MicrobeWorld

IF YOU'RE reading this article, antibiotics have probably saved your life – and not once but several times. A rotten tooth, a knee operation, a brush with pneumonia; any number of minor infections that never turned nasty. You may not even remember taking the pills, so unremarkable have these one... Read More

The drug-resistant bac­te­ria known as MRSA, once con­fined to hos­pi­tals but now wide­spread in com­mu­ni­ties, will likely con­tinue to exist in both set­tings as sep­a­rate strains, accord­ing to a new study.

The pre­dic­tion that both strains will coex­ist is reas­sur­ing because pre­vi­... Read More

As anyone who’s seen a yogurt commercial knows, our guts are teeming with bacteria. So, too, are our hands, feet, ears, and mouths.

But our brains?

Until recently, scientists would have said no way. The brain was long thought to be a kind of fortress, separated from the body by a virtually... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Read More

Daily supplements of a fermented milk product containing five different probiotic strains may affect the parts of the brain linked to emotion and sensation, says a new study from UCLA and Danone.

The study is said to be the first to show chronic intake of a fermented milk product with probiot... Read More

Simon Fraser University virologist Masahiro Niikura and his doctoral student Nicole Bance are among an international group of scientists that has discovered a new class of molecular compounds capable of killing the influenza virus.

Working on the premise that too much of a good thing can be a... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Vincent and Dickson review... Read More

At the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, patients are treated for all kinds of bacterial infections with viruses called phages. In most places in the world antibiotics are given for these infections.

One patient says he regularly uses phages to treat a recurring eye infection.

"I've tr... Read More

You’ve heard of Sputnik, that little tiny antenna-clad chunk of metal heaved into low orbit on October 4, 1957, effectively kicking off the Space Age?

Well, make way for Gutnik. A news release issued by NASA’s Ames Research Center foretells the launch into space of a satellite inhabited by a ... Read More

Jason writes:

Hi Drs. Despommier and Racaniello,

This week you wondered why the immune-activating receptor for Toxoplasma gondii, TLR11, is present in mice but not in humans. You noted that it looks like there's no selective pressure keeping it around in us an... Read More

Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites, which means that they must enter a cell to reproduce. As virions are too large to diffuse passively across the plasma membrane, cellular pathways for uptake of extracellular materials provide entry routes. The first step in entry is adherence of viru... Read More

The US government has taken delivery of the first drug said to cure smallpox. It was developed under a government plan to buy biodefence drugs that would otherwise stall in development for lack of a market. The country plans to buy enough to treat two million people, for $410 million.

On the ... Read More

Treating people with HIV rapidly after they have become infected with the virus that causes Aids may be enough to achieve a "functional cure" in a small proportion of patients diagnosed early, according to research.

Scientists in France who followed 14 patients who were treated swiftly with H... Read More

Diseases transmitted by mosquitoes have a devastating impact on global health and the situation is complicated due to difficulties with both existing control measures and the impact of climate change. Genetically modified mosquitoes that are refractory to disease transmission are seen as having ... Read More

For the first time we are close to creating artificial life from scratch. So says Craig Venter, founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and famed for creating the first cell with a synthetic genome.

"We think we're close, but we've not submitted a paper yet," he said ... Read More

There is still time to ward off medical disaster - but we need to think two steps ahead, not one

IF YOU'RE reading this article, antibiotics have probably saved your life – and not once but several times. A rotten tooth, a knee operation, a brush with pneumonia; any number of minor infections... Read More

A large-scale study of a biomedical intervention that potentially offers novel options for women to protect themselves from HIV infection has, to the surprise of many researchers, failed. But the results say more about the participants’ behavior than the effectiveness of the products being teste... Read More

The first analysis of powder samples drilled out from the inside of once water-soaked rock shows Mars was a suitable place for microbial life to evolve, scientists with NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity mission said Tuesday.

Among the chemicals discovered inside the rock, called “John Klein,” were ... Read More

A potentially lethal fungal infection appears to gain virulence by being able to anticipate and disarm a hostile immune attack in the lungs, according to findings by researchers at Duke Medicine.

Defense mechanisms used by the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans enable it to lead to fatal meningit... Read More

What do cancer cells, weeds, and pathogens have in common? They all evolve resistance to the treatments that are supposed to eliminate them. However, researchers developing the next generation of antibiotics, herbicides, and anti-cancer therapeutics rarely come together to explore the common evo... Read More