MicrobeWorld

Four months ago, a mucus sample arrived in Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki’s laboratory in Saudi Arabia.

The mucus had been coughed up by a 60-year-old Saudi Arabian man with a strange case of pneumonia. He had been admitted to the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh hospital in Jeddah on June 13; soon after, his kidney... Read More

Secretion of bacterial proteins is an essential biological process with biotechnological and biomedical impact on human health. European scientists studied a universal and widely conserved bacterial secretory pathway towards its utilisation in biotechnology and medicine.

The coordinated secr... Read More

A new study by researchers at Imperial College London has identified a way in which Salmonella bacteria, which cause gastroenteritis and typhoid fever, counteract the defence mechanisms of human cells.

One way in which our cells fight off infections is by engulfing the smaller bacterial cell... Read More

This episode: Bacterial enzymes are good for making nanomagnets for computers!

Read More

Luis writes:

Hi TWiVers!

I am writing to you this time because I have just read a short report in “El Pais” (the highest-circulation daily newspaper in our country) referring to the fact that five “exotic” mosquitos are establishing a permanen... Read More

The newly discovered virus that killed a Saudi Arabian man in June and is now causing life-threatening illness in a person from Qatar is similar to strains carried by bats, researchers reported Thursday.

Most of the bat strains do not infect people. Why the new strain does — and how it got in... Read More

Many prokaryotes move actively in liquid (swim) or on moist solid surfaces (swarm and glide) toward or away from a stimulus, such as a nutrient, light, or oxygen. Not surprisingly, prokaryotes have evolved numerous means of locomotion built around distinct molecular mechanisms.

How distinct? ... Read More

This colorized negative-stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM) depicts the ultrastructural details of a number of influenza virus particles, or “virions”. A member of the taxonomic family Orthomyxoviridae, the influenza virus is a single-stranded RNA organism

The flu is a contagious r... Read More

Haematococcus (algae), Euplotes (protozoa), and Cyclidium (ciliate) (400x)

2012 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, Charles Krebs, Issaquah, Washington, USA Read More

I approached several physicists-some turned-biologists-to ask them for a brief comment on the topic: "In the long run, what will the discovery of the Higgs boson do for biology?" Their answers span the extremes from “nothing” to “everything.”

Comments from:

Joe Incandela, Dept. of Physics,... Read More

A bacterial protein in common house dust may worsen allergic responses to indoor allergens, according to research conducted by the National Institutes of Health and Duke University. The finding is the first to document the presence of the protein flagellin in house dust, bolstering the link betw... Read More

New research shows that human herpesviruses (HHV)-6B and HHV-7, commonly know as roseola virus), account for one third of febrile status epilepticus (FSE) cases. Results of the FEBSTAT prospective study now available in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Internati... Read More

The United States has reported the first known death caused by the H3N2 variant virus, the new swine flu that has been jumping from pigs to people there.
And in another development that underscores how dynamic the intersection is between pigs, people and influenza viruses, health authorities in... Read More

This 1975 transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed the presence of a number of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) virions, which are Coronaviridae family members, and members of the genus Coronavirus. IBV is a highly contagious pathogen, which infects poultry of all ages, affecting a numbe... Read More

Carl Woese, a biophysicist and evolutionary microbiologist whose discovery 35 years ago of a “third domain” of life in the vast realm of micro-organisms altered scientific understanding of evolution, died on Sunday at his home in Urbana, Ill. He was 84.

His death was announced by the Universi... Read More

Dr. Donna Stolz of the University of Pittsburgh assembled a wreath collage of mammalian cells stained for various proteins and organelles magnified from 220x to 2000x.

Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition Read More

The World Health Organization is keeping a close eye on a disease outbreak in Saudi Arabia caused by a virus in the same family as the one that caused SARS.

There have been two confirmed infections with the new coronavirus and tests results are pending on a third suspected case, according to ... Read More

Every different life form on earth can probably be infected with at least one type of virus, if not many more. Most of these viruses have not yet been discovered: just over 2,000 viral species are recognized. While the majority of the known viruses infect bacteria and eukaryotes, there are only ... Read More

Large (about 5 mm in diameter), lactose positive colonies of Klebsiella pneumoniae on desoxycholate-citrate agar. Cultivation 37°C, 24 hours.

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common source of hospital-acquired infections. Some of the strains can carry plasmids that harbour genes conferring resistan... Read More

Little attention has been paid to the use of antibiotics in the aquaculture industry as one reason for the increase in bacteria resistant to antibiotics and the spread of such resistance to other bacteria.

Since the antibiotics that are used in veterinary medicine and aquaculture belong to t... Read More