MicrobeWorld

The identification of key proteins in a group of heat-loving bacteria by researchers at the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center could help light a fire under next-generation biofuel production.

Scientists have long been on the hunt for cost-effective ways to break down complex pla... Read More

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have discovered that tiny vanadium pentoxide nanoparticles can inhibit the growth of barnacles, bacteria, and algae on surfaces in contact with water, such as ship hulls, sea buoys, or offshore platforms. Their experiments showed... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More

Adam writes:

What up Doc's?

I'm writing to voice my complete disagreement with the sentiments of Sven Urban, in his letter on TWIP 38, that you as hosts are prone to engage in a ‘degree of banter which is distracting'.

I'm sure Dickson does not mind being ant... Read More

Scientists from the Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Bonn have succeeded for the first time in the real time filming of the transport of an important information carrier in biological cells that is practically unmodified. This paper has now been published in ... Read More

When I drafted my article for TakePart (Don’t Panic – Ebola Isn’t Heading For You), I used the term ‘ebolavirus’ throughout, but the editors changed every instance to ‘Ebola virus’. Understanding which term is correct is far more complicated than you might imagine. Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Mass... Read More

Scientists may have hit gold in their fight against dengue. They have located a human antibody that can neutralise and kill its virus within two hours.

Significantly, they have also identified a way to reproduce this antibody in large quantities, potentially opening the door to a cure for den... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Vanessa Cowton, Mary Holton, Mark Robinson, Swetha Vijayakrishnan, and Gavin Wilkie

Vincent returns to t... Read More

Cholera is an extremely virulent intestinal infection caused by ingestion of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae (V. cholerae). EU researchers elucidated the molecular mechanisms behind expression of virulence genes with important implications for new therapies.

Click "source" to read more.

"Inv... Read More

India has been free of polio for over one year. This is a remarkable accomplishment, considering that just 30 years ago the country recorded 200,000 cases of the disease annually, or one every three minutes. With polio endemic in two neighboring countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in the mo... Read More

In the first field study of its kind researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Oxford have investigated the competitive dynamics of pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains of bacteria.

Bacteria are increasingly seen as living and interacting in groups and sharing... Read More

There is no parasite that is universally infective, even generalist parasites that can infect many different host species are usually limited to a particular taxonomic group - such as fish, insects, or mammals. Some parasites may infect a broad spectrum of hosts during one stage of their life-cy... Read More

I guess it doesn't sting, which is a plus - clearly we need no more stinging/biting/blood-sucking creatures on this earth - but my real wonder is what's next, and why rat heart muscle? Read More

Small Things Considered

The purpose of Small Things Considered is to share appreciation for the width and depth of the microbial activities on this pla... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More

Our days of crying over spoiled milk could be over, thanks to Cornell food scientists.

Milk undergoes heat treatment -- pasteurization -- to kill off microbes that can cause food spoilage and disease, but certain bacterial strains can survive this heat shock as spores and cause milk to curdle... Read More

Synthetic biology is getting a boost. So far, most researchers have designed their synthetic circuits using transcription factors found in bacteria. However, these don’t always translate well to nonbacterial cells and can be a challenge to scale. Now, researchers have come up with a new method t... Read More

I still wonder why the influenza virus H5N1 ferret transmission studies generated such fear and misunderstanding among the public, the press, and even some scientists. I still cannot fully explain what transpired, but now that the papers have been published some new clues have emerged. Read More

At one time or another, every human goes through the rather introverted and personal experience of omphaloskepsis.

The term, better known as navel-gazing, originally described the act of self-reflection through a complete physical and mental focus on the bellybutton. The practice has been rec... Read More