling pro... Read More

A scientific endeavour carried out by two French groups belonging to INSERM and CNRS at Aix-Marseilles University shows for the very first time that both bacterium adhesion to and bacterium motion on a surface are driven by the same mechanism (see paper in PNAS: "Wet-surface–enhanced ellipsometr... Read More

A new estimate places the number of people killed by the pandemic influenza A H1N1 strain worldwide at 284,400, about 15 times greater than the number of reported laboratory-confirmed cases, researchers found.

But the estimate spans a range as low as 151,700 and as high as 575,400 during the ... Read More

Staying safe at the beach involves more than just sunscreen and lifeguards. Beaches and oceans are prone to unhealthy levels of bacteria which can cause sickness in people. Pathogens make their way into the water and onto the sand from many sources, including but not limited to, animal and hu... Read More

The very word infection brings to mind the arrival of a nasty pathogen countered by a host immune response, a battleground strewn with the carcasses of the losers. But how do you define infection? Is not the beginning of an endosymbiosis, even a mutually beneficial one, also an infection? Corals... Read More

Since ancient times, mind control has been one of the holy grails of human manipulation. Militaries in particular have been looking for ways to create the "Manchurian Candidate" through a variety of means including hypnosis, electric shock, drugs and "neurosurgical techniques," which include lob... Read More

You can stop searching for a rainbow pooping unicorn now - if that's your thing - because scientists have come up with a way to bring that sort of colour to your very own toilet bowl. But the rainbow shades in your modified poo are all aimed at telling you how healthy you are or what could b... Read More

A wonderful musical A - Z of nasty microbes and related topics. By Jennifer Gardy and friends. Read More

The human gut is home to a teeming ecosystem of microbes that is intimately involved in both human health and disease. But while the gut microbiota is interacting with our body, they are also under constant attack from viruses. In a study published online in Genome Research , researchers have an... Read More

This episode: Scientists use a modified rabies virus to map brain connections!

Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Vanessa Cowton, Mary Holton, Mark Robinson, Swetha Vijayakrishnan, and Gavin Wilkie

Vincent returns to t... Read More

Convulsions in children immunized with a CSL Ltd. (CSL) flu shot probably were caused by an excessive immune response to viral components in the vaccine, according to preliminary findings of a two-year study.

Use in children younger than 6 years of CSL’s Fluvax vaccine, to protect against the... Read More

Scientists may have hit gold in their fight against dengue. They have located a human antibody that can neutralise and kill its virus within two hours.

Significantly, they have also identified a way to reproduce this antibody in large quantities, potentially opening the door to a cure for den... Read More

Last weeks post on the changing composition of bacteria in the vagina generated a lot of interest, and as there’s been quite a of talk about the human microbiome (all the bacteria that live on the human body) at the moment I thought I’d stick with the theme. This weeks post is about how bacteria... Read More

Scientists in the US have used an optical-frequency comb – a laser that emits light at a range of equally spaced frequencies, like the teeth on a comb – to monitor how well a device designed to kill dangerous bacteria does its job. The comb was used to measure the concentrations of ozone, hydrog... Read More

Some lessons and notes from the ASM meeting from Jonathan Eisen on "The Tree of Life" Read More

Notes and links relating to meeting of the Genomics Standards Consortium (GSC13) session on microbiology of the built environment. Read More