MicrobeWorld

The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, is now the first and only place in Europe where pathogens requiring Containment Level 3 -- including serious viruses such as those responsible for AIDS, Hepatitis and some types of flu -- can be analysed at atomic and molecular level ... Read More

A nanoparticle wrapped in a red blood cell membrane can remove toxins from the body and could be used to fight bacterial infections, according to research published today in Nature Nanotechnology.

The results demonstrate that the nanoparticles could be used to neutralize toxins produced by ma... Read More

(from National Geographic) In this 6th interview with renowned wildlife biologist Dr. Michael Hutchins, we discuss the challenges facing vanishing species and other threatened free-ranging and captive populations of wildlife due to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.

Jordan: Zoonose... Read More

Two young EPFL scientists have developed a device that can create 3D images of living cells and track their reaction to various stimuli without the use of contrast dyes or fluorophores. Read More

It's easy to forget just how far medicine has progressed. While we may worry about the spread of infectious diseases like avian flu or meningitis today, those pathogens have nothing on fearsome pandemics in the distant past like the Plague of Justinian, which killed over 100 million people from ... Read More

Fresh fruit and vegetables carry an abundance of bacteria on their surfaces, not all of which cause disease. In the first study to assess the variety of these non-pathogenic bacteria, scientists report that these surface bacteria vary depending on the type of produce and cultivation practices.
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A piece that I wrote for Elio Schaechter's "Small Things Considered" appeared today. I tried to show what my students last semester "got" out of the course, and the challenges of a "one microbiology course" curriculum. My answer: more micro, earlier, in other classes! Read More

Researchers have found microbes in the deepest oceanic trench on Earth - the Mariana Trench, which is located at nearly 7 miles or 11 kilometers below sea level in the western Pacific.

The study of life in this inaccessible site revealed a community of bacteria that live in extreme pressures,... Read More

To infect its host, the respiratory pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa takes an ordinary protein usually involved in making other proteins and adds three small molecules to turn it into a key for gaining access to human cells. In a study to be published May 7 in mBio, the online open-access journal... Read More

Every day it seems like some new discovery is revealed ab0ut the microbial life on our bodies, in our bodies and around our homes. The tendency in writing about such studies is to make sweeping conclusions about what is and is not and, of course, how we should live and what we should do. But the... Read More

Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) -- inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract -- have puzzled the scientific community for decades. Ten years ago, researchers recognized that both genes and the environment contributed to these diseases but knew little about precisely ho... Read More

A new federal report blames a combination of problems for a mysterious and dramatic disappearance of U.S. honeybees since 2006.

The intertwined factors cited include a parasitic mite, multiple viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, genetics, habitat loss and pesticides.

The multiple causes mak... Read More

It's a chemical that's been in U.S. households for more than 40 years, from the body wash in your bathroom shower to the knives on your kitchen counter to the bedding in your baby's basinet.

But federal health regulators are just now deciding whether triclosan — the germ-killing ingredient fo... Read More

The parasites that cause schistosomiasis, one of the most common parasitic infections in the world, are notoriously long-lived. Researchers have now found stem cells inside the parasite that can regenerate worn-down organs, which may help explain how they can live for years or even decades insid... Read More

As the Northern Hemisphere shivers through winter, bacteria in Antarctica are employing an inventive strategy to survive the extreme cold: they use a specialized antifreeze protein to latch onto the ice and stay afloat.

Antifreeze proteins generally protect their hosts from freezing by contro... Read More

Scientists at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science have discovered a possible method by which cancer cells and dying cells communicate with nearby normal nerve cells without being physically connected to them.

Dr. Keith Norris, senior author of the research and assistan... Read More

Here is a short post about life in academia (with some rules) and some "rules" I have developed in teaching undergraduate students about Life in the Lab! Read More

After receptor binding and internalization during influenza virus entry, the hemagglutinin (HA) protein is triggered by low pH to undergo irreversible conformational changes that mediate membrane fusion. To investigate how mutations that alter the activation pH of the HA protein influence the fi... Read More

Certain Streptococci increase their production of toxic shock syndrome toxin 1, sometimes to potentially dangerous levels, when aerobic bacteria are present in the vagina. But scientists from the University of Western Ontario have discovered certain strains of lactobacillus bacteria are capable ... Read More

Scientists have cracked a 35-year-old mystery about the workings of the natural motors that are serving as models for development of a futuristic genre of synthetic nanomotors that pump therapeutic DNA, RNA or drugs into individual diseased cells. Their report revealing the innermost mechanisms ... Read More