MicrobeWorld

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Vincent and Dickson reveal... Read More

Seeing how the Hepatitis C virus builds ion channels could help researchers find new drugs to fight the disease. Viruses are masters of minimalist design. With only a simple genome and a handful of proteins, a virus can hijack much more sophisticated cells and mimic many of the intra- and inter-... Read More

UI-led team creates first comprehensive guidelines to reduce staph infections after surgery. Staph infections in hospitals are a serious concern, so much so that the term Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is as commonly known as MRI. Far less known is that in many of these cases... Read More

Strains of E. coli that produce the Shiga toxin last longer in lake water. The toxin appears to help E. coli fend off predators. “The take-home lesson is that E. coli that produce Shiga toxin persisted longer in recreational water than E. coli that don’t produce this toxin,” says study leader Ge... Read More

Bioluminescent art blends science and creativity to create images that can only be seen in the dark. What do you get when you add a chemical engineer, a graphic designer and a research scientist? Beautiful art. In a wondrous combination of nature and design, bioluminescent art involves using nat... Read More

There’s a surprising connection between HIV, Ebola, and viruses that infect organisms called archaea that grow in volcanic hot springs.

The viruses hijack the same set of proteins to break out of infected cells, new research shows.

In eukaryotes—the group that includes plants and animals—a... Read More

The Supreme Court said human genes isolated by scientists may not be patented, ruling unanimously today in a dispute weighing intellectual property associated with genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer.

The dispute concerned a 2009 lawsuit filed by the American Civil ... Read More

Now that the mammalian intestinal microbiome has been promoted to organ status, might not such stately respectability be granted to the gut microbiota of other metazoans? If looking for a worthy candidate for such recognition, one could not do better than to consider the varied communities dwell... Read More

From millions of random mutations, scientists identify a virus that could make gene therapy for inherited retinal diseases safer and more effective. A new delivery mechanism shuttles gene therapy deep into the eye’s retina to repair damaged light-sensing cells without requiring a surgeon to put ... Read More