MicrobeWorld

A specific protein on the surface of a common bacterial pathogen allows the bacteria to leave the bloodstream and enter the brain, initiating the deadly infection known as meningitis. The new finding, which may guide development of improved vaccines to protect those most vulnerable, including yo... Read More

Most ethnic foods and cooking practices have incorporated the use of spices and other food additives. Many common
spices have crossed cultural boundaries and appear in multiple ethnic cuisines. Recent studies have demonstrated that many of these ingredients possess antimicrobial properties agai... Read More

James Staley, Ph.D., suggests the phylogenomic species concept, which combines phylogenetic and genomic analyses, can be used to circumscribe species:

"Bacteriologists have not yet adopted a concept for a species. Bacterial and archaeal species are defined on the basis of phenotypic propertie... Read More

Dr. Mike Leahy is a Virologist and an adventure junkie. Now he has his own show called Bite Me where he combines his work with his passions which leads to one very scary outcome, "up-close-and-personal encounters with Earth's most dangerous creatures."

Check out the show on the Travel Channel... Read More

The death of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 35 may have been caused by complications stemming from strep throat, according to a Dutch study published on Monday. Since the composer's death in 1791, there have been various theories about the cause of his untimely end, from intentio... Read More

It appears that bacteria can squeeze through practically anything. In extremely small nanoslits they take on a completely new flat shape. Even in this squashed form they continue to grow and divide at normal speeds. This has been demonstrated by research carried out at TU Delft's Kavli Institute... Read More

Bacteria communicate with chemical languages that allow them to synchronize their behavior and thereby act as multi-cellular organisms. This process, called quorum sensing, enables bacteria to do things they can’t do as a single cell, like successfully infect and cause disease in humans.
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Life in the fruit bowl is no longer the pits, thanks to a University of Alberta researcher.

In research published in the latest Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researcher Christina Engels describes how the pure tannins that can be extracted from the otherwise-useless mango kernel... Read More

One group of scientists reported a major advance toward that goal at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). They described the first successful method of producing the active ingredients in Devil's claw — ingredients that have made the Devil's claw a sensation in alte... Read More

The U.S. won't have nearly as much swine flu vaccine ready by mid-October as long predicted — 45 million doses instead of the anticipated 120 million, a federal official said Monday.

It's not a shortage but a delay, Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Hall said. More will arrive rapidly ... Read More

Elio Schaechter of www.smallthingsconsidered.us has a thought provoking piece on the function of bacteria and the antibiotics they produce. Could it be that antibiotics have more to do with bacterial communication then as a defense mechanism?

Snippets:

"Antibiotics are now being thought a... Read More

This is a fungal colony in PES COLLEGE, BANGALORE , INDIA .

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This is a from fungal isolation from soil in PES college , india. Read More

Blood agar culture of sputum from patient with pneumonia. Comprimised host. Colonies of Candida albicans and pseudomonas aeruginosa Read More

To the best of our knowledge zombies aren't real, but if there ever is a zombie outbreak in the future we now have an epidemiological model we can use for predictive analysis. Created by several Canadian mathematicians at the University of Ottawa, "When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modeling of ... Read More

Brown University researchers have discovered that Candida albicans, a human fungal pathogen that causes thrush and other diseases, pursues same-sex mating in addition to conventional opposite-sex mating.

Scientists have observed this same-sex mode of reproduction in other fungi, but this is t... Read More

As summer hits its stride, many Americans are taking a moment to step into their backyards and smell the roses. And lilies. And, uh, raccoon feces?

That's the case for many Americans living near woods or marshes. And backyard "raccoon latrines" -- spots created by the animal as a kind of shar... Read More

Tao Weitao, a researcher in the College of Sciences' Department of Biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio is making great strides in a project that was funded one year ago by the San Antonio Area Foundation. The professor in the South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases is r... Read More

Albert Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Center, designed "The Great Flu" game with colleagues. In the game, as the head of the fictitious "World Pandemic Control," players pick a flu strain, and then monitor that strain's spread around the world.

To fight the eme... Read More