MicrobeWorld

Potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” including C. difficile and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, were among the disturbing findings uncovered in a CBC Marketplace test conducted in dozens of hotel rooms across the country.

In a comprehensive survey, Marketplace did... Read More

One of the world’s smallest predators, Myxococcus Xanthus, engulfs and devours other bacteria by traveling in a wave, and scientists have figured out how.

The study, featured on the cover of this month’s online issue of the journal PLOS Computational Biology, shows how the simple motions of i... Read More

How much money would you need to put your health at risk? Ten thousand dollars? Five hundred? How about one single dollar? For a teenager in New York City, the latter was enough to test his fate in a subway station. In a video that has gone viral, a young unidentified teen was offered a dollar t... Read More

Are you willing to take a close look at yourself for science?

A really, really close look?

A team of scientists in the Bay Area is inviting citizen scientists to join them in a quest to create the largest database of human microbiomes in the world.

The human microbiome is the ecosystem ... Read More

UC Irvine biologists have discovered that fats within cells store a class of proteins with potent antibacterial activity, revealing a previously unknown type of immune system response that targets and kills bacterial infections.

Steven Gross, UCI professor of developmental & cell biology, and... Read More

Scientists have found a soil bacteria that not only resists the toxic effects of antibiotics -- it makes a meal out of them.

Many bacteria can protect themselves from antibiotics by modifying the compounds to make them harmless or by pumping the compounds out of their cells entirely. And othe... Read More

A mix of six different bacteria found naturally in the healthy gut system of mice and isolated from feces can succeed where antibiotics fail, and eradicate murine infection by highly contagious strains of the Gram-positive anaerobe Clostridium difficile, including the human epidemic 027/BI strai... Read More

A group of scientists based at several institutions in the US and beyond are getting set to kick off a crowdsourcing study called the "American Gut Project," aimed at assessing gut microbial communities in 10,000 or more individuals in the US in relation to their diet and lifestyle.

"The big ... Read More

Scientists have recently discovered three new human viruses.

One, from the Arabian Peninsula, causes severe pneumonia and kidney failure. Another sent two Missouri farmers to the hospital with severe fatigue and low blood platelets. The third, in central Africa, causes a new kind of hemorrhag... Read More

Jim Lahey, the founder of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, wanted to find out which organisms inhabited his sourdough and produced its tantalizing sulfuric aroma.

Meanwhile, in the East Village test kitchen of the Momofuku restaurants, David Chang and Dan Felder were fermenting pork tender... Read More

Poor Larry isn't looking too good. He's pale and clammy and he's been projectile vomiting over and over again while his carers just stand by and watch.

Yet their lack of concern for Larry is made up for by their intense interest in how far splashes of his vomit can fly, and how effectively th... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, T. Jack Morris, Read More

Two Missouri farmers have been infected with a brand-new tick-borne virus that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling the Heartland virus.

The men recovered but suffered serious illness that required hospital care and weeks of convalescence. Symptoms included fever, severe ... Read More

Honeybees the world over are susceptible to the bacterial disease called "foulbrood", which can wipe out a hive faster than beekeepers can react to the infection. In the U.S., beekeepers have kept the disease at bay with regular preventive applications of the antibiotic oxytetracycline. Given wh... Read More

Proteus mirabilis colonies on depleted medium in false color by Sune Dano and Kasper Dyring-Anderson. From Dr. James Shapiro's lab where he studies bacterial genetics, and is interested in pattern formation during colony growth. Photo from microbialart.com

Dr. James Shapiro is a Professor in ... Read More

This episode: Engineered diatoms can produce functional antibodies!

Downlo... Read More

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an annual report on Monday profiling a variety of CDC influenza-related projects from around the world, including epidemiology training, vaccine effectiveness studies and flu surveillance.

The CDC began its international flu efforts... Read More

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter is not a runner, but she shares a marathoner’s philosophy when it comes to legislation: She’s in it for the long haul.

It took several years for her to get a ban on genetic discrimination signed into law in 2008. Slaughter said she worked six years before a shift in c... Read More

Here are photographs I took during our visit to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to record This Week in Microbiology #40. We roamed around campus scouting locations befo... Read More

The human “microbiome”—the trillions of bacteria, yeasts, and other microscopic creatures that live inside a human body—has been one of the major science stories in recent years. It seems that barely a week goes by that we don’t learn something new about the relationship between the human body a... Read More