MicrobeWorld

Researchers from UNSW have cautioned that more work is needed to understand how micro-organisms respond to the disinfecting properties of silver nano-particles, increasingly used in consumer goods, and for medical and environmental applications.

Although nanosilver has effective antimicrobial... Read More

In peer-reviewed study, the accuracy and speed of Bruker's Biotyper analyzer integrated into a comprehensive antibiotic stewardship program reduced hospital stays by days & per patient costs substantially. A co-author of a groundbreaking study documenting reductions in patient length of stay an... Read More

In 2010, a study revealed that the main agent of malaria in humans, called Plasmodium falciparum, arose from the gorilla. Today, the vector which transmitted the parasite from apes to humans has just been identified. A Franco-Gabonese research consortium has determined which species of anopheles... Read More

If you had heard of glomalin, you are a better person than I am. Until a couple of months ago I wasn’t aware of its existence, which is close to sinful: it happens to be a very abundant protein in the soil rhizosphere, playing a key role in the soil’s mechanical properties and as repository of s... Read More

Researchers at NIAID have devised a method for delivering tumor cell-killing enzymes in a way that protects the enzyme until it can do its work inside the cell. In their study in mBio this week, researchers assembled microscopic protein packages that can deliver an enzyme called PEIII to the ins... Read More

I joined Buddhini Samarasinghe and Scott Lewis on a Science Sunday Hangout on Air to talk about my career in virology: how I came to be interested in viruses, and what goes on in my laboratory. You can find hangouts and more at the ScienceSunday community.

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Scientists at a local laboratory say a new piece of technology there can identify bacteria a day earlier than traditional methods.

"If it's a blood infection or meningitis, getting that identification as fast as we can can mean the difference between life and death," said Karen Calvert, a mic... Read More

Women suffering from recurring urinary tract infections may carry a particularly hearty strain of E. coli bacteria that flourishes in both the gut and the bladder, and can migrate back and forth despite repeated treatments, a small new study finds.

Doctors believe that urinary tract infection... Read More

Patients in the UK have been enrolled into a trial to see if an engineered virus can be used to heal their damaged and struggling hearts. The trial will use a virus to introduce genetic material into heart muscle to reverse the organ's decline. The British Heart Foundation said the idea had "gre... Read More

Bacteria may draw other bacteria to a site of infection by laying down trails of a “molecular glue” that lead free-swimming individuals to come together and organize into colonies.

In the study, researchers were looking at how a species of bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa attach and mov... Read More

Shanghai Daily has a web page set up that shows the geographic distribution of H7N9 infections and fatalities in China. There is also a news feed, information on symptoms and a photo gallery. Click "source" to view. Read More

There was much written concerning the research published earlier this month in Science, where researchers from China’s Harbin Veterinary Research Institute reported creating an avian H5N1 (highly pathogenic) and pandemic 2009 H1N1 (easily transmissible) hybrid, that according to them, achieved ... Read More

In 2001, Kashefi and collaborators published an article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology reporting the surprising finding that several iron-reducing microbes can use gold as an electron acceptor for their respiration. These microbial alchemists included both mesophilic and thermophilic ... Read More

Raw oysters, a delicacy for foodies and a purported hangover cure (it isn’t) aren’t always the safest thing to eat. Pathogens such as Vibrio vulnificus, norovirus and Hepatitis A sometimes lurk in oyster flesh. These little nasties can cause food poisoning and norovirus specifically has no treat... Read More

Researchers have identified the dose of dengue virus in human blood that is required to infect mosquitoes when they bite. Mosquitoes are essential for transmitting the virus between people, so the findings have important implications for understanding how to slow the spread of the disease.

By... Read More

The swine flu virus that caused a 2009 pandemic has been found in elephant seals off the central California coast, according to new research. The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the first report of the virus H1N1 in any marine mammal. Researchers are now being advised to wear protec... Read More

With cold temperatures, low humidity and high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, conditions 10 kilometers above Earth’s surface may seem inhospitable. But next time you’re flying, consider this: The air outside your airplane window might be filled with an array of microscopic life that affect... Read More

One widely-used tactic for defense against phage and other mobile genetic elements is to deploy a CRISPR-Cas system (click here and here) to recognize and chop them into pieces. Based on sequenced genomes, 60% of Bacteria and 90% of Archaea have the wherewithal to dispatch invaders this way. But... 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

Symbiotic algae that live within reef-forming corals scoop up available nitrogen, store the excess in the form or uric acid crystals, and slowly feed it to the coral as needed, according to a study in mBio this week. Scientists have known for years that these symbiotic microorganisms serve up ni... Read More