MicrobeWorld

A paper published in PubMed that appeared in the July 1967 edition of Applied Microbiology reports that men with beards who work in microbiology labs may be a public health hazard. The authors conclude that although lab personnel who wash their beards reduced the amount of virus or toxin, a suff... Read More

The science of metagenomics has uncovered that viruses are the most abundant and genetically diverse organisms on earth. In an article published in Microbiology Today, Peter Simmons from the Centre for Infectious Diseases, University of Edinburgh, discusses how discoveries of new viruses are pro... Read More

This article looks at key challenges when using agricultural waste as a sustainable source for biofuels to meet worldwide energy needs. Subjects include dealing with diverse cellulosic sugars and finding ways to recycle carbon dioxide back into useful biomass.
Why plants such as sugar cane and ... Read More

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Dr. Carl Winter, a food toxicologist at University of California, Davis, sings this parody of The Eagles' "Heartache Tonight." Read More

Vincent Racaniello from This Week in Virology has a great post on his site about what happens to the immune system during the initial infection of an influenza virus:

During the earliest stages of a virus infection, cytokines are produced when innate immune defenses are activated. The rapid ... Read More

While estimates of the number of genes in the human genome is said to be around 20,000, new research estimates that if you take into account our microbiota there may be as many as 9 million genes in the human gut.

"A new concept is to consider human as a super-organism containing those microb... Read More

The CDC report on the direct costs of nosocomial infections and costs of prevention. The last report was published in 1992 based.

From the Summary:

This report uses results from the published medical and economic literature to provide a range of estimates for the annual direct hospital co... Read More

Koi herpesvirus (KHV) is a highly contagious viral disease that may cause significant morbidity and mortality in common carp (Cyprinus carpio) (Hedrick et al. 2000; OATA 2001). Common carp is raised as a foodfish in many countries and has also been selectively bred for the ornamental fish indust... Read More

An Emergency Use Authorization online course developed by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide public health officials, emergency managers, or Strategic National Stockpile coordinators with an introduction to the Emergency Use Authorization o... Read More

Beginning in 2010, undergraduate students from colleges and universities with limited resources will be offered research experience at research-intensive, resource-rich host institutions under the guidance of members from the American Society for Microbiology. This paper (click "source") explain... Read More

A new paper submitted to PLoS One shows histamine plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of experimental cerebral malaria (CM) in mice infected with Plasmodium berghei ANKA. Histamine exerts its biological effects through four different receptors designated H1R, H2R, H3R, and H4R. In humans, ... Read More

The Public Library of Science's open access journals just release its 2009 June Progress Report in which they project "a publishing business model projected to be 100% self-sufficient in 2010."

"PLoS journals use a business model that recovers expenses — including administration of peer revie... Read More

Streptococcus suis infection is a zoonosis which can cause severe systemic infection in humans exposed to infected pig tissue. To date there have been relatively few reports of S. suis infection in humans, with around 700 cases reported worldwide, most of them in the last few years. In developed... Read More

I'm sure most of us have had enough of swine flu/H1N1 news, but the CDC does daily updates on their site that tally the number of cases and fatalities. To date the US has a grand total of 21,449 cases and 87 deaths. I don't think the daily number tallies are worth posting to MicrobeWorld everyda... Read More

With all the excitement about the microbes found in Greenland that have been buried below two miles of ice for at least 120,000 years and have been revived in the laboratory, there is another living microbe that's supposedly 250 million years old.

Found in a Kansas salt mine and reviv... Read More

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An interesting presentation given by Yuri Gorby, an electromicrobiologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, at CalIT2 at UCSD on electronmicrobiology. Here's part of the description from SciVee.tv:

Respiratory microorganisms capture energy for growth and maintenance as they trans... Read More

Here's a movie from the University of Madison-Wisconsin depicting the steps for creating an acid fast stain.








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BAC Down! Give bacteria the cold shoulder. Keep your refrigerator at 40° F or below. Use a thermometer to monitor.

The bacterium Listeria monocyotogenes can grow at refrigerator temperatures. Pregnant women, young children and people with weakened immune systems are at greater risk of Listeri... Read More