MicrobeWorld

The top prize at this year’s Intel International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF) went to a 16-year-old from Taiwan who found a bacterium present in mealworm beetles that is capable of decomposing Expanded Polystyrene (EPS).

With the help of two microbiologists, the student, Tsen... Read More

At the World Pork Expo going on this week, the decision to call H1N1 'Swine Flu' is heavily debated and it's effects are felt. With the power of words, do you think that the CDC should have been more explicit in telling people they would not be at risk from pigs? Read More

An interesting story with some news on MRSA's increased prevalance in children as well as how MRSA infections cn be transferred from animals to people. Read More

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis four grants totaling $19 million to explore the trillions of microbes that inhabit the human body and determine how they contribute to good health and disease.

The grants ar... Read More

Description of the process the HIV virus uses to penetrate CD4 cells. This is a great animation. Read More

A movie showing gliding motility in a Paenibacillus isolate. Movie by Jon Roll, UW-Madison.









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The South Pacific Gyre has some of the conditions to support life yet remains a veritable desert on the ocean floor. Scientists are studying this, for some reason. I understand the interconnectedness of life and such, but do you think this is worthy of scientific research? Read More

Methane gas released as flatulence from livestock is a significant source of greenhouse gas, but entrepreneurs may have found a ready antidote to the problem: garlic. Mootral (“moo” and “neutral”), produced by Neem Biotech in Cardiff, Wales, contains a natural garlic extract—allicin—that when fe... Read More

A new paper submitted to PLoS One shows histamine plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of experimental cerebral malaria (CM) in mice infected with Plasmodium berghei ANKA. Histamine exerts its biological effects through four different receptors designated H1R, H2R, H3R, and H4R. In humans, ... Read More

About a third of the world’s countries limit people living with with H.I.V. from entering or staying in their nations, even if the individual's disease is under control with drugs. Some even restrict their access to health care.

"Hundreds of millions of people cross borders annually, travell... Read More

Working with components of the tuberculosis bacterium, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison identified an unusual process by which the pathogen builds an important structural carbohydrate. In addition to its implications for human health, the mechanism offers insight into a wides... Read More

Klebsiella pneumoniae. Maneval's capsule stain. Note clear area (capsule) surrounding pink stained organisms (1200X) Read More

The Public Library of Science's open access journals just release its 2009 June Progress Report in which they project "a publishing business model projected to be 100% self-sufficient in 2010."

"PLoS journals use a business model that recovers expenses — including administration of peer revie... Read More

A new system to clean the blood like wastewater, sucking out sepsis with an ELECTROMAGNET. While it only removes 80% of the fungus, it was enough so that drugs could finish off the rest. Read More

Another story in the good-for-mice category, but it is interesting to see how researchers are 'souping up' the body's innate immunity to combat MRSA. Read More

Neisseria meningitidis. Differential sugar reactions. (1-8) Read More

For years, rotting seaweed has been causing E. coli contamination at a Michigan beach... now public officials have a novel idea; remove it. Read More

Antibody mediated phagocytosis of old (18 generations) C. neoformans cells was significantly (* represents Pinduction in vivo was also more pronounced in senescent C. neoformans cells, bar size 5μm. Read More

Martin de Smet , leader of the Médecins Sans Frontières malaria working group, has published a letter in the New Scientist claiming malaria is developing alarming resistance to artemisinins, especially in Cambodia, and that the world needs to pay closer attention to this situation.

Artemisini... Read More

Streptococcus suis infection is a zoonosis which can cause severe systemic infection in humans exposed to infected pig tissue. To date there have been relatively few reports of S. suis infection in humans, with around 700 cases reported worldwide, most of them in the last few years. In developed... Read More