MicrobeWorld

How can scientists safely conduct avian flu research if the results could threaten or save millions of lives? A series of Commentaries in mBio this week presents some important perspectives on the type of H5N1 influenza research that started (the ongoing) widespread controversy among both scient... Read More

Constructed in 2009 in the highly populated South End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) facility contains labs that operate at biosafety levels 2, 3 and 4. Due to its location the NEIDL has faced a raft of legal and regulator... Read More

New research appearing in the August issue of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry adds to the growing work linking an infection caused by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite to suicide attempts. Michigan State University’s Lena Brundin was one of the lead researchers on the team.

About 10-20 percen... Read More

As a closer view of PHIL 12265, this photograph depicts the colonial morphology displayed by Gram-negative Yersinia pestis bacteria, which was grown on a medium of sheep's blood agar (SBA), for a 72 hour time period, at room temperature. Y. pestis is the bacterium responsible for causing the inf... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More

Public health officials provide the latest update on the H3N2, the new strain of influenza that appears to have jumped from swine to humans and has already infected nearly 300 people in the United States.

Participant:
Lyn Finelli, CDC, Atlanta, GA, United States Read More

The gold you see in the photo above was not found in a river or a mine. It was produced by a bacteria that, according to researchers at Michigan State University, can survive in extreme toxic environments and create 24-karat gold nuggets. Pure gold.

Maybe this critter can save us all from the... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Guest: Read More

This episode: Scientists find that phages might be good for treating acne!

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This episode: Fungi and such can transport pollutants in soil to bacteria for degradation!

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No bacterium lives alone – it is constantly encountering members of its own species as well as other kinds of bacteria and diverse organisms like viruses, fungi, plants and animals. To navigate a complex world, microbes use chemical signals to sense and communicate with one another... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Laura Piddock, Read More

This episode: Identifying the microbial communities of the lungs!

 

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Biologists at Georgia Tech have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern Escherichia coli (E.coli) bacteria. The researchers have observed the bacterium grow over more than 1,000 generations, allowing them to see "evolution in action".

In a process cal... Read More

As someone who has been taking a daily regimen of probiotics for some time now, a recent study was of particular interest to me. Probiotics, for those of you who don’t already know, are live microorganisms that are found to benefit the microbiome in your stomach and intestinal tract. They are be... Read More

European researchers at Linköping University in Sweden are showing how bacteria control processes in human cells through a process called quorum sensing. This phenomenon is where bacteria talk to each other via molecules they themselves produce and is an important process during their proliferat... 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 ... Read More

Researchers at the University of Leeds have identified a crucial stage in the lifecycle of simple viruses like polio and the common cold that could open a new front in the war on viral disease.

The team are the first to observe at a single-molecule level how the genetic material (genome) that... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Dickson Despommier

Vincent and Dickson review... Read More

This episode: Soil bacteria can help plants adapt to changing climate conditions!

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