MicrobeWorld

This episode: Fungi are found living deep under the sea!

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Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have identified a new chemical class of compounds that have the potential to block genetically diverse viruses from replicating. The findings, published in Chemistry & Biology, could allow for the development of broad-spectrum antiviral ... Read More

As the invisible bugs in hospitals get scarier and more prevalent, hospitals are finding new ways to clean.

Doylestown Hospital on Tuesday unveiled its newest high-tech weapon, a machine that zaps everything in a room with ultraviolet light 25,000 times brighter than the sun's. It can penetra... Read More

Every day it seems like some new discovery is revealed ab0ut the microbial life on our bodies, in our bodies and around our homes. The tendency in writing about such studies is to make sweeping conclusions about what is and is not and, of course, how we should live and what we should do. But the... Read More

When things don't go as planned in Chris Nomura's science world, they sometimes turn out for the better.

Nomura, an assistant professor in the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry's Department of Chemistry, and his team of researchers are using a synthetic protein molecule to di... Read More

Certain Streptococci increase their production of toxic shock syndrome toxin 1, sometimes to potentially dangerous levels, when aerobic bacteria are present in the vagina. But scientists from the University of Western Ontario have discovered certain strains of lactobacillus bacteria are capable ... Read More

Humans don't make chitin. So why do many bacterial pathogens require chitinases to maintain an infection? A study in mBio this week reveals that in Listeria monocytogenes, at least, chitinase helps the environmental pathogen live a double life, digesting chitin while the bacterium lives in the s... Read More

Unlike most organisms, they don't need iron, but they crave manganese. Scientists have confirmed that the pathogen that causes Lyme Disease—unlike any other known organism—can exist without iron, a metal that all other life needs to make proteins and enzymes. Instead of iron, the bacteria substi... Read More

As public health officials sound the alarm about the global spread of drug-resistant bacteria, researchers are working to develop more effective antibiotics to counter this dangerous trend. Now, results from a team including a Princeton University scientist offer a possible solution that uses th... Read More

A new analysis pokes holes in a widely accepted theory that connects biodiversity abundance with a reduced disease risk for people. More than three quarters of new, emerging, or re-emerging human diseases are caused by pathogens from animals. The dilution effect—considered to be one of the most... Read More

Viruses are biological pirates, invading cells and hijacking their machinery to reproduce and infect again. Research at Harvard Medical School is shedding new light on the battle line where viral and cell membranes meet, and the key role of a protein grappling hook with which the influenza virus... Read More

A genetically modified version of herpes simplex virus type 1, the same virus that causes cold sores, shrank tumors of the deadly skin cancer melanoma in a clinical trial, according to Amgen, which is developing the experimental cancer treatment.

Patients in the trial were in the late stages ... Read More

We continue our series of images that have made a difference in microbiology. This one, published by John Cairns in 1963 has earned a most deserved place in textbooks and reviews. It shows a radioautograph of an intact E. coli chromosome in the act of replicating. From this image, Cairns conclud... Read More

Drug successfully tested in mice; may be major advance as malaria has developed resistance to existing treatments

Scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland VA Medical Center have developed a drug that may represent one of the world's best hopes for treating and prevent... Read More

The bacterium Photorhabdus luminescens is a constant companion of some roundworms. These worms assault insect larvae, thereby infecting them with the bacteria; the pathogens then attack the cells of their victims with a deadly cocktail of various toxins. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of... Read More

Recently thousands of dead and decaying pigs were pulled from rivers in Shanghai and Jiaxing, China. Apparently farmers dumped the animals into the water after the pigs became ill, and porcine circovirus was subsequently detected in the in pig carcasses and in the water. Porcine circoviruses are... Read More

Infections caused by carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae can be impossible to treat. A family of drug-resistant bacteria that experts say kills up to 50 percent of people infected is spreading in Chicago and elsewhere, prompting doctors and public health officials to step up efforts to prot... Read More

Scientists have cracked a 35-year-old mystery about the workings of the natural motors that are serving as models for development of a futuristic genre of synthetic nanomotors that pump therapeutic DNA, RNA or drugs into individual diseased cells. Their report revealing the innermost mechanisms ... Read More

The first red alga genome has just been sequenced by an international team coordinated by CNRS and UPMC at the Station Biologique de Roscoff (Brittany), notably involving researchers from CEA-Genoscope[1], the universities of Lille 1 and Rennes 1 and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle[2]. ... Read More

When a phage invades a host’s premises, it delivers only its genome and perhaps a few specialized proteins needed immediately upon arrival. Its plan is simply to supervise production. The host is relied on to provide not only the raw materials and energy, but also the production equipment needed... Read More