MicrobeWorld

I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a labo... Read More

Scientists at the University of California, Davis have engineered a strain of photosynthetic cyanobacteria to grow without the need for light. They report their findings today at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

“In this work, we used synthetic biology appr... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Read More

Norovirus is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis in the United States. Each year, it causes about 21 million illnesses and contributes to about 70,000 hospitalizations and 800 deaths. Norovirus is also the most common cause of foodborne-disease outbreaks in the United States. Research... Read More

I can tell you the exact date that I began to think of myself in the first-person plural — as a superorganism, that is, rather than a plain old individual human being. It happened on March 7. That’s when I opened my e-mail to find a huge, processor-choking file of charts and raw data from a labo... Read More

Many ladies love their handbags and will spend a lot of money for the latest and greatest, but a new study says what is inside those bags may be covered in germs worse than what you’ll find in the bathroom.

As CBS 2′s Cindy Hsu reported Wednesday, the study said your purse may, in fact, have ... Read More

Food microbiology laboratories continue to submit false negative results and false positive results on a routine basis. A retrospective study of nearly 40,000 proficiency test results over the past 14 years, presented today at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, ... Read More

Michael Pollan, food author, activist and journalism professor, wrote this week’s cover story about the organisms with which we share our bodies — and how we’re dependent on them. His book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation” came out last month. His last article for the magazine was ab... Read More

The African clawed frog, a species used around the world for biomedical research, is spreading an amphibian-killing fungus when they are released into the wild. In a new study, researchers provide the first evidence that the frogs in California harbor a fungal infection that is decimating amphib... Read More

In 2008 researchers from the University of Southern Denmark showed that the drug thioridazine, which has previously been used to treat schizophrenia, is also a powerful weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococci (Staphylococcus aureus).

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is... Read More

Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst report their findings at the 113th General Meeting of the A... Read More

Microbial ecology may be a young field but it is well understood already that there is a broad spectrum of interactions between bacterial species, ranging from cooperative to competitive. In a recent paper researchers from John Mekalanos’ lab further characterized a recently discovered mechanism... Read More

The emergence of human infections with avian influenza viruses (H7N9 and H5N1) have raised concerns about the virus gaining the ability to spread person-to-person, potentially causing a deadly pandemic. So far the number of human cases has been limited but the mortality rates have been high. In ... Read More

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is bad enough, but what if drug resistance also gives bacteria the ability to fend off attacks by the immune system? In a study in mBio this week scientists identify a lose-lose situation with colistin and Acinetobacter baumannii: bacteria resistant to colisti... Read More