MicrobeWorld

The human gut is a reservoir of antibiotic resistance. And the bacteria residing there could bequeath their gift of resistance to more harmful microbes under the right conditions, researchers report in the August 28 Science.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have found more resistance ge... Read More

My little sister made this for my birthday this year. She was short on time, this is not an example of her best work (for real, I'm not writing this because she told me to). Note: the purple microbe in the middle is a Bifidobacterium, which is my research organism, and the dancing things on t... Read More

Aspergillus sp. Early stage with sterigma and spores. Nomarski technique (800X) Read More

A video compilation of bacteria dancing, set to music. Created by Jan Martinus Stalmans. Read More

(ed. note - this article is dense but interesting. Basically researchers have made progress using gold, rather than the usual carbon, to build nanotubes. The gold nanotubes can be exposed to laser pulses that carbon nanotubes can not, allowing a new range of applications.)

Biomedical research... Read More

Las Cualidades De Proteccion De Plata

El uso de la plata en utensilios para alimentos data de muchos anos, pero su uso no fue solamente estetico; la plata tambien tiene propi... Read More

Ten years ago this week, New York found itself at the center of a major public health drama: in Queens, a mysterious illness was attacking older men who liked to garden.

The minute-by-minute excitement resembled that of the recent pandemonium caused by swine flu, but with an important differe... Read More

A veterinarian in Australia has been hospitalized in critical condition after exposure to the rare Hendra virus, according to local reports, which said he fell ill after treating two dying horses on a Queensland stud farm.

The virus was found in 1994 and has never been seen outside Australia ... Read More

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a genomic research organization, reported that they successfully transformed one bacterium into a different strain by transferring the entire bacterial genome of the first strain into a second, related strain of bacteria. In order to accomplis... Read More

Rangeland plants may be harboring a virus that grasshoppers are transmitting to cattle, horses and other hoofed mammals, according to a published research study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists.

A recent outbreak of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in the southwest United Sta... Read More

Current research suggests that viral polymerase may provide a new therapeutic target for host-adapted avian influenza. The related report by Gabriel et al, "Spread of Infection and Lymphocyte Depletion in Mice Depends on Polymerase of Influenza Virus" appears in the September 2009 issue of the A... Read More

Intestines from infant rabbits fed cholera enterotoxin and control Read More

As noted entomologist E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. Wilson states that as we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life we're steadily, methodically, and vi... Read More

"This segment from a PBS program entitled "Evolution: Evolutionary Arms Race" illustrates the coevolution of the leafcutter ant and the fungi on which it feeds. Leafcutters have been "farming" this fungus for millions of years by feeding, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting it. Learn how one gr... Read More

The soft flesh of a banana provides a ready source of DNA. Using a few simple purification steps in a classroom setting, students can yield loads of crudely prepared DNA. To begin, the banana is mashed in a detergent/salt solution to lyse the cellular and nuclear membranes. Cellular lysate is st... Read More

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered a potential new drug delivery system. The finding is a biological mechanism for delivery of nanoparticles into tissue. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This work is important because when giving a... Read More

(ed. note - this is the final part of the BBC series The Cell)

Dr Adam Rutherford continues the extraordinary story of the scientific quest to discover the secrets of the cell and of life itself.

He explains how it is possible to turn ageing bacteria into diesel which is capable of powerin... Read More

Developments in genetics are now making it possible to invite custom-engineered symbiotic creatures into our bodies to help perform the functions we can't. In two separate developments, scientists have created a strain of bacteria that stimulates insulin production in the stomach of diabetic mic... Read More

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health have received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to educate AIDS patients on food safety.

The three-year, $600,000 award will be used to develop a better way to disseminate information to AIDS patients w... Read More

Electron micrograph of one cell of Proteus vulgaris with numerous flagella Read More