Microbial ecology may be a young field but it is well understood already that there is a broad spectrum of interactions between bacterial species, ranging from cooperative to competitive. In a recent paper researchers from John Mekalanos’ lab further characterized a recently discovered mechanism for inter-cell communication. This system, called ...

Robert Koch is one of the key figures in early bacteriology, helping develop culture techniques (e.g. solid media), critical reasoning (e.g. Koch’s postulates), and disease etiology (e.g. cholera and tuberculosis). He also published the first photomicrographs of bacteria (Figure 1A) in his 1877 paper Verfahren zur Untersuchung, zum Conservieren und ...

Another major goal of synthetic biology is to engineer unnatural molecules and compounds into systems and tools that mimic those found in biology. For instance, Joanna Aizenberg and her laboratory have pioneered using self-assembling synthetic nanofibers to generate capture-and-release devices that look strikingly like tiny fingers or tentacles. Image: Scanning electron ...

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 ...

Researchers from CNRS, Université Toulouse III -- Paul Sabatier and IRD have elucidated new molecular mechanisms involved in resistance to visceral leishmaniasis, a serious parasitic infection. They have shown that dectin-1 and mannose receptors participate in the protection against the parasite responsible for this infection, by triggering an inflammatory response, ...

The phrase "gut bacteria" might sound icky and repulsive, but modern science may have you soon thinking differently about the bugs that live in your intestinal system. Top researchers around the globe are exploring the bacteria that naturally reside in the bowels of both people and animals, and targeting them ...

Many ladies love their handbags and will spend a lot of money for the latest and greatest, but a new study says what is inside those bags may be covered in germs worse than what you’ll find in the bathroom. As CBS 2′s Cindy Hsu reported Wednesday, the study said your ...

The African clawed frog, a species used around the world for biomedical research, is spreading an amphibian-killing fungus when they are released into the wild. In a new study, researchers provide the first evidence that the frogs in California harbor a fungal infection that is decimating amphibian populations across the ...

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 and overall costs from implementation of an antibiotic ...

Over the past 30 years, the combined efforts of scientists and clinicians have delivered remarkable successes in HIV therapeutics. Since 1987, the FDA has approved more than 30 antiviral drugs, including 12 HIV protease inhibitors and one integrase inhibitor. These drugs stop ~99% of viral replication, essentially transforming HIV infection ...

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 defining the threshold for transmission, ...

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 ...

The World Health Organization says it appears likely that the novel coronavirus (NCoV) can be passed between people in close contact. This comes after the French health ministry confirmed a second man had contracted the virus in a possible case of human-to-human transmission. Two more people in Saudi Arabia are ...

I had a conversation with some colleagues last week about “personalized medicine,” which has been transformed now into the term “precision medicine.” The conversation revolved around what to do about the perceived effects of antibiotic treatment on the microbiota of individuals. How does one treat a patient without disrupting their ...

In the summer of 1968, a new strain of influenza appeared in Hong Kong. This strain, known as H3N2, spread around the globe and eventually killed an estimated 1 million people. A new study from MIT reveals that there are many strains of H3N2 circulating in birds and pigs that are ...

French health officials said Friday they are investigating three suspected cases of a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS, in people who had close contact in the hospital with France's only confirmed case. Beatrice Degrugillers, a spokeswoman for the regional health agency in France's Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, said a nurse at ...

Amoeba eat bacteria and other human pathogens, engulfing and destroying them – or being destroyed by them, but how these single-cell organisms distinguish and respond successfully to different bacterial classes has been largely unexplained. In a report in the journal Current Biology, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine use the model ...

Researchers have found a strain of bacteria that can infect mosquitoes and make them resistant to the malaria parasite. The study, in the journal Science, showed the parasite struggled to survive in infected mosquitoes. Malaria is spread between people by the insects so it is hoped that giving mosquitoes malaria ...

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 move about on surfaces. P. ...

As the bacteria grow within a biofilm, they organize themselves into reproducible patterns and shapes that can be predicted with mathematical models. Image: Confocal microscopy of a bacterial biofilm composed of Escherichia coli expressing the fluorescent proteins mCherry and sfGFP. The image was acquired on a Leica SP5 confocal microscope using ...

A 65-year-old Frenchman is hospitalized after contracting France's first case of a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS, and French health authorities said Wednesday they are trying to find anyone who might have been in contact with him to prevent it from spreading. It's unclear how or where the man ...

Through the serendipity of science, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have discovered a potential treatment for deadly, drug-resistant bacterial infections that uses the same approach that HIV uses to infect cells. The National Institutes of Health-supported discovery will be described in the June issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents ...

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 properties against certain pathogens, overexposure to silver nano-particles can cause other potentially harmful ...

Scientists have long believed that measuring the amount of HIV in a person’s blood is an indicator of whether the virus is actively reproducing. A University of Delaware-led research team reports new evidence that hidden virus replication may be occurring within the body’s tissue, despite undetectable virus levels in the ...

On May 8th JoVE will publish research that demonstrates how a biosensor can detect antibiotic resistance in bacteria. This new technology is a preliminary step in identifying and fighting superbugs, a major public health concern that has led to more deaths than AIDS in the United States in recent years. ...

The in vivo interaction between a Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm, on a silicone implant, and the responding polymorphonuclear leukocytes. Image: SEM imaging depicts the interaction at day 1 post insertion of the implant in the peritoneal cavity of a mouse. The leukocytes (yellow) are damaged with obvious cavities in the cell membrane ...

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 affects everything from weather and climate ...

To infect its host, the respiratory pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa takes an ordinary protein usually involved in making other proteins and adds three small molecules to turn it into a key for gaining access to human cells. In a study to be published May 7 in mBio, the online open-access journal ...

A new study led by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK has, for the first time, used genome sequencing technology to track the changes in a bacterial population following the introduction of a vaccine. The study follows how the ...

Certain types of anti-depressants have been linked to an increase in the risk of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) finds a study in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine. Awareness of this link should improve identification and early treatment of CDI. Certain types of anti-depressants have been linked to an increase ...

A new approach to treating antibiotic-resistant infections has been developed by University of Wollongong (UOW) and University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) researchers who have patented the new technology and entered into commercialization discussions with two French pharmaceutical companies. Antibiotics have saved countless lives and alleviated human suffering for more than ...

Trypanosoma brucei, a protozoan parasite, is the causative agent of African sleeping sickness in humans (T. b. gambiense and T. b. rhodesiense) and nagana in cattle (T. b. brucei). These diseases result in much economic hardship and morbidity in Sub-Saharan Africa. The life cycle of these organisms requires an insect ...

Researchers use a protein-lipid complex found in human breast milk to increase the activity of otherwise-ineffective antibiotics against drug-resistant pathogens. A protein-lipid complex that naturally occurs in human breast milk can increase the sensitivity of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant strains to multiple classes of antibiotics in animal ...

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 mosquitoes transfer the disease to ...

Five people in Saudi Arabia have died from a Sars-like virus and two more are seriously ill, officials say. The seven cases were all from al-Ahsa governorate in the east of the country, the Saudi news agency SPA said citing health officials. The novel coronavirus (NCoV) causes pneumonia and sometimes ...

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 treatment or vaccine, and ...

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 ...

Deep in the bowels of our, well, bowels, lurk trillions of microscopic bacteria. But don't be fooled by the big bad "B" word, intractably tied to infections and disease. In fact, these bitty bugs do us a world of good. "There's a certain 'ick' factor associated with gut bacteria," said Lita ...

Trichomonas vaginalis is a protozoan parasite of the urogenital tract in men and women and causes a sexually transmitted disease, trichomoniasis, in about half of infected women. Infections are associated with pelvic inflammatory disease, adverse pregnancy outcomes, infertility, an increased incidence of aggressive prostate cancers, and an increase in HIV-1 ...

More than half of ground turkey samples are contaminated with fecal bacteria, according to a new study from Consumer Reports. In addition, the magazine found that more than 90 percent of the ground turkey samples it tested contained at least one of the five bacteria the test was looking for ...

The resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and similar drugs—called antimicrobials—is considered a major public health threat by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its counterparts around the world. Antibiotics have transformed health care since they were introduced in the 1940s and have been widely used to fight bacterial infections. These ...

A research project at Indiana State University into a popular packaged drink has found five types of fungus. Kathleen Dannelly, associate professor microbiology, said one previous study published online found only one fungus in Capri Sun, the popular drink manufactured by Kraft. However, the research in Dannelly's lab found five ...

A macrophage (pale brown) interacts with Borrelia cells (blue), the spirochete bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Although the outer membrane of Borrelia contains a strong antigen, the OspC protein, the bacterium successfully evades the human immune system by hiding out in places less accessible to immune cells, such as the ...

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 ...

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 bacteria as well as hyperthermophilic archaea. The beauty of this process ...

Bacteria that grows only on rocks in the Swiss Alps has helped researchers identify how alcohol might affect key brain proteins. “Now that we’ve identified this key brain protein and understand its structure, it’s possible to imagine developing a drug that could block the binding site,” says Adron Harris, professor of ...

The tiny thymus teaches the immune system to ignore the teeming, foreign bacteria in the gut that helps you digest and absorb food, researchers say. When immune cells recognize essential gut bacteria as foreign, inflammatory bowel disease such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease can be the painful, debilitating result. In a ...

Researchers have uncovered details of a mechanism that bacteria use to avoid the effects of antibiotics, which could pave the way for developing new drugs to counteract antibiotic resistance. The discovery, from researchers at Durham University and the University of Birmingham, gives the first clear insight into how molecular pumps in ...

The microbial population in the air of the New York City subway system is nearly identical to that of ambient air on the city streets. This research, published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, establishes an important baseline, should it become necessary to monitor the subway's ...

The common waterborne bacterium Aeromonas hydrophila has increasingly been implicated in serious human infections. By correlating clinical and experimental findings with genome sequencing data, scientists have found key factors that distinguish bacteria that can cause necrotizing skin infections ("flesh-eating bacteria") from other bacteria commonly found in freshwater sources. Joshua Shak, an ...

Thanks to a rare bacteria that grows only on rocks in the Swiss Alps, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the Pasteur Institute in France have been the first to identify how alcohol might affect key brain proteins. It’s a major step on the road to eventually developing ...

For the second time in a matter of weeks, a group of researchers reported a link between the food people eat and bacteria in the intestines that can increase the risk of heart attacks. Two weeks ago, the investigators reported that carnitine, a compound found in red meat, can increase heart ...

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 phages ...

As the death toll from China's bird flu outbreak rose to 22 with news of another victim in eastern Zhejiang Province, the World Health Organization warned the H7N9 virus was one of the most lethal that doctors and medical investigators had faced in recent years. "This is an unusually dangerous virus ...

Researchers from the University of Tübingen have been able to show for the first time how microorganisms contributed to the formation of the world's biggest iron ore deposits. The biggest known deposits -- in South Africa and Australia -- are geological formations billions of years old. They are mainly composed ...

Back when the Time Lord and I were still engaged, we went shopping for wedding rings. He only had one criteria: he wanted his ring to be made of platinum or a similar material forged in a supernova. It’s not quite as exotic as it sounds: most heavy elements were ...

New scientific research published today in the journal PLoS Biology shows that bacteria can evolve resistance more quickly when stronger antibiotics are used. Researchers from the University of Exeter and Kiel University in Germany treated E. coli with different combinations of antibiotics in laboratory experiments. Unexpectedly they found that the rate of ...

Warnings about the emergence of another influenza virus may elicit scepticism, but we should not be complacent, cautions Peter Horby. Once again an animal influenza A virus has crossed the species barrier to cause an appreciable number of human cases. Now, two months after the first known human infections with the ...

Think about the type of animal that would make an ideal host for a virus. It would gather in large dense groups, making it easier for the virus to jump into fresh hosts. It should have a relatively long lifespan, so any single individual has many chances of becoming infected. ...

Our gut is home to trillions of bacteria, numbering more than the cells in the rest of our body, and these bacteria help us to digest our food, absorb nutrients and strengthen our immune system. This complex bacterial ecosystem, called the gut microbiota, also helps to prevent bad bacteria from ...

Two dangerous things together might make a medicine for one of the hardest cancers to treat. In a mouse model of pancreatic cancer, researchers have shown that bacteria can deliver deadly radiation to tumours — exploiting the immune suppression that normally makes the disease so intractable. Fewer than one in 25 ...

Reconfiguring the genetics of the food pathogen E. coli produces hydrocarbons indistinguishable from those burned in trucks. Welding bits and pieces from various microbes and the camphor tree into the genetic code of Escherichia coli has allowed scientists to convince the stomach bug to produce hydrocarbons, rather than sickness ...

There’s no question that variation in size and shape has conferred selective advantages over the course of evolutionary time. One of the most obvious examples is the long neck and legs of the giraffe, which allow it to snatch foliage that is unreachable by vertically challenged competitors. The variable beak ...

Salmonella is a major cause of human diarrhoeal infections and is frequently acquired from chickens, pigs and cattle, or their products. Around 94 million such infections occur in people worldwide each year, with approximately 50,000 cases in the UK per annum. In a BBSRC-funded collaboration between the University of Cambridge's Department ...

The cellular interior is criss-crossed by protein-based cables known as microtubules, each formed from 13 'protofilaments' composed of the protein tubulin. Microtubules are also associated with a host of other specialized proteins that help coordinate the transport of molecular cargoes and link microtubules to intracellular structures. A research team led by ...

The proportion of young women diagnosed with genital warts in Australia has seen a significant decline thanks to the HPV vaccine, suggests a new paper. In 2007, Australia became one of the first countries to implement a nationally funded quadrivalent human papillomarivus (HPV) vaccination programme for girls and young women, ...

Can scientists rid malaria from the Third World by simply feeding algae genetically engineered with a vaccine? That’s the question biologists at UC San Diego sought to answer after they demonstrated last May that algae can be engineered to produce a vaccine that blocks malaria transmission. In a follow up study, ...

Researchers have more questions than answers about the latest bird flu circulating in China, including whether birds are the only reservoir for the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 17 people in China have died of H7N9 infection, and there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission of the flu ...

IDRI (Infectious Disease Research Institute), a Seattle-based non-profit research organization that is a leading developer of adjuvants used in vaccines combating infectious disease, and Medicago Inc. (TSX: MDG; OTCQX: MDCGF), a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing highly effective and competitive vaccines based on proprietary manufacturing technologies and Virus-Like Particles (VLPs), ...

A long-forgotten candidate for antiviral therapy is undergoing a renaissance: Since the 1970s, the small molecule CMA has been considered a potent agent against viral infections, yet it was never approved for clinical use. Scientists at the Bonn University Hospital have now deciphered how the molecule can actually stimulate the ...

A key building block in the Schmallenberg virus could be targeted by anti-viral drugs, according to a new study led from the University of Leeds. The disease, which causes birth defects and stillbirths in sheep, goats and cattle, was first discovered in Germany in late 2011 and has already spread ...

A roller derby tournament seems like a brutal research environment: women crash around a rink in short skirts and skates, slamming their shoulders into members of the opposing team so that their own team’s “jammer” can lap them and score. But it’s perfect for researchers investigating how, through skin-to-skin contact, ...

What is more commonplace than saying that prokaryotic cells possess a nucleoid? It is implicit in the term prokaryote itself. Still, it was not shown definitively until the 1940s that bacteria and archaea have such differentiated structures made up of condensed DNA. It was the careful work of “bacterial cytologists” ...

Despite the pointless political assassinations of vaccine workers or the police officers who guard them in a few deeply troubled areas, enough progress has been made against polio in the past year that health experts are now planning for the grand finale—its complete eradication by 2018. The official to-do list ...

Bacteria, viruses and parasites from land animals such as cats, cows and humans are sickening and killing sea mammals. Scientists have been finding a daunting number of land-based pathogens in seals, dolphins, sharks and other ocean dwellers that wash ashore dead or dying, according to an article by Christopher Solomon ...

Radioactive iron may be first fossil imprint of a nearby cosmic explosion. Sediment in a deep-sea core may hold radioactive iron spewed by a distant supernova 2.2 million years ago and preserved in the fossilized remains of iron-loving bacteria. If confirmed, the iron traces would be the first biological signature ...

Exposing packaged liquids, fruits and vegetables to an electrical field for just minutes might eliminate all traces of foodborne pathogens on those foods, according to a Purdue University study. Kevin Keener, a professor of food science, looks for new ways to kill harmful bacteria, such as E.coli and Salmonella, that contaminate ...

Some facts about the toxin that was found in a letter addressed to US senator Roger Wicker. Government officials in Washington have shut down mail delivery to the US Senate after detecting ricin in a letter addressed to Mississippi senator Roger Wicker, a Republican, on 16 April. Here are some ...

As much as dog owners love their children, they tend to share more of themselves, at least in terms of bacteria, with their canine cohorts rather than their kids. That is just one finding of a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder that looked at the types and ...

Officials in Beijing confirmed today that a 7-year-old girl is infected with H7N9 avian influenza, widening the geographic spread of the virus that's already killed 11 people. The girl, whose parents sell live poultry, was admitted to the hospital Thursday with pneumonia and is the first case reported outside eastern China, ...

A newly discovered rodent virus that resembles hepatitis C could give research chimps a break. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is expected to make a decision imminently on how many of its 360 research chimps should be retired on the grounds that most studies can be done in other ...

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have made a counterintuitive finding that may lead to new ways to clear persistent infection that is the hallmark of such diseases as AIDS, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. The study, reported in the April 12, 2013 issue of the journal Science, focused on ...

The cholera strain that transferred to Haiti in 2010 has multiple toxin gene mutations that may account for the severity of disease and is evolving to be more like an 1800s version of cholera, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The strain, "altered El Tor," which emerged around 2000, is known ...

Newcastle University scientists have revealed the mechanism that causes a slime to form, making bacteria hard to shift and resistant to antibiotics. When under threat, some bacteria can shield themselves in a slimy protective layer, known as a biofilm. It is made up of communities of bacteria held together to protect ...

Circumcision drastically alters the microbiome of the penis, changes that could explain why circumcision offers protection against HIV and other viral infections. In a study to be published on April 16 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers studied the effects of adult male ...

A nanoparticle wrapped in a red blood cell membrane can remove toxins from the body and could be used to fight bacterial infections, according to research published today in Nature Nanotechnology. The results demonstrate that the nanoparticles could be used to neutralize toxins produced by many bacteria, including some that are ...

Hilary Koprowski, a pioneering virologist who was credited with developing the first successful oral vaccination for polio, died April 11 at his home in Wynnewood, Pa. He was 96.

Beijing confirmed that a 7-year-old girl has H7N9 avian influenza and Henan province reported its first two cases, opening a new front in the spread of the virus in the world’s most populous nation. Shanghai said today two people infected with the strain of bird flu died, taking the country’s ...

I suppose that most microbiologists and the readers of this blog would split the answer down the middle, the biomass of this planet and the chemical transactions therein being about half microbial, half everything else. However, it’s safe to say that most people, many scientists included, are unaware of the ...

You may notice a green, red or brown film on your favorite boating or swimming area in the summer. This coloring could mean that the water is affected by harmful algal blooms. Harmful algal blooms are an accumulation of tiny organisms known as algae and can release harmful toxins into ...

White-nose syndrome has invaded Fern Cave National Wildlife Refuge, home to more than 1 million endangered gray bats and other vulnerable species. The world's largest wintering colony of gray bats may be under attack from white-nose syndrome, federal wildlife authorities reported Monday, potentially spelling doom for the already-endangered species. More than ...

Harvard research reveals the role of the flagellum in helping biofilms colonize rough surfaces. New research from Harvard University helps to explain how waterborne bacteria can colonize rough surfaces—even those that have been designed to resist water. A team of materials scientists and microbiologists studied the gut bacterium Escherichia coli, ...

Imagine a substance that was strong and light enough to armour soldiers, flexible and conductive enough to be turned into the next generation of flexible smartphone screens - and even absorbent enough to make tampons more effective. Now imagine the process for making this wonder material was cheap, fast and involved ...

In a classic case of turning an enemy into a friend, scientists have engineered a protein from flesh-eating bacteria to act as a molecular “superglue” that promises to become a disease fighter. And their latest results, which make the technology more versatile, were the topic of a report here today ...

View an interactive animation of the life cycle of the malaria parasite, of the genus Plasmodium. The lifecycle of the malaria parasite is split between female mosquitoes and humans. In the mosquito gut, the parasites complete sexual reproduction and then multiply rapidly to produce many more parasites. The human ...

Tumor necrosis factor – normally an infection-fighting substance produced by the body – can actually heighten susceptibility to tuberculosis if its levels are too high. University of Washington TB researchers unravel this conundrum in a report this week in Cell. Their study shows how excess production of this disease-cell destroyer ...

Certain types of papilloma virus might actually prevent cervical cancer, according to a new study by researchers from The University of Manchester. There are over 100 different types of human papilloma virus (HPV). Cervical cancer is known to be caused by infection with approximately 14 so-called "high-risk" types of this ...

Nearly 6% of lung cancer tissue samples from non-smokers show signs that HPV may have triggered the tumors. A common virus known to cause cervical and head and neck cancers may also trigger some cases of lung cancer, according to new research presented by Fox Chase Cancer Center at ...

A mysterious type of protein found in bacteria and other organisms, including humans, appears to act as a delivery system for toxins. While these proteins, called rearrangement hotspots (Rhs), have been recognized for more 30 years, their function has been enigmatic. A research team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, ...

Recently, one of Paul Cezanne’s missing paintings was rediscovered. The painting shows Paulin Paulet, a gardener on Cezanne’s family estate, looking at his poker cards. Cezanne painted Paulet as part of a series of paintings between 1890 and 1896. This particular painting is called A Card Player. It had not ...

Metagenomics has allowed researchers to reconstruct the genome sequence of a deadly Shiga-toxigenic E. coli outbreak without having to grow bacteria in the lab. “The outbreak of Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli illustrated the effects of a bacterial epidemic on a wealthy, modern, industrialized society, with more than 3,000 cases and more than ...

This digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted the dorsal (upper) surface of a Giardia protozoan that had been isolated from a rat’s intestine. Some of the identifying morphologic characteristics include pairs of thread-like flagella that facilitate motility, and a ventolateral flange that appears as a “ruffle” around the anterior portion ...

In the search for new antibiotics, researchers are taking an unusual approach: They are developing peptides, short chains of protein building blocks that effectively inhibit a key enzyme of bacterial metabolism. Now, scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in Saarbrücken, a branch of the Helmholtz Center ...

A new study in the Netherlands has found a deep-sea microbe living in high-temperature hydro-thermal vents can thrive on chlorate and perchlorate anions. Perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel and fireworks, is toxic to most organisms. The researchers, led by Martin Liebensteiner of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, have shown for ...

Following up on our coverage of the work of John Rogers, who is leading efforts at University of Illinois to develop flexible and bioresorbable electronic systems, there’s news now of new findings evaluating such implants in animal models. Presented at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society ...

Sandia National Laboratories is developing a suite of complementary technologies to help the emerging algae industry detect and quickly recover from algal pond crashes, an obstacle to large-scale algae cultivation for future biofuels. The research, which focuses on monitoring and diagnosing algal pond health, draws upon Sandia's longstanding expertise in ...

Shingles vaccine is associated with reduction in both postherpetic neuralgia and herpes zoster, but uptake in the US is low. A vaccine to prevent shingles may reduce by half the occurrence of this painful skin and nerve infection in older people (aged over 65 years) and may also reduce the ...

This confocal micrograph, taken as part of a synthetic biology project, shows Bacillus subtilis, a Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in soil. Distinct lineages of bacteria expressing different fluorescent proteins were initially mixed randomly on a petri dish. As the bacteria grow, they organise themselves into reproducible patterns ...

A study at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine has identified a chicken-killing virus as a promising treatment for prostate cancer in humans. Researchers have discovered that a genetically engineered Newcastle disease virus, which harms chickens but not humans, kills prostate cancer cells of all kinds, including hormone-resistant cancer cells. ...

Nearly half of the world's population is at risk of infection by the dengue virus, yet there is no specific treatment for the disease. Now a therapy to protect people from the virus could finally be a step closer, thanks to a team at MIT. In a paper published today in ...

Technology that enlists natural soil bacteria as 21st century roughnecks now is commercially available and poised to recover precious oil remaining in thousands of exhausted oil wells, according to a scientist who spoke in New Orleans on April 8. His report on a process termed microbially enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) ...

Researchers suspect H7N9 virus is in bird markets as human cases rise rapidly. Virologists know its name: H7N9. What they don’t yet know is whether this novel avian influenza virus — first reported in humans in China less than two weeks ago — will rapidly fizzle out, become established in ...

Placement of copper objects in intensive care unit (ICU) hospital rooms reduced the number of healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) in patients by more than half, according to a new study published in the May issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, in a special topic issue focused on the role of ...

Like humans, mice can become infected with Borrelia. However, not all mice that come into contact with these bacteria contract the dreaded Lyme disease: Animals with a particular gene variant are immune to the bacteria, as scientists from the universities of Zurich and Lund demonstrate. Wild mice are the primary ...

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have found an effective method to infect house flies with a virus that stops the flies from reproducing. House flies can transmit hundreds of animal and human pathogens like Salmonella, Escherichia coli and Shigella bacteria, which cause foodborne illnesses. Insecticides are used to help control ...

Microbes turn nutrient in beef into an artery-clogging menace. Lean steak is low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein — qualities normally considered healthy. But eating a lot of it can still cause heart disease. Researchers have now laid the blame on bacteria in the human gut that ...

National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have developed a model of infection in rhesus macaques that will help scientists around the world better understand how an emerging coronavirus, first identified in September 2012, affects people. The virus has so far infected at least 17 people in the Middle East and ...

Thousands of women suffer from overactive bladder (OAB) or the sudden need to urinate, yet many don’t get relief from medication. Researchers at Loyola University Health System believe certain bacteria may be to blame. Loyola has launched a clinical trial to determine if the bacteria present in the urine of women ...

Viruses have historically been classified into one of two types – those with an outer lipid-containing envelope and those without an envelope. For the first time, researchers at the University of North Carolina have discovered that hepatitis A virus, a common cause of enterically-transmitted hepatitis, takes on characteristics of both ...

THE WORLD witnessed only 223 polio cases last year, the lowest level in history and an impressive advance from the hundreds of thousands of children afflicted as recently as the 1980s. However, the eradication quest is not over, and the next steps look difficult. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, an ...

Seeing the mosquito-transmitted chikungunya virus pathogen at very high resolution while it’s bound to antibodies could lead to vaccines for the disease. The infection causes symptoms similar to dengue fever, followed by a prolonged disease that affects the joints and causes severe arthritis. In recent outbreaks, some cases progressed to ...

A new study which was performed jointly at Umeå university and the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, discovered that bacteria can degrade the cell membrane of bacterial competitors with enzymes that do not harm their own membrane. This exciting finding opens the way for the development of new antibacterial ...

Two former Canadian Food Inspection Agency researchers face charges for trying to take 17 vials of pathogens out of the country. Klaus Nielsen, a world-leading researcher in brucella infection, and fellow researcher Wei Ling Yu have been charged with breach of trust by a public officer after what the RCMP called ...

Once upon a time, not too terribly long ago, getting the chicken pox was practically a rite of passage for kids. But now, nearly 20 years after approval of a vaccine for the varicella virus, which causes the itchy illness, chicken pox is a rarity. A new study conducted by researchers ...

Parasites pose a problem for the semantically-oriented microbiologist. There is no question that unicellular parasites such as Giardia, Plasmodium, or Toxoplasma are microbes, thus we can appropriate them with impunity. But what about parasitic worms? They are clearly not microscopic* and are taxonomically apart from parasitic protist. Yet parasitic protists ...

What is the influenza A(H7N9) virus? Influenza A H7 viruses are a group of influenza viruses that normally circulate among birds. The influenza A(H7N9) virus is one subgroup among the larger group of H7 viruses. Although some H7 viruses (H7N2, H7N3 and H7N7) have occasionally been found to infect humans, no ...

On 3 April 2013, the China Health and Family Planning Commission notified WHO of an additional four cases of human infection with influenza A(H7N9). The four patients are from Jiangsu province in eastern China. There is no link between the cases. The patients include a 45-year-old woman with illness onset on ...

University of British Columbia researchers have discovered two new symbionts living in the gut of termites, and taken the unusual step of naming them after fictional monsters created by American horror author HP Lovecraft. The single-cell protists, Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, help termites digest wood. The researchers decided to name ...

Call it hollow-hearted. Researchers have built a mimic of the outer capsule of the foot-and-mouth disease virus. Inside, where the virus' genetic material normally lives, is empty. Such synthetic virus-like particles could go into a foot-and-mouth vaccine that's cheaper to make because it doesn't require the tight biosecurity that a ...

Biology and nanotechnology are moving ever closer together. Ars recently wrote about the use of nanoparticles to aid delivery of stem cells in cardiac therapy. Now, Swiss researchers have developed nanoparticles that can detect, and one day could combat, viruses. When viruses enter the human body, the immune system responds to ...

Using the same strategy that a common virus employs to evade the human immune system, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine have modified adult stem cells to increase their survival -- with the goal of giving the cells time to exert their natural healing abilities. "Basically, ...

The recent news about a baby in Mississippi and 14 French adults said to have been "cured" of HIV infection has fueled excitement that the end of HIV/AIDS could be within sight. Both situations raise more questions than they currently answer. Although no one can say we now have "the" cure ...

An alternative treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections that are raising concern nationwide already exists. But there's a big problem. The treatment is not approved for use in the United States. And it could be a decade or more for the treatment, long used in Russia, former Soviet nations, Eastern Europe and more ...

The squid has fascinated microbiologists for years because of its harmonious relationship with just one bacteria -- Vibrio fischeri. The bacteria does not express light when it is freely roaming in the ocean, but when housed in the squid's light organ (located in its underbelly) it will work with the ...

A growing body of evidence suggests that all the antibacterial-wiping, germ-killing cleanliness of the developed world may actually be making us more prone to getting sick — and that a little more dirt might help us stay healthier in the long run. The idea, known as the hygiene hypothesis, was first ...

Good morning, everyone! Are you ready for that first cup of coffee? Apparently a strain of bacteria is, too. Researchers have engineered E. Coli bacteria that are "addicted" to caffeine. Why? That's a very good question. The latest creation is not a new idea. Researchers have been engineering organisms for ...

LOS ALAMOS, N. M., March 29, 2013—A new study by Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Pennsylvania scientists defines previously unknown properties of transmitted HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. The viruses that successfully pass from a chronically infected person to a new individual are both remarkably resistant to ...

Hong Kong (CNN) -- Two people in China have died and another remains critical after falling ill with a strain of bird flu not detected before in humans, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. Both of those who died, men aged 27 and 87, lived in Shanghai, while a ...

Normally we shudder when we think of bacteria, but a new study reveals that some of these microorganisms may be able to help us lose weight. The study, published in the March 27 issue of Science Translational Medicine, showed that bacteria in the guts of mice changed after they had gastric ...

A nasty fungal infection that can spread to the lungs or brain and cause lifetime symptoms is on the rise in the Southwestern U.S., federal health officials reported on Thursday. Cases of Valley Fever, known medically as coccidioidomycosis, have increased nearly 10-fold between 1998 and 2011, the Centers for Disease ...

Plant waste has long been seen as a possible source of sustainable biofuels, and new research out of Rice University could unlock some of the energy that scientists say lies waiting in organic material. According to materials provided by Rice, bioengineer Ka-Yiu San and his lab have developed a way to ...

Producing vaccines against viral threats is a potentially hazardous business and that's why manufacturers have to operate strict controls to ensure that no pathogens escape. British scientists have developed a new method to create an entirely synthetic vaccine which doesn't rely on using live infectious virus, meaning it is much safer. What's ...

BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh explains how British scientists have used a new technique to develop a synthetic virus which heralds a major development in vaccines. Click "source" to view video.

The mysterious SARS-like virus that appears to be originating in the Middle East has claimed two more victims after people died from the infection in Germany and in Britain. Their deaths brings to 11 the number of fatalities attributed to the virus, and six others have been determined to have been ...

Northwestern Medicine scientists have identified a component of the herpesvirus that "hijacks" machinery inside human cells, allowing the virus to rapidly and successfully invade the nervous system upon initial exposure. Led by Gregory Smith, associate professor in immunology and microbiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, researchers found that viral ...

Good microbiologists question assumptions. How about the assumption that semesters are the best calendars for learning? What would happen if rather than taking four courses concurrently during a semester, students instead took those four courses successively, one at a time? This describes the Colorado College “block plan,” first implemented in ...

The first evidence of cases of the Schmallenberg virus (SBV) among livestock bred and raised in Scotland has been confirmed. Eight cows on the Barony Campus of Scotland's Rural College in Dumfries and Galloway have tested positive for SBV antibodies. It indicates exposure to the virus at some time last year.

From the shiny, strong nacre that gives abalone shells an unbreakable, opaline sheen, to the goopy mix of proteins fired by a velvet worm that solidify and trap prey upon impact, nature is packed with inspiration for scientists designing new materials. Waterproof adhesives and self-cleaning surfaces, mineralized teeth and hairy insect ...

Governments, funders and regulatory authorities must urgently address the risks posed by gain-of-function research, says Simon Wain-Hobson. Barely two months after a small group of influenza virologists lifted a moratorium on work to make the H5N1 avian flu virus as transmissible between humans as seasonal flu, researchers are at ...

How much a person eats may be only one of many factors that determines weight gain. A recent Cedars-Sinai study suggests that a breath test profile of microorganisms inhabiting the gut may be able to tell doctors how susceptible a person is to developing obesity. The study, published online Thursday by ...

Older adults who harbor certain infections, such as the herpes cold sore virus, may have poorer thinking and memory abilities than their peers, a new study suggests. Researchers found that of more than 1,600 older adults, those with signs of chronic infection with herpes simplex and certain other viruses and bacteria ...

Bacteria could soon be acting as microscopic "bio-batteries" thanks to a joint UK-US research effort. The team of scientists has laid bare the power-generating mechanism used by well-known marine bacteria. Before now it was not clear whether the bacteria directly conducted an electrical charge themselves or used something else to do it. Unpicking ...

Observing microbes in nature is a challenge. Compared to what goes on in the lab, there is not much one can do with them out there. So, instead of bringing the bacteria to the lab, why not bring the lab to the bacteria? Imagine being able to capture the expression ...

Researchers have used whole genome sequencing to reveal if drug-resistant bacteria are transmitted from animals to humans in two disease outbreaks that occurred on different farms in Denmark. The results, which are published today in EMBO Molecular Medicine, confirm animal-to-human transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a disease-causing bacterium that ...

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 substitute manganese to make an ...

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 the bacteria's own byproducts to destroy them. In ...

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 important ideas ...

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 commandeers its ...

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 of the disease, ...

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 ...

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 preventing malaria — a disease ...

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 Molecular Physiology in Dortmund working ...

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 protect patients. Infections caused by these germs ...

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 of these nanomotors in a bacteria-killing ...

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]. The genome of Chondrus crispus, also ...

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 to ...

Over the past year, a viral infection has infected 15 people — killing nine. All lived in the Middle East or Britain. The novel germ doe not yet have a formal name. It causes pneumonia, a type of severe lung infection. On Feb. 27, scientists from around the world met ...

The world's longest-running experiments remind us that science is a marathon, not a sprint. Although science is a long-term pursuit, research is often practised over short timescales: a discrete experiment or a self-contained project constrained by the length of a funding cycle. But some investigations cannot be rushed. To study ...

Researchers have found microbes in the deepest oceanic trench on Earth - the Mariana Trench, which is located at nearly 7 miles or 11 kilometers below sea level in the western Pacific. The study of life in this inaccessible site revealed a community of bacteria that live in extreme pressures, which ...

The cyanobacterium Synechocystis produces toxins that often lead to its own demise. The biologists Stefan Kopfmann and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hess from the University of Freiburg have determined the logic governing this mechanism. The cyanobacterium Synechocystis produces several toxins. However, most of the time they cannot become active because the ...

The efficiency of hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission by sexual activity remains controversial. We conducted a cross-sectional study of HCV-positive subjects and their partners to estimate the risk for HCV infection among monogamous heterosexual couples. A total of 500 anti–HCV-positive, human immunodeficiency virus–negative index subjects and their long-term heterosexual partners ...

A rising percentage of parents say they won't have their teen daughters vaccinated to protect against the human papilloma virus, even though physicians are increasingly recommending adolescent vaccinations, a study by Mayo Clinic and others shows. More than 2 in 5 parents surveyed believe the HPV vaccine is unnecessary, and ...

Sara Volz won the Intel Science Fair for her work on growing algae that's more efficient at making biofuels--and she does all her work in her bedroom. Every year, the Intel Science Talent Search honors brilliant high school students for their contributions to the worlds of math and science. Last year, ...

Defective viruses, thought for decades to be essentially garbage unrelated to the transmission of normal viruses, now appear able to play an important role in the spread of disease, new research by UCLA life scientists indicates. Defective viruses have genetic mutations or deletions that eliminate their essential viral functions. They ...

The overuse of antibiotics has created strains of bacteria resistant to medication, making the diseases they cause difficult to treat, or even deadly. But now a research team at the University of Rochester has identified a weakness in at least one superbug that scientists may be able to medically exploit.

If you don’t have an immune system, you don’t last long in this parasite-riddled world. Your body receives a steady stream of invaders–viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens–which it has to recognize and fight. In many cases, it’s a brutal battle with an ultimate goal of eradication. In other cases, the ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute have developed a new method for studying the complex molecular workings of Anopheles albimanus, an important but less studied spreader of human malaria. An. albimanus carries Plasmodium vivax, the primary cause of malaria in humans in South America and regions outside of ...

The peptidoglycan cell wall is a hallmark of the bacterial subkingdom. Surprisingly, many modern bacteria retain the ability to switch into a wall-free state called the L-form. L-form proliferation is remarkable in being independent of the normally essential FtsZ-based division machinery and in occurring by membrane blebbing and tubulation. We ...

After receptor binding and internalization during influenza virus entry, the hemagglutinin (HA) protein is triggered by low pH to undergo irreversible conformational changes that mediate membrane fusion. To investigate how mutations that alter the activation pH of the HA protein influence the fitness of an avian H5N1 influenza virus in ...

As many San Franciscans have noticed, sourdough bread stays fresher longer than the regular stuff. Sourdough’s extended freshness is due to extra fermentation that traps more moisture in the dough. But now we know that sourdough’s longevity is also because it can ward off mold. Because bacteria in some sourdough ...

The year 2012 was quite turbulent in Italian politics but it ended with a display of near unanimity. The reason was the posthumous homage to the oldest senator of the Republic and the oldest Nobel Prize winner, Rita Levi-Montalcini. In Italy, the President has the privilege of personally naming up ...

In trying to figure out what ethics ought to guide scientists in their activities, we’re really asking a question about what values scientists are committed to. Arguably, something that a scientist values may not be valued as much (if at all) by the average person in that scientist’s society. Objectivity is ...

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 a killer, the ...

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) affects more than 90 percent of the population worldwide and was the first human virus found to be associated with cancer. Now, researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have broadened the understanding of this widespread infection with their discovery of a second B-cell attachment receptor ...

Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics when stressed, finds research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. In particular E. coli grown at high temperatures become resistant to rifampicin. It is generally thought that antibiotic resistance is costly to maintain, for example mutations which reduce antibiotic uptake also restrict ...

A simple, fast and inexpensive new test for leprosy offers hope that, even in the poorest countries, victims can be found and cured before they become permanently disabled or disfigured like the shunned lepers of yore. American researchers developed the test, and Brazil’s drug-regulatory agency registered it last month. A Brazilian ...

In the celebrated novel The Rebel Angels, the famed Canadian author Robertson Davies mentions Ozias Froats, a fictional professor potentially on his way to a Nobel Prize for discovering that everyone’s feces reflect the maker’s personality. He did not have today’s ready recourse to metagenomics (that being still in the ...

Eleven scientists, most of them American, were scheduled to be named on Wednesday as the first winners of the world’s richest academic prize for medicine and biology — $3 million each, more than twice the amount of the Nobel Prize. The award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, was established by ...

With the help of a tiny worm, Cornelia Bargmann is unpicking the neural circuits that drive eating, socializing and sex. Male sexual dysfunction is never pretty, even in nematodes. In normal roundworm courtship, a slender male will sidle up to a plump hermaphrodite, make contact, and then initiate a set ...

Scientists are targeting disease-causing bacteria present on cows’ skin as an attempt to prevent them from contaminating beef meat, and from posing a threat to consumers’ health. If you can't kill them, trap them. Such is the fate that scientists are reserving to pathogenic bacteria, such as the infamous E. coli. ...

In the mid-1990s, people in the United States and Canada began to notice something grotesque. The frogs in their local ponds were sprouting extra legs. As news of the deformed frogs spread, the Minnesota state government set up a hot line for sightings, and soon they got hundreds of calls from ...

Researchers in Australia have provided the final piece of a puzzle to develop a new anti-malarial drug, which targets the parasite that causes the disease and kills it with a salt overdose. The drug, the first discovery in the fight against malaria in two decades, holds out fresh hope for conquering ...

A suffocating fungus that threatens amphibians around the world has skipped over the diverse frog population in West Africa. Amphibians are one of the most threatened animal groups in the world; almost one third of all species are under acute threat. One of the main reasons for their decline is a ...

A team of scientists and surgeons from Newcastle are developing a new nasal spray from a marine microbe to help clear chronic sinusitis. They are using an enzyme isolated from a marine bacterium Bacillus licheniformis found on the surface of seaweed which the scientists at Newcastle University were originally researching ...

A team of molecular biology students at the University of Surrey has created a series of 'artworks' by imprinting mobile phones onto a layer of bacteriological growth media. Students in the undergraduate Practical and Biomedical Bacteriology class run by Simon Park were encouraged to imprint their mobile phones onto a petri ...

The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, is now the first and only place in Europe where pathogens requiring Containment Level 3 -- including serious viruses such as those responsible for AIDS, Hepatitis and some types of flu -- can be analysed at atomic and molecular level using synchrotron ...

Performing sensitive biological experiments is always a delicate affair. Few researchers, however, contend with the challenges faced by Cheryl Nickerson, whose working laboratory aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is located hundreds of miles above the Earth, traveling at some 17,000 miles per hour. Nickerson, a microbiologist at Arizona State University's ...

Fungi living beneath the seafloor are widespread in ocean environments around the world, according to a new paper by scientists at the University of Delaware and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “They’re ubiquitous,” said co-author Jennifer Biddle, assistant professor of marine biosciences at UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. “They ...

High on the list of the exciting manners bacteria communicate with one another is quorum sensing (QS), a population-dependent gene regulation system that operates within a wide range of species. The general scheme of QS is as follows: at high population densities, signal molecules called autoinducers reach threshold levels, at ...

DNA preserved in calcified bacteria on the teeth of ancient human skeletons has shed light on the health consequences of the evolving diet and behaviour from the Stone Age to the modern day. The ancient genetic record reveals the negative changes in oral bacteria brought about by the dietary shifts as ...

A research team led by Blossom Damania, PhD, found that suppressing the TLK enzyme causes the activation of the lytic cycle of both EBV and KSHV. During this active phase, these viruses begin to spread and replicate, and become vulnerable to anti-viral treatments. Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) ...

Throughout her career, the famous biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) argued that the world of microorganisms has a much larger impact on the entire biosphere—the world of all living things—than scientists typically recognize. Now a team of scientists from universities around the world has collected and compiled the results of hundreds ...

Vibrio cholerae, the scourge of nations lacking clean water. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the microbe that plagues people with cystic fibrosis. Acinetobacter species, opportunistic organisms that can infect vulnerable people. Escherichia coli, a culprit in food-borne illnesses. When these bacteria invade their human hosts, they can cause misery and death. But these pathogens ...

Echinococcus granulosus is a tapeworm parasite that in its larval form can cause hydatid disease, which is characterized by cysts forming within the victim's body. In order to complete its lifecycle, the tapeworm must infect two hosts, a carnivore and a herbivore. The adult form of Echinococcus granulosus exists benignly in ...

We tend to believe -- and quite rightly so -- that germs are a detriment to our economy. The billions of dollars spent each year to treat infections can overburden the budget of any healthcare institution and the pocketbooks of anyone without appropriate health insurance. But pathogens only make up a ...

The discovery of new viruses that appear to be spread around the world's oceans hints at a war waging between such viruses and their prey: an abundant group of bacteria. The bacteria, collectively known as SAR11, are the most abundant organisms known to inhabit seawater. "They are everywhere, from the surface down ...

Scientists wondering why some children and not others survived one of China's worst food safety scandals have uncovered a suspect: germs that live in the gut. In 2008, at least six babies died and 300,000 became sick after being fed infant formula that had been deliberately and illegally tainted with the ...

Elaine Hsiao is a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry and biology at Caltech. She received her undergraduate degree in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics from UCLA and her doctoral degree in neurobiology from Caltech with Professor Paul Patterson. She studied neuroimmune mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders and uncovered a ...

If you were a science professor, and you received two equally strong applications for the position of laboratory manager, one from a female, one from a male, which one would you pick? The answer may surprise you. It is well known that women are underrepresented in many fields of science. Whether ...

Scanning electron micrograph of HIV particles infecting a human T cell. Credit: NIAID, NIH

I suspect we think of large-scale confinement agriculture as a uniquely American issue. Possibly that’s because growth-promoter antibiotic use, which makes meat-raising efficient, originated in the United States; more likely, it’s because some of the largest firms in that sector — Smithfield and Tyson, for example — are US-based. But ...

Depending on the strain, or genotype, of the human papillomavirus (HPV), the lesions it causes can range from relatively benign to cancer-causing. Differentiating between lesions caused by low-risk and high-risk viral genotypes, however, is difficult. Françoise Thierry at the A*STAR Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore and co-workers have now ...

Genetic system performs logic operations and stores data in DNA. Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in living cells. These ‘genetic circuits’ could be used to track key moments in a cell’s life or, at the flick of a chemical switch, change a cell’s fate, the ...

Synthetic biology delivers combination therapies into an uncertain market. “It’s been a dream project — but it’s been a long dream,” says Jay Keasling, a biochemical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. Seven years ago, he and his team genetically engineered yeast to produce artemisinic acid (D.-K. Ro et ...

US outbreak foxes a leading web-based method for tracking seasonal flu. When influenza hit early and hard in the United States this year, it quietly claimed an unacknowledged victim: one of the cutting-edge techniques being used to monitor the outbreak. A comparison with traditional surveillance data showed that Google Flu ...

An increasing number of bacteria is evolving antibiotic resistance. Much-feared representatives of this steadily growing group include Staphylococci strains. At this point, multi-resistant forms of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus - the "hospital germ" known commonly by its acronym, MRSA - can only be treated with a select subset of antibiotics ...

A synthetic version of the Schmallenberg virus has been made in the laboratory by Scottish scientists. The research raises hopes for developing a vaccine for the livestock disease, which causes lambs and calves to be stillborn. Schmallenberg virus (SBV) was discovered little more than a year ago in Germany, but ...

What is more emblematic of our science than the Gram stain? Since its invention 130 years ago, it has been in frequent and continuous use. It conveniently places most bacteria into one of two groups, the Gram-positives or the Gram-negatives. Gram staining is cheap, effective, quick, and relatively easy to ...

UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have synthesized a peptide that shows potential for pharmaceutical development into agents for treating infections, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer through an ability to induce a cell-recycling process called autophagy. In their latest findings reported online in the journal Nature, Center researchers were able to synthesize a ...

In a path-breaking study to be published online in Immunity, the investigators found that over the course of our lives, CD4 cells - key players circulating in blood and lymph whose ability to kick-start the immune response to viral, bacterial, protozoan and fungal pathogens can spell the difference between life ...

In Monday's issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Hamilton said they found infants born by caesarean delivery lacked a group of bacteria common in the stool of infants delivered vaginally, even if they were breastfed.

British officials have found the world's 10th known case of a new coronavirus, a mysterious disease related to SARS and first identified last year. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that are behind ailments including the common cold and SARS. SARS killed about 800 people in a global epidemic in ...

Two young EPFL scientists have developed a device that can create 3D images of living cells and track their reaction to various stimuli without the use of contrast dyes or fluorophores.

One of the big mysteries of AIDS is why some HIV-positive people take more than a decade to progress to full-blown AIDS, if they progress at all. A group of investigators from the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), housed within the UCLA AIDS Institute, may have uncovered the key to ...

Olympus Bioscapes, Honorable Mention, Dr. Petr Znachor, Laboratory of Phytoplankton Ecology, Institute of Hydrobiology,Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. Specimen: Cyanobacterium Anabaena planctonica, Technique: Nomarski contrast, 20x Objective

It is generally a mystery how new diseases arise and how the pathogens that cause them first enter countries. However, clues may come from examination of specimens from similar outbreaks. This approach has recently been taken by scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna to trace the origin of ...

Scientists have long puzzled over why "bad" bacteria such as E. coli can thrive in the guts of those with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), causing serious diarrhea. Now UC Davis researchers have discovered the answer -- one that may be the first step toward finding new and better treatments for ...

A pair of commentaries to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy highlight a debate within the public health community surrounding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for treatment of exposed individuals during last year’s fungal meningitis outbreak. Manuscripts of the commentaries ...

The UK dog population is estimated to be around ten million, with dogs producing approximately 1,000 tonnes of excrement each day. New research has shown that dogs act as a major source of the parasite egg, Toxocara, which can potentially contaminate the public environment and infect humans. The aim of the ...

Genes relocated from their correct position in the nucleus cause them to malfunction and this may lead to the heart, blood vessels and muscles breaking down. This new discovery by A*STAR scientists may be the key to finding new cures in the future. Scientists from Singapore and Germany have identified that ...

One of the most critical biological advances in the past decade was the discovery that the introduction of four simple genetic factors can turn a fully mature adult cell back into an embryonic-like state, a process called reprogramming. Cllick "source" to read more and view video.

Penicillin-producing fungus, previously thought to be asexual, has a sexual side. The finding is the latest in a kind of sexual revolution in fungal genetics. By turning off the lights, setting up an oatmeal-based bed and slipping some extra vitamins into their food, researchers have persuaded the supposedly asexual mold ...

Scientists hope that one day in the distant future, miniature, medically-savvy computers will roam our bodies, detecting early-stage diseases and treating them on the spot by releasing a suitable drug, without any outside help. To make this vision a reality, computers must be sufficiently small to fit into body cells. ...

An international collaboration of researchers from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), Tunisia and France has demonstrated a high cure rate and remarkably few side effects in treating patients with cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) with an investigational antibiotic cream. CL is a parasitic disease that causes disfiguring lesions, ...

There's nothing quite like the pastime of cloud watching. We can spend hours watching these ethereal formations pass by. We can find shapes in them, try to imagine where they came from -- and where they are going -- and whether or not they are going to open up and ...

UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have synthesized a peptide that shows potential for pharmaceutical development into agents for treating infections, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer through an ability to induce a cell-recycling process called autophagy. Autophagy is a fundamental recycling process in which intracellular enzymes digest unneeded and broken parts of the ...

A team of scientists just won a battle in the war against antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" -- and only time will tell if their feat is akin to the bacterial "Battle of Gettysburg" that turns the tide toward victory. They won this particular battle, or at least gained some critical intelligence, not by ...

As the Northern Hemisphere shivers through winter, bacteria in Antarctica are employing an inventive strategy to survive the extreme cold: they use a specialized antifreeze protein to latch onto the ice and stay afloat. Antifreeze proteins generally protect their hosts from freezing by controlling the growth of destructive ice crystals. They ...

Biochemical trick could aid in recovery of the metal from waste. Gold prospectors may one day use Petri dishes to help with their quests. A species of bacterium forms nanoscale gold nuggets to help it to grow in toxic solutions of the precious metal, reports a paper published online today ...

Prions can turn their victims into zombies—they punch holes in their brains and steal their souls. The infected stumble about, might take a bite out of someone if hungry, certainly don’t think straight and, most important, lose their memories and with them the very essence of their humanity or “soul.” ...

Plant and animal cells have two genomes—in the nucleus and the mitochondria. A new study describes how a clash between the two makes fruit flies sick. Diseases from a mutation in one genome are complicated enough, but some illnesses arise from errant interactions between the DNA in the nucleus and ...

When you get the flu, viruses turn your cells into tiny factories that help spread the disease. In this animation, NPR's Robert Krulwich and medical animator David Bolinsky explain how a flu virus can trick a single cell into making a million more viruses. See and hear the rest of the ...

Scientists report that they have developed a method that cuts down the time it takes to make new parts for microscopic biological factories. Scientists report that they have developed a method that cuts down the time it takes to make new ‘parts’ for microscopic biological factories from 2 days to only ...

Two studies of malnourished children offer the first major new scientific findings in a decade about the causes and treatment of severe malnutrition, which affects more than 20 million children around the world and contributes to the deaths of more than a million a year. Merely giving children a cheap ...

Aside from rising sea levels, many climate change models predict that in the future, the planet's temperature and weather will become increasingly erratic with wild, unpredictable storms and fluctuating conditions. A new study from researchers at the University of Florida and Yale University and published today by the journal Evolution investigated ...

Scientists at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science have discovered a possible method by which cancer cells and dying cells communicate with nearby normal nerve cells without being physically connected to them. Dr. Keith Norris, senior author of the research and assistant dean for clinical and translational ...

Applied to the hull of a ship like paint, a new material could shake off scum by moving in response to an electric current. Bacterial buildup on ships increases drag and reduces the energy efficiency of the vessel, as well as blocking or clogging undersea sensors. The material works by physically moving ...

Fun science activity for kids! Have you ever wondered how scientists extract DNA from an organism? All living organisms have DNA, which is short for deoxyribonucleic acid; it is basically the blueprint for everything that happens inside an organism’s cells. Overall, DNA tells an organism how to develop and function, and ...

New research in The FASEB Journal suggests that a network of steroid molecules found in the brain is disrupted during HIV infection, and treatment with the steroid DHEA-S prevents brain damage. A team of scientists from Canada, Thailand and Morocco have found that DHEA-S may prevent neurocognitive impairment that affects a ...

Achnanthes longipes (a diatom, Bacillariophyta) (1000x) Nikon Small World 2012 PHOTOMICROGRAPHY COMPETITION, IMAGE OF DISTINCTION, Dr. Victor Chepurnov, De Water Architect, Ghent, Belgium

A new study suggests that patients with influenza can emit small virus-containing particles into the surrounding air during routine patient care, potentially exposing health care providers to influenza. Published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the findings raise the possibility that current influenza infection control recommendations may not always be ...

A rumbling tummy is our body's way of telling us "it's time for lunch." Likewise, bacteria need to know when it's time to eat. Researchers at the Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park have uncovered how the food-borne bacterial pathogen Campylobacter jejuni can change its swimming behaviour to ...

In a new study, iron-oxidizing microbes give fresh meaning to the phrase "living off the grid," and provide fresh hope as a potential biofuel. Researchers at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, have coaxed a species of bacteria into trading their usual diet of partially-oxidized iron for a small current of ...

Not long ago, Elio said in this blog that predation, a major force in evolution, is somewhat neglected in microbiological circles. The full implications of predation are just beginning to be uncovered as more becomes known about the ecology, physiology, and genomics of predators against microbes and their interactions with ...

Multiple RNA sequences can code for the same amino acid, but differences in their respective "optimality" slow or accelerate protein translation. Stanford biologists find optimal and non-optimal codons are consistently associated with specific protein structures, suggesting that they influence the mysterious process of protein folding. Click "source" to read more.

Nikon Small World 2012 PHOTOMICROGRAPHY COMPETITION, IMAGE OF DISTINCTION, Wim van Egmond, Micropolitan Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Nassula ornata, conjugating ciliates

OHSU researchers, in partnership with scientists from several other institutions, have published two new research papers that signal how the next class of powerful medications may currently reside at the bottom of the ocean. In both cases, the researchers were focused on ocean-based mollusks -- a category of animal that ...

Scientists have found a new protein that protects against viral infections, including influenza. They have been investigating the “defensive devices” contained within the T-cells that are located on exposed body surfaces such as skin and mucosal surfaces to ward off infection. T-cells detect cells infected with viruses and kill them before ...

Each year, hundreds of millions of metric tons of dust, water, and humanmade pollutants make their way into the atmosphere, often traveling between continents on jet streams. Now a new study confirms that some microbes make the trip with them, seeding the skies with billions of bacteria and other organisms ...

Researchers seeking to improve production of ethanol from woody crops have a new resource in the form of an extensive molecular map of poplar tree proteins, published by a team from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Populus, a fast-growing perennial tree, holds potential as a bioenergy crop due ...

Every minute of its existence, a living cell must assess and analyze myriad bits of information—everything from the temperature of its environment to the chemical makeup of its surroundings. Sometimes, these inputs cause a cell to change how it functions, but other times, the information may not lead to a ...

Researchers from computer firm IBM say they have invented a new non-toxic gel that can kill deadly drug-resistant bacteria by cutting through the sludge that shelters them and attacking the germ's cell membrane. If verified, the finding could herald a breakthrough in the fight against the superbugs that infect hospitals everywhere ...

The alarm system the helps immune system cells destroy invading bacteria points to a potentially new way to protect people from biological weapons, researchers report. Cells in the immune system called macrophages normally engulf and kill intruding bacteria, holding them inside a membrane-bound bag called a vacuole, where they kill and ...

The highest rates of infection were in children, with 47 per cent of those aged five to 19 showing signs of having caught the virus. Older people were affected less, with only 11 per cent of people aged 65 or older becoming infected. The findings come from an international collaboration led ...

The polio virus has been found in the sewers of Cairo, and it appears to have come from Pakistan, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Egypt has not had a case of polio since 2004. A vaccination drive is being planned for Feb. 25, and health workers are canvassing the ...

What cancerous conditions lead to what kinds of bacterial infections? If doctors knew, they could predict which patients would likely benefit from pre-treatment with certain kinds of antibiotics. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in this month's issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases shows the answer: ...

A common type of bacteria may help pigs stay healthy during weaning. In a study of 36 weanling-age pigs, researchers found that a dose of lipid-producing Rhodococcus opacus bacteria increased circulating triglycerides. Triglycerides are a crucial source of energy for the immune system. Click "source" to read more.

Virology was born in 1898, and has suffered from sampling bias ever since. For decades, viruses were defined by what they were not: not as big as a bacterium, not visible with a microscope, not culturable in the absence of a host. At the dawn of the 20th century, undiscovered ...

Nikon Small World 2012 PHOTOMICROGRAPHY COMPETITION, IMAGE OF DISTINCTION, Rogelio Moreno Gill Euplotes belongs to the class Nassophorea in the phylum Ciliophora; the ciliates, of which there are approximately 8,000 species, are generally considered to be the most evolved and complex of the protozoans. The cell surface is covered with hundreds ...

Children with eczema have a more diverse set of bacteria in their guts than non affected children, finds a new study in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Microbiology. The types of bacteria present were also more typical of adult gut microbes than for toddlers without eczema. Eczema is a chronic ...

Troublesome strains of Staphylococcus aureus are often troublesome because they carry genes for superantigens and multiple antibiotic resistance. But don’t blame the bacteria. These genes are hitchhikers that arrived by horizontal gene transfer, embedded within mobile pathogenicity islands known as SaPIs. SaPIs are common; all S. aureus strains investigated so ...

A team of researchers based at Johns Hopkins has decoded a system that makes certain types of immune cells impervious to HIV infection. The system's two vital components are high levels of a molecule that becomes embedded in viral DNA like a code written in invisible ink, and an enzyme ...

Living cells are surrounded by a membrane that tightly regulates what gets in and out of the cell. This barrier is necessary for cells to control their internal environment, but it makes it more difficult for scientists to deliver large molecules such as nanoparticles for imaging, or proteins that can ...

Very cute animated video about the microbial ecology of the human body. You are your microbes - Jessica Green and Karen Guillemin from TedEd.

The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) Medical School this week in Science ...

If you would like to have a particularly striking organism named after you, choose your collaborator well. The Harvard rickettsiologist S. Burt Wolbach was lucky to have such a colleague—the entomologist Marshall Hertig. In 1936, Hertig gave the name Wolbachia to the endosymbionts of mosquitoes they had jointly discovered in ...

A compound from the South African toothbrush tree inactivates a drug target for tuberculosis in a previously unseen way. Tuberculosis causes more deaths worldwide than any other bacterial disease. At the same time as rates are increasing, resistance strains are emerging due, in part, to non-compliance with the treatment required. Many ...

Based on the price of medication, consumers make irrational inferences about their risk of getting sick. The study, published in Journal of Consumer Research, finds that consumers make judgments about their risk of catching an illness based on the cost of its medication. The higher the price, the less they ...

Researchers have discovered a new compound that restores the health of mice infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an otherwise dangerous bacterial infection. The new compound targets an enzyme not found in human cells but which is essential to bacterial survival. The research team, led by scientists at the University of ...

In a recent post I shared with you how different microbes come together to breathe as one. In some cases, all it takes is the presence of conductive minerals such as magnetite to facilitate the exchange of metabolic electrons between two microbial partners. This allows the team to catalyze a ...

A research team of scientists from EMBL Grenoble and the IGBMC in Strasbourg, France, have, for the first time, described in molecular detail the architecture of the central scaffold of TFIID: the human protein complex essential for transcription from DNA to mRNA. The study, published January 7 in Nature, opens ...

Some strains of nasty bacterial infections, such as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), come loaded with resistance to antibiotics built right into their genes. But certain infections seem to acquire an ability to persist in the face of drugs that should knock them out—without developing the genetic hallmarks of antibiotic resistance. ...

Conventional wisdom holds that genes determine the shape and structure (morphology) of animals, but something else may be at play. A new study shows that a roundworm (P. pacificus) regulates its offspring's morphology by using a potent cocktail of small-molecule signals. Exposure to trace quantities of these chemically unusual molecules ...

Medical Diagnostics: A library of peptides on the surfaces of bacteria can capture new antibodies associated with celiac disease. Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder, is notoriously difficult to diagnose, particularly in its early stages. Now, researchers have developed a strategy to capture novel celiac disease antibodies. The technique successfully differentiated between ...

Scientists at Argonne are on a mission to sort out the trillions of good and bad microbes carried around by the human body. Biologist Daniel Smith crouched in an empty patient room at the new University of Chicago hospital and dragged a white cotton swab across the gleaming tile. Smith ...

Poor Larry isn't looking too good. He's pale and clammy and he's been projectile vomiting over and over again while his carers just stand by and watch. Yet their lack of concern for Larry is made up for by their intense interest in how far splashes of his vomit can fly, ...

Questionnaire suggests researchers not as safe as they feel. Scientists may have a false sense of security about the safety of their laboratories, according to early results from the first international survey of researchers’ workplace attitudes and practices. Some 86% of the roughly 2,400 scientists who responded said that they believe ...

On a sparkling New England afternoon, as hawks coasted overhead and yellow leaves drifted to the ground, Anne Pringle stood before a large granite obelisk that marked the graves of a family called French. In this bucolic cemetery, steps from the headquarters of Harvard’s research forest, she was pondering mortality. But ...

Living green alga Euglena mutabilis. Technique: Differential interference contrast. Credit: Gerd Gunther, Düsseldorf, Germany Nikon Small World 2012 Honorable Mention.

Infection control experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital have found that a combination of robot-like devices that disperse a bleaching agent into the air and then detoxify the disinfecting chemical are highly effective at killing and preventing the spread of multiple-drug-resistant bacteria, or so-called hospital superbugs. A study report on the ...

Red algae Scagelia, showing reproductive tetraspores and golden diatoms. 2nd place winner of Olympus BioScapes photomicrography contest 2012. Credit: Dr. Arlene Wechezak, Anacortes, Washington

The winners of Olympus' annual live sciences photography competition are in, with the top 10 submissions revealing an entire world of microscopic wonder. It's the 10th year of Olympus' BioScapes international digital-imaging competition — where photographers from around the globe can send in their photos and videos of a world that ...

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have presented a new principle for fighting bacterial infections, in other words, a new type of antibiotic, in the FASEB Journal. The new antibiotic mechanism is based on selectively blocking the thioredoxin system in the cells, which is crucial to the growth of certain ...

Researchers have found that the organism that causes deadly white-nose syndrome persists in caves long after it has killed the bats in those caves. A study just published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology shows that the fungus can survive in soil for months, even years, after the bats have departed. This is ...

Tomorrow morning, the US Food and Drug Administration will consider whether to accept reauthorization of legislation that allows us to know a few details about how many antibiotics are sold each year for agricultural use. The agency probably will accept the reauthorization, and you would think that would be a good ...

We continue our semi-annual ritual and offer this quick tour of our blog postings since our June 2012 Retrospective. Click "source" to read blog posts from June 2012 - December 2012. Topics: Pathogenesis, Evolution, Ecology, Symbiosis, Viruses, Microbial Physiology and Taxonomy

A new model of the how the protein coat (capsid) of viruses assembles, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biophysics, shows that the construction of intermediate structures prior to final capsid production (hierarchical assembly) can be more efficient than constructing the capsid protein by protein (direct assembly). The ...

The Ebola virus uses a protein decoy to undermine and evade the immune response of its infected host, new research shows. Ebola virus is the causative agent of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF), a disease with up to 90 percent mortality. While human outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever have been confined to ...

Multidrug-resistant bacteria remain a major concern for hospitals and nursing homes worldwide. Propagation of bacterial resistance is alarming and makes the search for new antimicrobials increasingly urgent. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have now identified a potential new target to fight bacteria: the factor ...

Genus Serratia presents special problems of identification because of biochemical and morphological similarity to other genera of the Enterobacteriaceae, notably Klebsiella and Enterobacter. Serratia liquefaciens is an opportunistic pathogen which is capable of colonizing a wide variety of surfaces in water, soil, the digestive tracts of rodents, plants, insects, fish, ...

We've all been there. The holidays are approaching and there's that one person on our list for whom we have no idea what to give. It's a common problem that is usually resolved with the purchase of a gift card from a local retailer. From hardware stores to electronic shops ...

The cervical cancer-causing virus may not fully clear from the body as once thought, experts say. Many older women infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV) in their youth may not "clear" it from the body as completely as once thought, a new study suggests. The research hints that HPV infection in older ...

Understanding what happens to a soybean root hair system infected by symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria, Bradyrhizobium japonicum, could go a long way toward using this symbiosis to redesign plants and improve crop yields, benefitting both food and biofuel production. Because of their extensive genomes, it is especially difficult to use ...

Long ago, when life on Earth was in its infancy, a group of small single-celled algae propelled themselves through the vast prehistoric ocean by beating whip like tails called flagella. It's a relatively unremarkable tale, except that now, more than 800 million years later, these organisms have evolved into parasites ...

Unlike warthogs, likely to be considered beautiful only by their mother, the Verrucomicrobia (verruca means “wart, thus the warty bacteria; more about this later) have considerable appeal, be it morphological, physiological, or ecological. This is yet another phylum that owes its recognition to nucleic acid technology. Although few of ...

Rare brain tumors emerging among raccoons in Northern California and Oregon may be linked to a previously unidentified virus discovered by a team of researchers, led by scientists from the University of California, Davis. Their findings, published today in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, could lead to a better understanding ...

SLAC's high-power X-rays have revealed a potential drug target in H. pylori, the ulcer-causing bacteria that infect half the world's population. n 1982, Australian scientists extracted bacteria from a person's stomach, grew them in a petri dish and identified them as the cause of ulcers and gastritis. Three decades later, scientists ...

Following up on an ancient Russian way of keeping milk from going sour -- by putting a frog in the bucket of milk -- scientists have identified a wealth of new antibiotic substances in the skin of the Russian Brown frog. The study appears in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research. A. ...

I've spent most of the week with the flu. I'd heard flu season was starting early this year, but I wasn't prepared for it to be this early, in part because predictions for flu outbreaks are still not that precise—especially in germy places like here in New York City. But a ...

Although both cooperation and conflict are decisive forces in evolution, some of the most successful microbial strategies for survival have arisen from cooperation. At times, two or more microorganisms can even come together to breathe as one. Breathing, or respiration, accomplishes a most challenging fête: the disposal of electrons ...

University at Buffalo senior Courtney Szyjka has been awarded the American Society for Microbiology's 2012 Undergraduate Research Fellowship. The award is made to highly competitive students who wish to pursue graduate careers in microbiology. Szyjka is one of 56 fellows selected from a field of 122 applications. Fellows receive a $4,000 stipend ...

It's well known how bacteria exposed to antibiotics for long periods will find ways to resist the drugs -- by quickly pumping them out of their cells, for instance, or modifying the compounds so they're no longer toxic. Now new research has uncovered another possible mechanism of antibiotic "resistance" in soil. ...

Toxoplasma is a common 'cat parasite', and has previously been in the spotlight owing to its observed effect on risk-taking and other human behaviours. To some extent, it has also been associated with mental illness. A study led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now demonstrates for the first ...

Using new software developed at HHMI’s Janelia Farm Research Campus, a computer can be trained to recognize characteristic animal behaviors like an experienced biologist. Rather than scrutinizing hours of video to catalog how often fruit flies chase one another, for example, scientists can quickly teach the software what to look ...

We tend to love our space captains and put them in high regard. Fictionally speaking, some of the most memorable characters have been captains, such as Kirk, Solo, Reynolds, and Starbuck. The one trait all of these individuals possess is the ability to guide and lead an entire crew to ...

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 proliferation. The study, whose results were published ...

This reissuing of The Double Helix, now adorned with umpteen photographs, reprints of first pages of articles, personal letters (some in scrawled—illegible—handwriting), sketches, etc., is not your usual reprint, but I hasten to say that it does make sense. The added material fleshes out the events of that time, with ...

Dr. Donna Stolz of the University of Pittsburgh assembled a wreath collage of mammalian cells stained for various proteins and organelles magnified from 220x to 2000x. Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition

fd virus membranes and various other assemblages. Credit: Dr. Zvonimir Dogic, Dr. Thomas Gibaud, Dr. Edward Barry & Mark Zakhary 2012 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition Image of Distinction

New research shows that copper can prevent horizontal transmission of genes, which has contributed to the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in bacteria is largely responsible for the development of antibiotic-resistance, which has led to an increasing number of difficult-to-treat healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs). The newly-published paper, which ...

The bacterial zoo inside your gut could look very different if you're a vegetarian or an Atkins dieter, a couch potato or an athlete, fat or thin. Now for a fee – $69 and up – and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what's living in their intestines ...

Can treatment with modern anti-HIV drugs help fight hunger for HIV-infected patients in Africa? Starting antiretroviral therapy for HIV reduces "food insecurity" among patients in Uganda, suggests a study published online by the journal AIDS, official journal of the International AIDS Society. Treatment including antiretroviral therapy (ART) may lead to a ...

I started teaching microbiology to medical students in 1958, at a time when biomedical science was in its full ascendancy. Grant money was there practically for the asking, jobs were plentiful, universities and their medical schools were frenetically building up their science base. Not entirely surprising, the general feeling of ...

Industry says antibiotic pipeline is being blocked by overly stringent clinical-trial requirements for new treatments. The latest skirmish in the battle between human and microbe played out on 29 November in a hotel conference room in Silver Spring, Maryland. There, an assembly of scientists and clinicians debated the merits of an ...

Beatriz Apellaniz, PhD holder of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, has studied in her PhD thesis HIV regions that could be used to design a vaccine. The researcher has focussed her research on a specific region of the surface protein of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which is responsible ...

The Trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have elected Professor Erin K. O’Shea, Ph.D., now a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Harvard University, as Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. O’Shea will begin her new duties part-time in January 2013 and transition to full-time in July 2013. A member ...

Micrasterias is a Desmid - a group of green algae mostly found in neutral to acidic fresh waters and sphagnum bogs. Most are unicellular, though a few form chain-like colonies. Each cell is constructed of 2 semicells which are mirror images of each other. In Micrasterias the cells are flattened ...

Microscopic animals held algae hostage and stole their genes for energy production, thereby evolving into a new and more powerful species many millions of years ago. The results, published today in Nature, reveal a “missing link” in evolution because the tiny animal thieves (protozoa) couldn’t completely hide all evidence of the ...

Soft rot diseases cause a great deal of damage in agriculture, and turn fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms to mush. By using imaging mass spectrometry together with genetic and bioinformatic techniques (genome mining), German researchers have now discovered the substance the bacteria use to decompose mushrooms. As the scientists report in ...

Since the dawn of the millennium, reality programming has inundated the media with the competition format making the lion's share of offerings. The process is simple: a collection of individuals undergoes a series of challenges to vie for a prize and the title of champion, master or idol. At one ...

A Kansas State University research team has resolved a 40-year-old debate on the role of iron acquisition in bacterial invasion of animal tissues. The collaborative research—led by Phillip Klebba, professor and head of the department of biochemistry—clarifies how microorganisms colonize animal hosts and how scientists may block them from doing so. ...

One reason that biofuels are expensive to make is that the organisms used to ferment the biomass cannot make effective use of hemicellulose, the next most abundant cell wall component after cellulose. They convert only the glucose in the cellulose, thus using less than half of the available plant material. "Here ...

An international group of scientists working at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has mapped a weak spot in the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, pinpointing a promising new target for treating a disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year. The results, reported Nov. ...

Have you ever wondered how individual fingers form? If you have taken a developmental biology class, you know that the hand first develops as a mitten-like structure with the future fingers connected (Figure 1). Later, during normal development, the cells in the areas between the fingers undergo programmed cell death, ...

Just over a month ago, word came back from a Russian research team that they had failed so far to find life living within the cold Antarctic Lake Vostok, a massive body of water that had been buried beneath glacier ice, effectively cut off from the rest of the world, ...

A sample of raw pork products from supermarkets around the United States found that yersinia enterocolitica, a lesser-known food-borne pathogen, was present in 69 percent of the products tested, according to a study released today by Consumer Reports. The bacteria infects more than 100,000 Americans a year, according to ...

Measles vaccine given with painless and easy-to-administer microneedle patches can immunize against measles at least as well as vaccine given with conventional hypodermic needles, according to research done by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the study, the researchers developed a technique ...

The genome encodes the complete information needed by an organism, including that required for protein production. Viruses, which are up to a thousand times smaller than human cells, have considerably smaller genomes. Using a type of herpesvirus as a model system, the scientists of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of ...

Scientists have engineered bacteria that are capable of sacrificing themselves for the good of the bacterial population. These altruistically inclined bacteria, which are described online in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, can be used to demonstrate the conditions where programmed cell death becomes a distinct advantage for the survival of ...

Quite a few years ago, I spent some time viewing a natural history-inspired show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. One exhibit that especially caught my attention consisted of a meter-square dish containing what must have been EMB agar. This “plate” had been left exposed to the air and ...

Our oldest national park may hold answers to questions about the activities of microbial communities that, in turn, may help in developing bioenergy technologies or safely storing carbon dioxide. Detailed analyses of metagenome assemblies have revealed a new archaeal phylum in microbial mats from Yellowstone National Park (YNP) hot springs. "Previous ...

Many researchers maintain close financial ties to the drug companies that stand to gain from the results of their research. Congress passed the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which, starting in 2013, will compel pharmaceutical firms and medical device manufacturers to reveal most of the money that they are putting into the ...

For decades, microbiologists thought that bacteria act individually, unaware of their multitudinous counterparts involved in causing the same infection. In the past two decades, however, they have discovered that many species of bacteria 'communicate'. In fact, bacteria can signal to each other that their numbers are sufficient to launch a ...

DNA has been around for billions of years — but that doesn't mean scientists can't make it better. When Steven Benner set out to re-engineer genetic molecules, he didn't think much of DNA. “The first thing you realize is that it is a stupid design,” says Benner, a biological chemist ...

Genetic exchange of antibiotic resistance occurs about 10 million times more effectively in the nose than in the blood of animals, report researchers. Antibiotic resistance results from bacteria’s uncanny ability to morph and adapt, outwitting pharmaceuticals that are supposed to kill them. But exactly how the bacteria acquire and spread that ...

Viruses can be elusive quarry. RNA viruses are particularly adept at defeating antiviral drugs because they are so inaccurate in making copies of themselves. With at least one error in every genome they copy, viral genomes are moving targets for antiviral drugs, creating resistant mutants as they multiply. In the ...

Biomedical-lab closure highlights plight of independent research institutes that rely heavily on federal grants. On the eve of a ballot that would dissolve his institution, Charles Emerson fell silent when asked how he would cast his vote. A combination of declining federal support and the economic downturn had left the ...

But shake-up raises doubts over the future of a major malaria-control programme. It has been a rough couple of years for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world’s largest funder of international health programmes. Since its creation in 2002, the organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland, has ...

Barely a month after the World Health Organization (WHO), declared Uganda Ebola-free, scores of people in Luweero have been isolated following another outbreak. The outbreak was confirmed by the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) after two people belonging to the same family and a health worker died in Sombwe parish, ...

Large (about 5 mm in diameter), lactose positive colonies of Klebsiella pneumoniae on desoxycholate-citrate agar. Cultivation 37°C, 24 hours. Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common source of hospital-acquired infections. Some of the strains can carry plasmids that harbour genes conferring resistance to almost all antibiotics. These bacteria are called multiresistant or, informally, ...

Research by the University of Warwick indicates that vaccinating families could protect young babies against a common winter virus which can be fatal for infants under six months. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) typically leads to mild, cold-like symptoms in adults and older children but can be more serious and even fatal ...

Acid-loving bacteria thrive in sour, acidic places and can help to dissolve metal. Therefore they are often used for industrial metal extraction. In her doctoral thesis "Growth and Survival of Acidithiobacilli in Acidic, Metal Rich Environments" Stefanie Mangold, Umeå University, has explored basic mechanisms of these very special bacteria. Click "source" ...

A team of researchers at the University of Helsinki has discovered how indoor mould makes people sick. The only remedy is to heal the living environment. For more than a decade, it has been known that the fungus Trichoderma longibrachiatum is the most common finding wherever people are suffering from health ...

Last week, Sci covered a paper on the nematode “version” of oxytocin, nematocin, and its role in learning behavior. We usually think of oxytocin-like peptides (including oxytocin and vasopressin), as being linked with emotion, trust, love, and of course, sex. But oxytocin also tends to get a lot of hype, ...

A bacterial protein in common house dust may worsen allergic responses to indoor allergens, according to research conducted by the National Institutes of Health and Duke University. The finding is the first to document the presence of the protein flagellin in house dust, bolstering the link between allergic asthma and ...

As biologists, we divvy the biological realm up into domains using a formula that frankly, smacks of nepotism, bestowing three glorious domains upon our closest relatives—the Eucaryota, the Archaea, and the Bacteria—while committing an injustice to the so-called viruses, lumping them together in a miscellaneous catch-all category (“viruses” from Latin ...

A new study by researchers at Imperial College London has identified a way in which Salmonella bacteria, which cause gastroenteritis and typhoid fever, counteract the defence mechanisms of human cells. One way in which our cells fight off infections is by engulfing the smaller bacterial cells and then attacking them ...

Two years ago, a 71-year-old Indiana man impaled his hand on a branch after cutting down a dead crab apple tree, causing an infection that led University of Utah scientists to discover a new bacterium and solve a mystery about how bacteria came to live inside insects. Because the new bacterial ...

Signaling a potential breakthrough for immunization programs in resource-poor countries, researchers have announced at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference that regulatory authorities -- after conducting a rigorous review of stability data -- will for the first time allow a vaccine in Africa to be transported ...

Intestinal issues are not just for us humans. Whereas the inflammatory bowel disease (IBS) now afflicts some 1.4 million people in the U.S., a similar condition often besets captive monkeys. But these animals are providing new insights about a cure for this condition in both species—and that cure is worms. Rhesus ...

When people who have been treated for Lyme disease recover but later come down with its symptoms again, is the illness a relapse or a new infection? The question has lingered for years. Now, a new study finds that repeat symptoms are from new infections, not from relapses. The results challenge the ...

But researchers, reporting at ASTMH annual meeting, also cite barriers to complete elimination from a surge of cases in Nigeria to intensifying vaccine refusals in Pakistan Polio cases worldwide reached historic lows in 2012, and for the first time there were no new outbreaks beyond countries already harboring the disease, leaving ...

Is coffee bad for you or good for you? Does acupuncture actually work, or does it produce a placebo effect? Do kids with autism have different microbes living in their intestines, or are their gut flora largely the same as neurotypical children? These are all good examples of topics that ...

32 deaths. 461 cases…and counting. Unless you live under a rock, you probably know about the nationwide outbreak of an unusual fungal meningitis caused by Exserohilum rostratum, a plant fungus. The outbreak is now linked to a single pharmacy in Massachusetts, New England Compounding Center (NECC), which compounded a variety ...

The common picture of a dividing rod-shaped bacterium encompasses the positioning of the divisome, including an FtsZ-ring, in the cell center. This occurs after the cell has doubled its length without increasing its diameter. Conversely, increase in diameter without cell elongation would seem highly unlikely in a rod-shaped organism. Yet, ...

Streptomyces spp. on various cultivation media. Production of different pigments and formation of aerial mycelia. Colonies after approximately 15 days of cultivation in aerobic atmosphere, 28°C. Environmental isolates. Streptomyces is the largest genus of Actinobacteria and the type genus of the family Streptomycetaceae. Over 500 species of Streptomyces bacteria have been ...

We are entering cold and flu season, that time of year when many of us, and many of our loved ones, get sore throats and coughs and congestion and fevers and feel downright miserable. In our quest to feel better (and to make those we love feel better), it's natural ...

Leprosy is an ancient disease. References to leprosy and the social stigma attached to it go back to 600 BC from India and in the Old Testament. However, like the plague, it was not until relatively late (1873) that the term leprosy became attached to a particular microbe, Mycobacterium leprae. ...

The New York area has suffered more than its fair share of heartache over the centuries but nothing has caused more devastation and heartbreak than Hurricane Sandy, which in just a few hours, turned much of the region into a disaster zone. The wind and rain was only one aspect ...

Researchers have used DNA sequencing for the first time to identify, analyse and put a halt to an infectious disease outbreak in a hospital. The success of the technique, which used fast genome sequencing technology to control an outbreak of the MRSA superbug on a baby ward, suggests it could be ...

Humans and chimpanzees have much in common, biologically speaking, and that may now include certain communities -- or ecosystems -- of gut bacteria, a new study finds. Gut bacteria play a crucial role in collecting nutrients from food, helping the immune system and protecting people against disease-causing viruses, bacteria and other ...

Scientists at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya BarcelonaTech (UPC) in Spain have succeeded in eliminating infectious bacteria from medical textiles by using an enzymatic pre-treatment combined with simultaneous deposition of nanoparticles and biopolymers under ultrasonic irradiation. This was an outcome of the SONO ('A pilot line of antibacterial and antifungal ...

Proteus mirabilis colonies on depleted medium in false color by Sune Dano and Kasper Dyring-Anderson. From Dr. James Shapiro's lab where he studies bacterial genetics, and is interested in pattern formation during colony growth. Photo from microbialart.com Dr. James Shapiro is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology ...

Scientists are unpacking the genomic tricks that help camels to live in harsh conditions. Sky-high blood glucose levels, a diet loaded with salt and a tendency to pack away fat sounds like a recipe for a health disaster in a human. But in a Bactrian camel, these are adaptations that may ...

Exposure to cigarette smoke has long been associated with increased frequency of respiratory infections—which are harder to treat in smoke-exposed people than in those who lack such exposures. Now Ritwij Kulkarni of Columbia University, New York, NY, and colleagues show that cigarette smoke actually boosts virulence of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. ...

A variety of institutions and governments have developed “commonsense-based” disinfection guidelines to control norovirus contamination, but now, for the first time, a Dutch team has come up with science-based guidelines. The research is published in the November 2012 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Norovirus is the most common ...

Eight weeks after antibiotic treatment of infants, the diversity of gastrointestinal flora remained diminished, although the number of individual bacteria was back to normal, according to a paper in the November 2012 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Additionally, the potentially disease-causing Proteobacteria were now the dominant population ...

Norovirus causes more than half of all food-born illnesses in the United States, and is the second greatest source of reported food borne illness outbreaks in the European Union. A recent study found that grape seed extract could reduce the infectivity of Norovirus surrogates (Norovirus surrogates are viruses that share ...

Though it took hundreds of thousands of years for fossil fuels to form naturally, chemical engineers at the University of Michigan did it in a minute. By “pressure cooking” green microalgae in 1,100-degree-Fahrenheit sand for around 60 seconds, the researchers converted more than half of the slimy algae into biocrude oil, ...

The primary culprit in the recent flare-up caused by tainted steroids, Exserohilum rostratum, is not an especially picky eater. Although the fungus prefers grasses, it will dine on many items—including humans The nation's ongoing fungal meningitis outbreak has killed 30 and sickened 419 people so far, but the fungus responsible has ...

It is downright scandalous that in our hi-tech world food-borne infections should be so prevalent (some 48 million cases a year in the US alone, with about 3000 deaths). The tools to take care of these problems are hardly mysterious, requiring mainly safe food production and preservation. High on the ...

The West Nile virus epidemic of 2012, the worst in a decade, may be notorious for yet another reason: The virus, in some cases, is attacking the brain more aggressively than in the past, raising the specter that it may have mutated into a nastier form, say two neurologists who ...

University of Cambridge researchers have discovered an extraordinary way that bacterial parasites prevent their hosts from killing themselves to protect the wider colony. Researchers funded by BBSRC discovered that a strain of the potato soft rot and blackleg bacterium Pectobacterium atrosepticum (AKA Erwinia) had evolved to commit suicide in the presence ...

Study shows that key proteins in mucus prevent bacterial adhesion to surfaces, could help prevent growth of biofilms. Slimy layers of bacterial growth, known as biofilms, pose a significant hazard in industrial and medical settings. Once established, biofilms are very difficult to remove, and a great deal of research has gone ...

A completely new way of delivering anti-cancer drugs to tumours, using “minicells” derived from bacteria, has been tested for the first time in humans and found to be safe, well-tolerated and even induced stable disease in patients with advanced, incurable cancers with no treatment options remaining. The research, which is presented ...

Interim poor results of RTS,S vaccine trial in African children raise question marks over deployment. A vast phase III clinical trial in Africa of the malaria vaccine candidate RTS,S/AS01 reported disappointing results this morning. The vaccine failed to show substantial protection in the key trial age group of infants who received ...

Proteomics experts and resources at EMSL contributed to a study published in Science centered on the discovery of new bacteria and the metabolic roles, such as carbon cycling, of bacteria in the environment. The bacteria studied were part of microbial communities collected directly from an acetate-amended subsurface aquifer as part ...

An interview with the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. The Double Helix is a famous book. It's also an infamous one. Written by James Watson in 1968, it tells the story of how he and Francis Crick figured out the structure of DNA. The catch is that Watson chose to ...

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have mimicked pulmonary edema in a microchip lined by living human cells, as reported November 7 in the journal Science Translation Medicine. They used this "lung-on-a-chip" to study drug toxicity and identify potential new therapies to prevent this ...

Researchers find a viral symbiont of a protozoan parasite increases virulence to the human host. When humans have parasites, the organisms live in our bodies, co-opt our resources, and cause disease. However, it turns out that parasites themselves can have their own co-habitants. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and ...

This is a confession. I started out as a respectable sort of ecologist studying rain forests and then at some point my road turned and I ended up where I am today, lost among the belly buttons. I know how it happened. Two years ago we began to focus much of ...

A team led by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Public Health has found that the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is prevalent at several U.S. wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). MRSA is well known for causing difficult-to-treat and potentially fatal bacterial infections in hospital patients, but since the ...

New research suggests that just one or two individual herpes virus particles attack a skin cell in the first stage of an outbreak, resulting in a bottleneck in which the infection may be vulnerable to medical treatment. Unlike most viruses that spread to new cells by bombarding them with millions of ...

In a quest to make safer and more effective vaccines, scientists at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have turned to a promising field called DNA nanotechnology to make an entirely new class of synthetic vaccines. In a study published in the journal Nano Letters, Biodesign immunologist Yung Chang joined ...

ONE of the crucial transitions of modern health care was from herbal to chemical medicine. Doctors had known for millennia that willow bark and poppy sap relieve pain. But it was not until the late 19th century, when Felix Hoffman synthesised versions of their active ingredients, namely acetylsalicylic acid and ...

In two papers to be published in Current Biology, researchers from JIC and The Sainsbury Laboratory on the Norwich Research Park, and Rothamsted Research and the University of York identify genes that help plants interact with microbes in the soil. Click "source" to read more and view video.

Water is everywhere in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy – in basements, on the streets and in transit systems – but the one place that flood water is most dangerous is in your body. ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser collected floodwater and drinking water in some ...

Weill Cornell Medical College researchers report that mass spectrometry, a tool currently used to detect and measure proteins and lipids, can also now allow biologists to "see" for the first time exactly how drugs work inside living cells to kill infectious microbes. As a result, scientists may be able to ...

For babies, the trip from the womb to the outside world is a transition from a blank, sterile slate to host for what will eventually be trillions of microscopic organisms. Unfortunately, the demographics of a burgeoning microbial community can easily tip in favor of dangerous bacteria. "While that microbial environment in the ...

Scaling up the production of biofuels made from algae to meet at least 5 percent – about 10 billion gallons – of U.S. transportation fuel needs would place unsustainable demands on energy, water and nutrients, says a new report from the National Research Council, or NRC. However, these concerns are ...

Concrete cracks for many reasons: just for starters, the heating and cooling of changing seasons make it expand and contract, and the stress produced as the freshly poured goo dries and shrinks in volume, pulling against its underlying metal supports, can also cause cracks. But Dutch researchers are testing a ...

Fluorescent image of the sporangium, an enclosure in which spores are formed, of the slime mold Craterium minutum. Honorable Mention, 2011 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®. Credit: Dr. Dalibor Matýsek, Mining University - Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic

A dramatic image of a virus replicating and spreading through cells, destroying them as it goes, has been captured by University of Sydney researchers. As featured in the prestigious Cell magazine as part of their Cell Picture Show the technique used to create the image also helps calculate the level of ...

Until now, it has been known that ticks primarily transmit two pathogens to humans in Switzerland: the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi -- which causes borreliosis -- and the early-summer-meningoencephalitis virus, which can cause cerebral inflammation. Now, microbiologists from the University of Zurich confirm the existence of another tick disease in Switzerland ...

We occasionally post very brief taxonomic pieces on selected bacterial groups. Be warned that we may not be fully attentive to the taxon level and may mix up genera and higher taxa. The Acidobacteria are an offspring of metagenomics. Their existence as a phylum was not known until 1997, when their ...

When there is little water available for plants to grow, their roots form alliances with soil microbes that can promote plant growth even under water-limiting conditions, according to research published Oct. 31 by Daniele Daffonchio and colleagues from the University of Milan, Italy in the open access journal PLOS ONE. Click ...

Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) -- inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract -- have puzzled the scientific community for decades. Ten years ago, researchers recognized that both genes and the environment contributed to these diseases but knew little about precisely how and why illness occurred. To begin to ...

A research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a model for making quantifiable predictions of how a group of cells will react and change in response to a given environment or stimulus -- and how quickly. The NIST model, in principle, makes it possible ...

Water Lecture Series John Mekalanos discusses the biology of cholera, driven by his investigations on the molecular genetics of the causative bacterial organism. With his many colleagues in Bangladesh, Haiti, and elsewhere, he has provided strong evidence for how this organism emerged as a human pathogen and has recently become more ...

The Gram stain is commonly used in epidemiologic and clinical studies. It involves smearing a sample onto a slide, staining the material using dyes that bind to bacterial cells, and visually inspecting under a microscope. Many epidemiologic and clinical studies of pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and lower respiratory infections include ...

The New York University School of Medicine is one of the top medical research colleges in the country. It hosts some of the top scholars in medicine, and Langone Medical Center is home to much of the school's research. Now much of that work is in jeopardy. The hospital was forced ...

The bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis, which lives in the human gut, is just one type of microbe that will be studied as part of NIH's Human Microbiome Project.

Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have created the first true mouse model of typhoid infection. The development promises to advance the study of typhoid and the creation of new vaccines against the infection, which remains a major health threat in developing countries. Click "source" to read more.

Eliminating bacteria's DNA and boosting antimicrobial proteins that already exist may help prevent middle ear infections from reoccurring. These are the findings from a Nationwide Children's Hospital study that examined how an immune defense protein common in the middle ear interacts with a structure meant to protect a colony of ...

At least gazelles can run. But if you’re a tree, a blade of grass, or a hapless kohlrabi, there’s nothing you can do when the choppers, nippers, or clippers of your predator — aka “grazer” — approach. Such is the fate of most photosynthetic organisms, which we landlubbers tend to ...

As this year’s flu season gathers steam, doctors and pharmacists have a fresh stock of vaccines to offer their patients. The vaccines usually provide strong protection against the virus, but only for a while. Vaccines for other diseases typically work for years or decades. With the flu, though, next fall ...

Scientific American presents House Call Doctor by Quick & Dirty Tips. Today’s topic will be vaccines and how they work. With all of the controversy surrounding vaccines, I thought that if I am going to make a case for them, I would do little good by giving the standard finger-wagging ...

Our appreciation of the colors of nature is limited by the narrow wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can detect. This portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between 390 and 750 nm is what we refer to as the visible (vis) light or, simply, light. We cannot see ...

Bacteria in the guts of honeybees are highly resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline, probably as a result of decades of preventive antibiotic use in domesticated hives. Researchers from Yale University identified eight different tetracycline resistance genes among U.S. honeybees that were exposed to the antibiotic, but the genes were largely ...

A new “smart” material made of DNA responds with movement when stimulated, much like a living cell. Artificial muscles and self-propelled goo may be the stuff of Hollywood fiction, but for Omar Saleh and Deborah Fygenson, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the reality of it isn’t that ...

On a long spaceflight, it could be easy for microbes to get out of control. Microgravity weakens the immune system in some ways while it also increases the virulence and antimicrobial resistance of some microorganisms. Meanwhile, without gravity, germs launched by coughs and sneezes no longer fall to the ground within ...

Babies were less likely to get an itchy skin rash when their mothers took probiotics during pregnancy and while breastfeeding, in a new study from Finland. Known as eczema, the rash is caused by an allergic reaction and hints at future problems with allergies and asthma. Researchers said it's possible that probiotics ...

Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted on Wednesday to recommend the use of GlaxoSmithKline's newly approved vaccine for bacterial meningitis in babies at increased risk of the infection. The vote is not related to the ongoing outbreak of fungal meningitis that has been linked to tainted ...

A mix of six different bacteria found naturally in the healthy gut system of mice and isolated from feces can succeed where antibiotics fail, and eradicate murine infection by highly contagious strains of the Gram-positive anaerobe Clostridium difficile, including the human epidemic 027/BI strain, report scientists at the Wellcome Trust ...

Haematococcus (algae), Euplotes (protozoa), and Cyclidium (ciliate) (400x) 2012 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition, Charles Krebs, Issaquah, Washington, USA

The bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae -- which can cause pneumonia, meningitis, bacteremia and sepsis -- likes to share its antibiotic-defeating weaponry with its neighbors. Individual cells can pass resistance genes to one another through a process called horizontal gene transfer, or by "transformation," the uptake of DNA from the environment. Click source ...

Two years ago, microbiologist Lars Peter Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark was studying the mud on the seafloor of the city’s port when he discovered something unexpected: The mud was coursing with detectable levels of electricity. At the time, he and his colleagues suspected that the electric currents might ...

Patients newly diagnosed with pediatric Crohn’s disease had significantly different levels of certain types of bacteria in their intestinal tracts than age-matched controls, according to a paper in the October Journal of Clinical Microbiology. The work may ultimately lead to treatment involving manipulation of the intestinal bacteria. Click source to ...

Microbes corrode sewer pipes from the inside, a process that can lead to spills, bad odors, disease outbreaks, and the need for costly repairs. In a first step towards reducing the corrosion, researchers have identified the culprit microbes. The research is published in the October Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Click source ...

Contact lenses, particularly the extended wear variety, render wearers vulnerable to eye infections from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These infections can cause severe damage, including blindness. Treating the eye with antibodies to the inflammatory immune compound interleukin-17 (IL-17) reduced eye damage and the number of bacteria in a mouse model. The research ...

Prevalence of a particularly dangerous form of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) jumped three-fold in just two years, in hospitals in the United Kingdom, according to a paper in the October 2012 Journal of Clinical Microbiology. This particular pathogen emerged in the US in 1998, and “is endemic within many US ...

We seldom post items of immediacy, but here we interrupt our leisurely ways to write about the current disastrous meningitis outbreak caused by the injection of fungus-contaminated steroids and other drugs. As microbiologists, the question comes to mind at once: Who is the pathogen? The fungus implicated is Exserohilum rostratum ...

There are days when I wish that the Woesian Three Domain scheme were wrong. Not that I would be happier if there were four or five or whatever number of domains. What would please me would be an escape from what I feel is an unnecessarily oppressive way of thinking, ...

Researchers at Michigan State University demonstrate how a new virus evolves, shedding light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations. Click "source" to view video. Credit: Michigan State University/Jeremy Polk, National Science Foundation

Biology researchers from the University of Sydney, working with colleagues from Paul Sabatier Université in Toulouse have found that the brainless slime mold Physarum polycephalum, is able to use its slime trail as a memory device. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the ...

Sonderia sp. (a ciliate that preys upon various algae, diatoms, and cyanobacteria) 2012 Nikon Small World Photomirography Competition Dr. Diana Lipscomb, George Washington University, Department of Biological Sciences, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

University study finds soil encourages anthrax spores’ growth, multiplication. A recent University study shows that anthrax, when aided by a specific type of amoeba, can thrive and multiply in soil — a trick that could prove deadly for livestock and other mammals. Bacillus anthracis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and ...

Bacteria have a bad rap as agents of disease, but scientists are increasingly discovering their many benefits, such as maintaining a healthy gut. A new study now suggests that bacteria may also have helped kick off one of the key events in evolution: the leap from one-celled organisms to many-celled organisms, ...

Fuels including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel are derived from fossil oil thorough the petroleum refinery processes. Increased concerns over environmental problems and limited fossil resources drive scientists and researchers to turn their attention to developing fossil-free, bio-based processes for the production of fuels from renewable non-food biomass. Utilizing systems ...

Thinking he had only months to live, Frank Tarantino, 67, of Amityville, N.Y., a retired electrician, father of four and grandfather of seven, was getting his affairs in order in the winter of 2011. Doctors believed he had a lethal brain tumor. Tarantino, a prostate cancer survivor, had just finished ...

In a critical breakthrough in unraveling how molecular "motors" ferry proteins and nutrients through cells, Harvard scientists have produced high-resolution images that show how the "foot" of dynein—one of the most complex, but least understood such motors—binds to microtubules, the cellular tracks it travels on. As described in a Sept. 20 ...

To remove waste from cells, a class of membrane-sculpting proteins create vesicles—molecular trash bags—that carry old and damaged proteins from the surface of cellular compartments into internal recycling plants where the waste is degraded and components are reused. Click source to read more.

Patients newly diagnosed with pediatric Crohn's disease had significantly different levels of certain types of bacteria in their intestinal tracts than age-matched controls, according to a paper in the October Journal of Clinical Microbiology. The work may ultimately lead to treatment involving manipulation of the intestinal bacteria.

Three Simon Fraser University scientists are among six researchers who've made a discovery that could help revolutionize antibiotic treatment of deadly bacteria. Lisa Craig, Christopher Ford and Subramaniapillai Kolappan, SFU researchers in molecular biology and biochemistry, have explained how Vibrio cholerae became a deadly pathogen thousands of years ago. Click source ...

Listeria, which cause severe infections in humans, appear to have met their match: researchers from Professor Martin Loessner's group at ETH Zurich have discovered that they are – quite literally – easy prey for a particular species of amoeba. The amoeba's tactics are shrewd. It immobilises the motile listeria, which ...

ETH Zurich researchers demonstrate how vaccinia virus manipulates the cellular waste-disposal system and thereby cleverly tricks the cell into assisting the intruders replication. Now, the virologists have turned the tables, using inhibitors of this cellular waste-disposal system as a way to block virus infection. Over the years, researchers in the laboratory ...

European scientists investigated differences in the genomes of various distantly-related yeast and their effects on cell survival. Results may provide insight into cell death induced by free radicals. Most of us have heard of the health benefits of nutritional sources high in antioxidants such as vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene. ...

Big fish eat little fish, and so on, the ultimate “so on” being the microbes, which are typically placed at the bottom of the food web. In the oceans, bacteria are commonly set upon by protists, in soils also by nematodes and other small animals. And everywhere, there lurk virulent ...

India marked a milestone when the World Health Organization struck it from the list of polio-endemic countries in February after no new cases were reported for more than a year. From Delhi, NPR's Julie McCarthy reports on how, despite poverty and poor sanitation, the world's second-most populous country is eradicating ...

Bacteria found in caves could provide the clues to help produce antibiotics needed in the fight against drug-resistant superbugs, explains Prof Hazel Barton. When you think about caves, your first thoughts might not include microbes and antibiotics, but these isolated and starved environments may hold the key to better understanding our ...

When tested in patients hospitalized with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) unresponsive to previous treatment, linezolid, an antibiotic used to treat severe bacterial infections, proved largely effective when added to the patients' ongoing TB treatment regimen. Also, few patients developed resistance to the drug. These promising findings were tempered, however, by ...

Almost 500 international experts have worked together to develop a ranking system of the ten most important phytopathogenic fungi on a scientific and economic level. The rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) sits at the top of the list. Each researcher chose three that they thought to be most significant and ...

Despite government recommendations, there is little evidence that flu vaccines help individuals older than 65 or younger than two. Every year around this time, 120 million Americans roll up their sleeves to get their annual flu shots. Since 2010, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended yearly jabs ...

The claim that nanopore technology is on the verge of making DNA analysis so fast and cheap that a person's entire genome could be sequenced in just minutes and at a fraction of the cost of available commercial methods, has resulted in overwhelming academic, industrial, and global interest. But a ...

Skydiver breaks speed of sound; researcher ID system launches; and the online open-access journal eLife publishes its first papers. From the science journal "Nature". Click "source" to read more.

IMAGINE your excitement as a budding young researcher taking on your first piece of research as part of an undergraduate summer studentship; you’re working on a gene that makes a type of medically important bacteria resistant to a key group of antibiotics, the tetracyclines. The gene in question is described ...

How much money would you need to put your health at risk? Ten thousand dollars? Five hundred? How about one single dollar? For a teenager in New York City, the latter was enough to test his fate in a subway station. In a video that has gone viral, a young ...

A bit of early rejection tends to pay off later, according to a new study that examines the fates of research papers initially turned down by scientific journals. A large-scale survey of the process for submitting research papers to scientific journals has revealed a surprising pattern: manuscripts that were turned down ...

Cold viruses generally get a bad rap -- which they've certainly earned -- but new findings by a team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies suggest that these viruses might also be a valuable ally in the fight against cancer. Adenovirus, a type of cold virus, has developed ...

Scientific American is partnering with the folks at ScienceDebate.org and more than a dozen leading science and engineering organizations to try to inject more discussion about critical science issues into the U.S. presidential election campaign this year. As part of that effort, we will be asking the two main presidential ...

Researchers who developed two ultra-rapid new tests, designed for worldwide use, say they dramatically speed up the diagnosis of antibiotic resistant infections and will improve our ability to control antibiotic resistance, which is emerging at an alarming rate globally among a number of bacterial species. Click "source" to read more.

The foreground shows the density map (gold) from a cryoelectron micrographic reconstruction of malabaricus grouper nervous necrosis virus, a fish nodavirus. The background shows the fitting of a two-domain model consisting of a protruding domain and a β-sandwich domain into the reconstruction density (semitransparent surface). Three subunits of the T=3 ...

This colorized negative-stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM) depicts the ultrastructural details of a number of influenza virus particles, or “virions”. A member of the taxonomic family Orthomyxoviridae, the influenza virus is a single-stranded RNA organism The flu is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. It can cause mild to ...

Seven decades after penicillin revolutionized the treatment of infections by killing bacteria, medicine is poised for another revolution. The central idea: Many bacteria, rather than creating disease, actually protect against it. So, rather than indiscriminately killing all bacteria, a growing number of researchers say we should be taking an ecological approach ...

Around 71 per cent of the Earth's surface is made up of salt-water oceans - that's 98 per cent of all water. The ecosystems that exist beneath their surface are diverse and vibrant. Their sheer scale, however, means that there is still a lot to be discovered. And that is ...

Acne, the scourge of many an adolescent life, is getting harder to treat, but 80 percent of teenagers have some form of it. Conventional treatment includes topical and oral antibiotics. Studies are now finding the bacteria that cause acne are increasingly resistant to antibiotic treatment. Alternatively, there are effective laser treatments. ...

Surprises are the stuff of science, but some discoveries are more surprising than others. This column is where I’ll share some findings that strike me as most unexpected. Biomineralization has long been recognized as an important albeit not always appreciated process in microbiology. Too bad, because microbes have literally made mountains. ...

The circuit is designed to act as the controller in synthetic bacteria that monitor and modify their environment. By force of habit we tend to assume computers are made of silicon, but there is actually no necessary connection between the machine and the material. All that an engineer needs ...

Lycoming College senior Jordan Krebs was a 2012 award recipient of the American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Undergraduate Research Capstone Program. Krebs, a biology and chemistry double major from Roaring Spring, Pa., was one of only seven students to receive the award, and was the only student from a baccalaureate college ...

If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a ...

Smart viruses find ways around host defenses. In the case of the influenza viruses A and B, rapid genetic changes and resistance to available therapies make it hard to combat flu epidemics in humans. Mortality rates for influenza B viruses are higher than those reported for seasonal influenza A H1N1. ...

The extent to which hospital superbugs are being transmitted via the air needs to be investigated, experts say. It comes after a Leeds University study has added to a growing body of evidence about the ability of bacteria to float on air currents. Researchers carried out lab tests on a bacteria associated ...

An international team of scientists led by Indiana University chemist Michael S. VanNieuwenhze and biologist Yves Brun has discovered a revolutionary new method for coloring the cell wall of bacterial cells to determine how they grow, in turn providing a new, much-needed tool for the development of new antibiotics. Discovery of ...

Specialized immune cells recognize the vitamin B synthesized by bacteria and yeast, and this signal sets off their fight against infection, scientists say. The study, published in the journal Nature, is the first to reveal that the highly abundant mucosal associated invariant T cells (MAIT cells) recognize products of vitamin B ...

Many prokaryotes move actively in liquid (swim) or on moist solid surfaces (swarm and glide) toward or away from a stimulus, such as a nutrient, light, or oxygen. Not surprisingly, prokaryotes have evolved numerous means of locomotion built around distinct molecular mechanisms. How distinct? A human running, a dog walking, an ...

Legislative efforts aim to tackle rising incidence of disease. More than ten years after a study in The Lancet falsely linked autism to the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine, evidence of reduced immunization rates and rising incidence of disease are spurring politicians to try to make up lost ground. California has ...

A new study reveals that a significant amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from lakes and rivers in Southern Québec, Canada, is very old – approximately 1,000 to 3,000 years old – challenging the current models of long-term carbon storage in lakes and rivers. Previous studies have suggested that there ...

One of the world’s smallest predators, Myxococcus Xanthus, engulfs and devours other bacteria by traveling in a wave, and scientists have figured out how. The study, featured on the cover of this month’s online issue of the journal PLOS Computational Biology, shows how the simple motions of individual bacteria are amplified ...

Crafting public health messages about a disease may create stigmas that influence how likely people are to endorse certain interventions, such as isolating infected persons, forcing treatment on them and mapping their location, according to a Penn State researcher. Rachel Smith, associate professor of communication arts and sciences and investigator with ...

The American Society for Microbiology has designated the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories on New York’s Long Island as a Milestone in Microbiology site. This is the ASM’s way of recognizing locations where important microbiological history was made. For previous sites so honored click here. Cold Spring Harbor has in fact ...

It’s getting close to two years now since a NASA-funded team of scientists announced they had found a form of life that broke all the rules by using arsenic to build its DNA. It’s become something of an obsession for me. If you want to follow the saga, click here ...

ANATOLIA, 9,000BC – The rising sun advanced over the hills, engulfing the arid land in a blaze of warmth. Below the amber sky lay a patchwork of wheat fields, in which a scattering of stooped figures silently harvested their crops. Later, their harvest would be scrutinised, and only the largest grains ...

Since first discovered in 2007 in New York, white-nose syndrome has spread to 16 states, including Virginia and Maryland, and four Canadian provinces. The disease is estimated to have killed over five million hibernating bats. An outbreak of infectious disease among bats on the order of white-nose syndrome is without ...

Malaria-drug monitoring over the past 30 years has shown that malaria parasites develop resistance to medicine, and the first signs of resistance to the newest drugs have just been observed. At the same time, resistance monitoring at the University of Copenhagen shows that the previously efficacious drug chloroquine is once ...

Nikon Small World Honorable Mention 2010 photomicrography competition, Gerd A. Guenther, Düsseldorf, NRW, Germany Subject Matter: Paramecium caudatum fed with Congo red-stained yeast, living specimen (600x) Technique: Differential interference contrast

Scientists have recently discovered three new human viruses. One, from the Arabian Peninsula, causes severe pneumonia and kidney failure. Another sent two Missouri farmers to the hospital with severe fatigue and low blood platelets. The third, in central Africa, causes a new kind of hemorrhagic fever. The most striking thing about all ...

Scientists have said they have come up with a new way to destroy a bacteria which killed four babies in hospitals in Belfast and Londonderry. Three babies died from pseudomonas in January, while another newborn died in December. The team from Queen's University Belfast believe they have made a significant ...

Observing signaling molecules before they leave a cell could give researchers insights into how cells in our bodies influence one another. Chemical communication between cells keeps tissues functioning and systems coordinated, but eavesdropping on the conversation is challenging. Now, researchers have developed a technique to identify signaling proteins before they leave ...

Scientists who helped to fight the 2003 epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) have sprung into action again to investigate the latest threat: a new SARS-related virus that has killed one man and left another seriously ill. Last week, the researchers reported the genome sequence of the new coronavirus ...

It may be time to re-think the antibiotic. Traditional antibiotics act by killing the infecting organism, much the way an army would seek to do to it’s enemies. But if an army could somehow disarm its foes, taking away every last weapon, wouldn’t that accomplish the same end? The authors ...

At a time when the value of gold has reached an all-time high, Michigan State University researchers have discovered a bacterium’s ability to withstand incredible amounts of toxicity is key to creating 24-karat gold. “Microbial alchemy is what we’re doing – transforming gold from something that has no value into a ...

The emergence of international air travel in the 20th century enabled an unprecedented spread of ideas, cultures and communication. Unfortunately, modern aviation has also proved an effective means of spreading diseases. Air travel didn’t introduce worldwide pandemics, of course, but with tens of millions of scheduled international flights annually and ...

Snakes in the wild serve as hosts for the deadly mosquito-borne Eastern equine encephalomyelitis Virus (EEEV), possibly acting as a "bridge" to the next season, according to researchers studying endemic areas in the Tuskegee National Forest in Alabama. This sets the stage for mosquitoes feeding on the infected snakes -- ...

What if I told you that engineering a single protein into E. coli is sufficient to make it fill up with membrane-bound vesicles? Would you send me to the couch or to a padded cell? Not so fast, as this is precisely what a group of sixteen investigators from three ...

By analyzing the genes of bacteria, University of Florida researchers have moved a step closer to pinpointing how two brain disorders common in small-breed dogs occur. The researchers found that the bacteria, known as Mycoplasma canis, invade dog's cells and suppress their immune system responses. "This could explain how the bacteria ...

That's the winning formula of one of the world's smallest predators, the soil bacteria Myxococcus xanthus, and a new study by scientists at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School shows how M. xanthus uses the formula to spread, engulf and devour ...

Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered a new class of treatment against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as well as evidence of a growing need to quickly genotype individual strains of the organism most commonly referred to as the "superbug." The two separate studies were funded by the Ohio State ...

Listeria monocytogenes has a particular tropism for the central nervous system. To gain knowledge about the immune response elicited by L. monocytogenes in the brain, we used a rat ex-vivo organotypic nervous system culture as a model for Listeria infection. Brain sections were maintained several weeks alive to study the ...

Serratia spp. are widely distributed in nature. Serratia marcescens is the most common Serratia sp. associated with human disease, followed by strains of the S. liquefaciens complex: S. liquefaciens, S. grimesii and S. proteamaculans. The clinical significance of these species is largely unknown, because most clinical data refer to the ...

If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a ...

Biologists at UC San Diego have unraveled the anti-viral mechanism of a human gene that may explain why some people infected with HIV have much higher amounts of virus in their bloodstreams than others. Their findings, detailed in a paper in this week’s advance online issue of the journal Nature, could ...

Bees are dropping dead in Washington state due to the bite of a parasitic fly. Click "source" to view video.

It may seem a bit incongruous that in this age of great advances everywhere in the microbial world, we must pause to learn the names of more and more microbes. The molecular biologists of old (that’s fifty years ago!) needed to recognize only a few names such as E. coli, ...

It may seem a bit incongruous that in this age of great advances everywhere in the microbial world, we must pause to learn the names of more and more microbes. The molecular biologists of old (that’s fifty years ago!) needed to recognize only a few names such as E. coli, ...

It may seem a bit incongruous that in this age of great advances everywhere in the microbial world, we must pause to learn the names of more and more microbes. The molecular biologists of old (that’s fifty years ago!) needed to recognize only a few names such as E. coli, ...

DNA extracted from the skins of koalas displayed in European and North American museums shows that a retrovirus has been a problem for the animals for much longer than was thought, according to Alfred Roca, an assistant professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois, and Alex Greenwood of ...

Nations should carefully consider how establishing or changing their food safety laws could influence global trade, experts caution. Social network analysis of global trade patterns for corn shows that the food safety regulations imposed by national governments are an indicator of how countries organize themselves for trade, according to research published ...

Malaria is a tropical disease, right? Actually, malaria parasites can be found as far north as Alaska—at least in birds. And a warming climate may push avian malaria even farther north by the end of the century, according to a study in the journal PLoS ONE. Click "source" to listen ...

Nikon Small World 2011 Small World in Motion competition, Dr. Ralf Wagner, Germany The video shows a daphnia together with a volvox. The volvox is turning and moving along under the slide and at two moments the daphnia is moving its complex-eye towards the direction of the volvox and you get ...

Nikon Small World Image of Distinction 2011 photomicrography competition, Sinclair Stammers, Science Photo Library, UK Nippostrongylus brasiliensis (rat nematode parasite) (560x) Technique: Differential Interference Contrast

Nikon Small World Honorable Mention 2008 photomicrography competition, Dr. Petr Znachor, Institute of Hydrobiology, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic Coiled filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. (600x) Technique: Nomarski Differential Interference Contrast

Researchers used viruses to infect and kill colonies of a common disease-causing bacteria and believe they could be used to help sanitize water. “Our experiment was the first to use bacteriophages in conjunction with chlorine to destroy biofilms, which are layers of bacteria growing on a solid surface,” says Zhiqiang Hu, ...

Budding researchers get ahead by spending their free time working side by side with real scientists. Matthew McIntyre, 19, will be a sophomore at Boston University in the fall. While in high school, he worked with scientists at the New York Medical College in Valhalla to explore new ways to treat ...

Bacteria and archaea are among the smallest forms of life on the planet, but don't let their size fool you. These simple creatures have persevered for billions of years, thanks in part to a recently discovered immune-like defense system that protects them from marauding infectious agents like viruses and plasmids. Click ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique to identify the proteins secreted by a cell. The new approach should help researchers collect precise data on cell biology, which is critical in fields ranging from zoology to cancer research. The work is important because cells communicate by secreting ...

Doctors treating older patients in Southern states are more likely to prescribe antibiotics than any other region in the United States. Published online in Archives of Internal Medicine, the findings could guide and target policy efforts to prevent antibiotic overuse, researchers say. In the first examination of antibiotic use among people age ...

A paper published September 24, 2012 in PLoS ONE discusses the human antibody response to Anopheles saliva in children from Balombo, Angola between the ages of 2 to 9 years of age to compare the efficacy of three malaria vector control methods. The three vector control methods used were ...

Each and every day in homes worldwide natural disasters are occurring; and the culprit isn't the weather. These unfortunate incidents are human-made and the result of a process every family must experience. For a child, it is the transformation from home-bound infant to a functional member of society; for his ...

Harmless viruses that already live on human skin could lead to natural treatment for acne, according to new research. “Our findings provide valuable insights into acne and the bacterium that causes it,” says corresponding author Graham Hatfull, professor of biotechnology and of biological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. “The lack of ...

Telophase HeLa (cancer) cells expressing Aurora B-EGFP (green) (100X), Deconvolution. 36th annual Nikon Small World competition 11th place photography winner. Paul D. Andrews, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK

Biological systems are characterized by a form of molecular recycling – and proteins do not escape this fate. In particular, unneeded or damaged proteins biochemically marked for destruction undergo controlled degradation by having their peptide bonds broken by proteasomes. Recently, scientists at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany used ...

To learn more about human cell migration works—and goes awry—biologists have turned to a tiny roundworm. Despite their small size, the worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) actually share quite a few genes with humans. “Migration is such a conserved process,” says Mihoko Kato, a senior research fellow in biology at the California Institute of ...

Tardigrades are minuscule, eight-legged creatures that can withstand extreme conditions, including the vacuum of space. They kind of look like fat little caterpillar-bear hybrids, earning them the name "water bears." Motherboard interviewed Mike Shaw, a naturalist, about the mysterious creatures for their Spaced Out series. Because they are so unlike ...

Tardigrades are minuscule, eight-legged creatures that can withstand extreme conditions, including the vacuum of space. Click "Source" to view video.

To the consternation of medical students and others who are obliged to learn such matters for exams, the number of special attributes that distinguish one pathogen from the others is colossal. But to those who are genuinely interested in the world of pathogens, each assortment of distinguishing properties holds its ...

Feeling sociable or reckless? You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old. Researchers tested participants for T. gondii infection and had them complete a personality questionnaire. They found that ...

Epidemiology for all ages! Click "source" to view video.

For nearly 260 years—since Carl Linnaeus developed his system of naming plants and animals—researchers classified species based on visual attributes like color, shape and size. In the past few decades, researchers found that sequencing DNA can more accurately identify species. A group of single-celled algae—Symbiodinum—that live inside corals and are ...

At any given moment, millions of cells are on the move in the human body, typically on their way to aid in immune response, make repairs, or provide some other benefit to the structures around them. When the migration process goes wrong, however, the results can include tumor formation and ...

The use of a commonly prescribed antibiotic is a major contributor to the spread of infection in hospitals by the ‘superbug’ MRSA, according to new research. The study also found that increasing measures to prevent infection – such as improved hygiene and hand washing – appeared to have only a ...

Nearly one third of forestry workers in parts of eastern France are infected with Hepatitis E virus (HEV), according to a paper in the September Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Wild boars in the same region are also heavily infected. HEV is endemic in developing nations, but heretofore, HEV infection in ...

Heavy metals and other toxins frequently contaminate food and water. The culprits read like a litany of bad actors—lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, chromium—but their numbers run into the thousands. Microbes have long been enlisted for bioremediation, but they also have the potential to protect us from toxins, according to a ...

The 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza virus appears to have required certain mutations in order to be transmitted to humans, according to a paper in the September Journal of Virology. The research could prove extremely valuable for efforts to predict human outbreaks. The 2009 influenza pandemic was caused by a swine influenza ...

People with a rare genetic trait who are infected with HIV progress more slowly to AIDS than others. But even within this group, there are wide variations in time to progression. A new study illustrates in detail how the immune system fights the virus in those subjects who progress more ...

One of our long-running goals at HuffPost Arts & Culture is to eliminate the unnecessary divide that has so long plagued the arts and sciences. So we were overjoyed to stumble upon the work of microbiologist-cum-photographer Zachary Copfer, who has turned a traditional artistic practice into a laudable technique weaving ...

It is our pleasure to continue our tradition of hosting a few reflections from the new president of the ASM. After nearly three months as president and one year as president elect, what amazes me most about the ASM is the breadth and depth of our activities. We literally span the ...

Contrary to previous findings, new research finds no link between chronic fatigue syndrome and the viruses XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) and pMLV (polytropic murine leukemia virus). A study to be published on September 18 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, reveals that ...

I approached several physicists-some turned-biologists-to ask them for a brief comment on the topic: "In the long run, what will the discovery of the Higgs boson do for biology?" Their answers span the extremes from “nothing” to “everything.” Comments from: Joe Incandela, Dept. of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara Suckjoon Jun, ...

About a month and a half ago, the 19th International AIDS Conference was filled with ambitious suggestions that the beginning of the end of AIDS was near. The tone of the meeting was hopeful: the tools were clear, the successes were growing and there seemed to be little to stand in ...

A paper recently published in the Journal of Animal Science helps researchers further understand how microbials and probiotics affect poultry health. Researchers at the North Carolina State University and Chung Jen College of Nursing, Health Sciences and Management (Taiwan) conducted a study to investigate the effects of direct fed microbials on ...

A simple blood test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and Mad Cow disease is a step closer, following a breakthrough by medical researchers at the University of Melbourne. Using newly available genetic sequencing scientists discovered cells infected with prions (the infectious agent responsible for these diseases) release particles which contain easily recognized ‘signature ...

A new study shows that when enough bacteria get together in one place, they can make a collective decision to grow an appendage and swim away. This type of behavior has been seen for the first time in marine sponges, and could lead to an understanding of how to break ...

Surprises are the stuff of science, but some discoveries are more surprising than others. We are starting a new column, its aim being to highlight findings that, in our view, lie outside the norm for being markedly unexpected and unforeseen. We plan to post notices of such items periodically. You ...

There is no doubt that filmgoers love sequels. The adulation is so great that in 2011, nine of the top 10 grossing films were continuations of cinematic storylines. For studios, a sequel is usually easy money as success is almost guaranteed with only a small evolution in the characters and ...

A few years ago I attended an ASM Branch meeting where an investigator gave a talk about a metagenomic survey of oceanic bacteriophages. In typical fashion for this type of study, one slide listed dozens genes of note identified as being encoded in phage genomes. With surprise I noticed that ...

Greater transparency about the scientific process and a closer focus on correcting defective data are the way forward, says Jim Woodgett. There is increasing unrest in global science. The number of retractions is rising, new examples of poor oversight or practice are being uncovered and anxiety is building among researchers. ...

Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) together with their collaborators have developed a new cell screening method that can be used to identify potential anti-influenza drugs. They also identified two novel anti-influenza agents. Medical Systems Virology group at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) at the University ...

Two Missouri farmers have been infected with a brand-new tick-borne virus that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling the Heartland virus. The men recovered but suffered serious illness that required hospital care and weeks of convalescence. Symptoms included fever, severe fatigue, headache and nausea. Their platelet counts plummeted, ...

This 1975 transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed the presence of a number of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) virions, which are Coronaviridae family members, and members of the genus Coronavirus. IBV is a highly contagious pathogen, which infects poultry of all ages, affecting a number of organ systems including the respiratory ...

Scientists are closer to establishing a definitive bacterial cause for the skin condition rosacea. This will allow more targeted, effective treatments to be developed for sufferers, according to a review published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. Rosacea is a common dermatological condition that causes reddening and inflammation of the skin ...

Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITG) opened a new front against the cause of sleeping sickness. This parasite is transmitted between humans by tsetse flies. The researchers learned a bacterium living in those flies how to produce antibodies against the parasite. Application in the field is still ...

For this, my last post as co-blogger, I chose to loop back to my very first post about my favorites among the many Small Things, the phages. That was BYOG: Bring Your Own Gene, published in March of 2008, recounting what was at the time a totally new story for ...

Infection with a common virus may increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes in older adults, a new study from the Netherlands suggests. In the study, adults ages 85 and over who were infected with cytomegalovirus were about twice as likely to have Type 2 diabetes compared with those not infected. Cytomegalovirus ...

Vitamin B3 may offer a new way to treat infections from potentially deadly staph bacteria such as MRSA, according to a new study. Researchers treated mice and human blood cells in lab dishes with a hefty dose of vitamin B3 and found that the ability of immune system cells to fight ...

Chimpanzees in African sanctuaries harbor human strains of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, according to a new paper in The American Journal of Primatology. Chimpanzees carry their own strains of staph, but scientists worry that some human strains are particularly pathogenic and could be harmful if spread to wild chimpanzees. Click "source" to ...

A bacterial disease whose origin was traced to a high-end Chicago hotel is responsible for eight infections and two deaths. Health officials said Monday that two people have died of Legionnaires' disease after being exposed to the bacteria that causes it at the JW Marriott Hotel at 151 W. Adams St., ...

Can HIV be transformed into a biotechnological tool for improving human health? According to a CNRS team at the Architecture et Réactivité de l'ARN (RNA Architecture and Reactivity) laboratory, the answer is yes. Taking advantage of the HIV replication machinery, the researchers have been able to select a specific mutant ...

Researchers from The Wistar Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) have teamed to publish the first annotated atlas of the Epstein-Barr virus genome, creating the most comprehensive study of how the viral genome interacts with its human host during a latent infection. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which is thought to ...

The likelihood of becoming seriously ill from cholera depends on your blood group. It is possible to find a new remedy for the feared illness by studying the molecular structure in the toxin in the cholera bacteria. Three to five million people are infected by cholera ever year. The mortality rate ...

The emergence of the field of microbial endocrinology did not follow a straight course, nor was the destination intuitively obvious at the start. Like many research paths before it, the theoretical underpinnings of the field only emerged when it became obvious that the only explanation for the facts was a ...

Tempted to get a tattoo? Today, people from all walks of life have tattoos, which might lead you to believe that tattoos are completely safe. But there are health risks that can result in the need for medical care. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is particularly concerned about a ...

A deadly outbreak of antibiotic-resistant bacteria last year at the Clinical Research Center of the National Institutes of Health offers a fascinating and frightening window on the future of medicine. Fascinating because scientists used whole-genome sequencing to obtain a fine-grained blueprint of the genetic material in the bacteria and to track ...

2009 Nikon Small World Competition award 10th place: Leave it to the diminutive diatoms to bring out algae's best side. Only 10 times larger than life, this image was captured via dark-field by Arlene Wechezak in Anacortes, Wash. Such diatoms have been proposed as a key biofuel source of the ...

Here’s an old article ‘from the archives’. Actually, it’s two articles combined: both originally appeared at Tet Zoo ver 1 in 2006, and both are included together in Tetrapod Zoology Book One. I’ve made no effort to update the text (bar minor tweaks). If I did, I’d write about the ...

Here’s a challenge for present-day systems biologists. Say you wanted to find out how many ribosomes are present in cells growing under different conditions. How would you do it? You might think of using quantitative PCR to measure the amount of rRNA inside the cell. However, you could end up ...

Drug gradients may give bacteria an evolutionary boost towards antibiotic resistance. Since Alexander Fleming discovered in 1928 that a substance secreted by a mold could kill bacteria, we have become used to the ease of administering cocktails of antibiotics to fight bacterial infections. However, the use and misuse of antibiotics in ...

"The thought of parasites preying on your body or brain very likely sends shivers down your spine. Perhaps you imagine insectoid creatures bursting from stomachs or a malevolent force controlling your actions. These visions are not just the night terrors of science-fiction writers—the natural world is replete with such examples. "Take ...

For many bacteria, scarcity of phosphorus—serious though it may sound—is not insurmountable. True, phosphorus is needed for nucleic acids and phospholipids, but many prokaryotes have found a way to reduce their need of this element for phospholipid synthesis. But first, why are there phospholipids in the first place? In these ...

Scientists have built a device that simulates blood flow—and used it to discover that bacteria literally stick together to infect the blood. Hundreds of thousands of Americans get sick each year—and tens of thousands die—after bacteria get into their blood, and the new research may explain why. The study also suggests ...

No doubt, one of the defining events in evolution was the acquisition by some primitive cell of bacterial symbionts that became mitochondria and chloroplasts. Symbiosis has, in fact, driven evolution in many other ways and has had a profound effect in the origin of species. For a deeper understanding of ...

A trio of researchers has encoded a draft of a whole book into DNA. The 5.27-megabit tome contains 53,246 words, 11 JPG image files and a JavaScript program, making it the largest piece of non-biological data ever stored in this way. DNA has the potential to store huge amounts of information. ...

The popular spice turmeric packs more than just flavor — it shows promise in fighting devastating viruses, Mason researchers recently discovered. Curcumin, found in turmeric, stopped the potentially deadly Rift Valley Fever virus from multiplying in infected cells, says Aarthi Narayanan, lead investigator on a new study and a research assistant ...

Like bacteria, cancer cells rely on communication and cooperation, says TAU research Experts agree that, more than ever before, modern wars will be fought in the cyber zone, targeting an enemy’s communications technology to cause untold damage. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is suggesting that the same tactics should be ...

This photomicrograph depicts a Treponema pallidum bacterium, a spirochete 5 - 15 micrometers in length, which is the causative agent of syphilis. Syphilis, is passed from person to person through direct contact with a syphilis sore. Sores occur mainly on the external genitals, vagina, anus, or in the rectum. Sores also ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida have discovered a mechanism that explains how some cancer cells “hijack” a biological process to potentially activate cell growth and the survival of cancer gene expression. Their study appeared in a recent issue of Nature Structural & ...

A chemical widely used in soaps, toothpaste, and toys weakens muscles in mice. Triclosan, an antibacterial chemical, hinders muscle contractions at a cellular level, slows swimming in fish, and reduces muscular strength in mice, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Colorado. The team ...

A novel virus has been identified as the possible cause of a common but mysterious disease that kills a significant number of pet snakes all over the world, thanks to research led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—and three snakes named Juliet, Balthazar and Larry. The virus, ...

Scientists from the research groups of Prof. Dr. Susana Andrade and Prof. Dr. Oliver Einsle, members of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Cluster of Excellence BIOSS, the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies of the University of Freiburg, have collected the first precise data ever on the function of ...

Scientists have combined MRI and imaging mass spectrometry to visualize the body’s inflammatory response to a bacterial infection in 3D. The techniques, described in Cell Host & Microbe, offer opportunities for discovering proteins not previously implicated in the inflammatory response. Eric Skaar, chair in pathology at Vanderbilt University and his team ...

A team of researchers led by scientists at Rockefeller University have discovered that a protein once thought to be mainly involved in antiviral immunity is in fact more important in fighting bacterial infections and could provide new mechanisms for treating diseases like tuberculosis, which is increasingly becoming resistant to antibiotic ...

Scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine have breathed new life into a forgotten technique and so succeeded in detecting resistant tuberculosis in circumstances where so far this was hardly feasible. Tuberculosis bacilli that have become resistant against our major antibiotics are a serious threat to world health. Click "source" ...

With NASA’s Curiosity Rover safely on Mars and ready to search for signs of life, back on Earth attempts are underway to engineer bacteria that could thrive on the Red Planet. A team of undergraduates from Stanford and Brown Universities are busy applying synthetic biology to space exploration, outfitting microbes to ...

While the number of people diagnosed with lupus has more than tripled over the past four decades, researchers remain baffled, for the most part, as to what exactly causes the autoimmune disease. Previous studies have pointed to gender, ethnicity (lupus is two to three times more prevalent among women of color ...

There is an organism out there that is smaller than you, older than you, and that has a house that’s probably fancier than yours. Meet Emiliania huxleyi, or Ehux. Ehux is a miniscule coccolithophore, a beautiful single-celled alga that doesn’t get enough attention in the world of microbiology. The tendency ...

Streptomyces produce the majority of clinically useful antibiotics, yet we don’t fully understand how they grow. PhD student Antje Hempel has contributed to our understanding of this by working out how and why the bacterial filaments produce branches. Streptomyces bacteria typically live in soil and survive by decomposing plant matter. They ...

Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a method of modeling, simultaneously, an organism’s metabolism and its underlying gene expression. In the emerging field of systems biology, scientists model cellular behavior in order to understand how processes such as metabolism and gene expression relate to one ...

Fish tales, Piles of Ants and the Difficulty of Measuring the World We have made great progress in biology but we still struggle to measure the limits of life. The one-eyed poet Jim Harrison has written that he has a count of the number of birds he has seen in ...

After a decade of research, ContraFect Corporation, a small biotech company based in Yonkers, N.Y., is preparing to test bacteriophages—viruses that infect and destroy bacteria—in people as a potential alternative to overused antibiotics for treating and preventing bacterial infections. The first trials for patient safety are expected to start by ...

Scientists have sequenced the genomes of several species of malaria, revealing both good and bad news about the deadly parasite. The research appears in two studies published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Genetics. They focus on Plasmodium vivax, a species of malaria that afflicts humans and the most ...

by Moselio Schaechter I don't get tired of symbioses, something I attribute to the Power Law of Symbiosis I just made up: Interacting genomes are more interesting than single ones by the nth power of their numbers, where n is a matter of personal preference. Here I relate two examples that ...

When bacteria start building cities, we’re in trouble. The normally free-floating cells can gather in large numbers and secrete a slimy matrix that they live within. These communities are called biofilms, and they grow wherever there is a surface to support them. Hospital catheters are prime real estate, but they’ll ...

Delicately and cautiously, health authorities in the United States and other countries are beginning to open up a difficult topic: Whether the extraordinary ongoing epidemic of whooping cough, the worst in more than 50 years, may be due in part to unexpected poor performance by the vaccine meant to prevent ...

Risk of accidental reintroduction shadows rinderpest eradication effort. Rinderpest, a devastating cattle disease, has not been seen in the wild for a decade, but it lives on in scores of labs. Twelve months after the world celebrated the success of a years-long vaccination campaign that made rinderpest only the second disease ...

Four times in the past century, a new strain of flu has emerged that can spread quickly in humans. One of those strains, which emerged in 1918, killed an estimated 50 million people. All human flu strains evolved from flu viruses that live in birds. To understand how these transitions happen, ...

Can specific genes cause muscles to grow faster or stronger, and can genetic tampering give athletes an unnatural edge? Take a close look at the athletes competing in this year's Summer Olympic Games in London—their musculature will tell you a lot about how they achieved their elite status. Endless hours of ...

With a milliseconds-long flash of blue light, Yale University researchers regulated a critical type of signaling molecule within cell membranes, another illustration of the power of light-based techniques to manipulate cell functions and thus to study mechanisms of disease. One of the most innovative new research approaches of recent years is ...

The outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever that has killed at least 14 people this month in western Uganda initially went undetected because patients did not show typical symptoms, according to the nation's health minister. Patients had fevers and were vomiting, but did not show other typical symptoms, such as hemorrhaging, Health ...

A 15-year-old Inca girl who lived 500 years ago had a lung infection at the time of her death, according to a new method of analyzing protein samples. A team of scientists that used the method of analyzing proteins from samples is the first to detect an immune response from a ...

Microorganisms that reside on the skin found to influence host immunity. The skin has long been thought of as a mere physical barrier to attack by pathogens. Now, however, researchers are starting to realize that this simplistic view needs a radical rethink. The folds, follicles and tiny oil-producing glands on the skin's ...

The thinking behind an approach that has caused trouble in California. Last week, the Sacramento Bee reported that two neurosurgeons at the University of California, Davis, had been banned from research on humans after deliberately infecting three terminally ill cancer patients with pathogenic bacteria in an attempt to treat them. All ...

The opportunistic fungal pathogen Candida albicans inconspicuously lives in our bodies until it senses that we are weak, when it quickly adapts to go on the offensive. The fungus, known for causing yeast and other minor infections, also causes a sometimes-fatal infection known as candidemia in immunocompromised patients. An in ...

The Mariana Trench is the deepest feature of the Earth's surface. The water column there exerts a pressure of more than one thousand times normal atmospheric pressure at sea level, enough pressure to crush an SUV. Yet many organisms thrive in this seemingly inhospitable environment. A Japanese research team has ...

Listening to Life: New chemical imaging method probes the communications of live microbial colonies Once impossible, scientists can now eavesdrop on microbes, thanks to a new technique from scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and three universities. Microbes converse by releasing simple and complex molecules, called metabolites. The metabolites interact with ...

Specimen: Dung fungi found on a cow pile Technique: Epi-illumination, 20 stacked images Credit: Mr. Mike Crutchley, Pembrokeshire, Wales, United Kingdom - Olympus BioScapes

In a recent post I shared with you some amazing things I had learnt about coprophilous (‘dung-loving’) fungi that spit their spores like pros. What I did not tell you then is that my six-year-old son also fell in love with the spitting fungi (dung + spit = child’s interest!) ...

Scientists are hot on the trail of a new tuberculosis treatment that a small study suggests might one day offer an alternative to battle this deadly lung disease, even if it’s resistant to today’s two main drugs. There haven’t been new medications to treat TB in four decades. But the experimental ...

Scientists have discovered the structure and operating procedures of a powerful anti-bacterial killing machine that could become an alternative to antibiotics. In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, scientists from Monash University, The Rockefeller University and the University of Maryland detail how the bacteriophage lysin, ...

In the days following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, methane-eating bacteria bloomed in the Gulf of Mexico, feasting on the methane that gushed, along with oil, from the damaged well. The sudden influx of microbes was a scientific curiosity: Prior to the oil spill, scientists had observed relatively few ...

In a quest to make safer and more effective vaccines, scientists at the Biodesign InstituteÒ at Arizona State University have turned to a promising field called DNA nanotechnology to make an entirely new class of synthetic vaccines. In a study published in the journal Nano Letters, Biodesign immunologist Yung Chang joined ...

Our gastrointestinal (GI) tract harbors a rich ecological niche of an extraordinary amount and variety of microbes. Most of these microbes we keep around because they provide us nutritional, metabolic, or immunological benefits. How our body keeps in constant communication with these microbes to “keep-it-down-in-there” is relatively unknown, however we ...

Microorganisms in the human gastrointestinal tract form an intricate, living fabric made up of some 500 to 1000 distinct bacterial species, (in addition to other microbes). Recently, researchers have begun to untangle the subtle role these diverse life forms play in maintaining health and regulating weight. In a new study appearing ...

There’s been a lot of focus on the human microbiome recently, and while I’m obviously thrilled at anything which makes people think more about bacteria it’s easy to forget that it isn’t just humans who provide internal living space for bugs. Bacteria are everywhere, inside and among every living creature, ...

Malaria’s impact worldwide is still an issue, particularly in developing countries. Research is ongoing to study the carriers of malaria, mosquitoes, and how they carry and transmit the disease and other pathogens. That’s why the 2010 winning image by Jonas King is so important to the life science community. Anopheles gambiae ...

Prosthogonimus macrorchis, a flatworm poultry parasite. A digenetic trematode (family Prosthogonimidae) located in the oviduct and bursa fabricii of poultry in North America, particularly common in states bordering the Great Lakes. (http://www.medilexicon.com) Credit: Mr. Spike Walker 2010 Honorable Mention - Olympus BioScapes 2010

Eight years old, wiry and ponytailed, Precious Reynolds bounds from the elevator to the entrance of the pediatric intensive-care unit. She fidgets impatiently as she waits to be buzzed in, eager to return to the clinic where, by the ironclad expectations of 2,000 years of medicine, she should have died. ...

With global attention focusing on London for the Games of the 30th Olympiad, a parallel competition of superlative ability has gone largely unnoticed. I’m referring, of course, to the Microbial Olympics, a truth-based but (largely) fictional test of microbial abilities published in Nature Reviews Microbiology. For the contributors, it’s an exercise ...

Scientists at Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute have developed the first software simulation of an entire organism, a humble single-cell bacterium that lives in the human genital and respiratory tracts. The scientists and other experts said the work was a giant step toward developing computerized laboratories that could ...

Marine bacteria of the Roseobacter clade are found to be spread widely throughout the oceans of this planet from the tropics to as far as Antarctica. They live freely in the water, in sediments and as symbiotic partners of algae. Special photosynthetic pigments are responsible for their pink colour. Marine ...

Belgian scientists of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp, Belgium made a breakthrough in bridging high tech molecular biology research on microbial pathogens and the needs of the poorest of the poor. After sequencing the complete genome of Leishmania donovani (a parasite causing one of the most important ...

Cell-cell junctions are important for communication, transport, signalling, waste evacuation and water homeostasis. An EU-funded project has investigated how biophysical forces can influence the fulfilment of this vast range of functions. Communication and signalling between cells in almost all tissues is achieved by gap junctions or intercellular channels. Gap junctions are ...

UC Santa Barbara researchers' discovery of a variation of an enzyme's ability to "hop" as it moves along DNA, modifying the genetic material of a bacteria — and its physical capability and behavior — holds much promise for biomedical and other scientific applications. Their results are published in a paper ...

Changes in an overactive immune system can contribute to autism-like behaviors in mice, new research shows. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) pioneered the study of the link between irregularities in the immune system and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism a decade ago. Since then, studies of postmortem ...

Melbourne researchers are now simulating in 3D, the motion of the complete human rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, on Australia’s fastest supercomputer, paving the way for new drug development. Rhinovirus infection is linked to about 70 per cent of all asthma exacerbations with more than 50 per ...

Computer simulations of how the body's tiniest building blocks behave are helping scientists to unlock the role of molecules in human diseases. In a series of recent studies, researchers from Monash University's School of Biomedical Sciences have shown how important the movements and interactions of molecules are to how the ...

Study found intestinal species varied depending on seniors' health, residence. The health of elderly people appears closely linked with their diet and the type of microorganisms living in their gut, suggesting that what you eat may affect how well you age, according to new research. Click "source" to read more.

Preparing food on surfaces made with copper alloys may prevent food poisoning, according to a study with Salmonella. Each year, Salmonella enterica, a tiny, rod-shaped species of bacteria with a fondness for proliferating on human food, causes numerous cases of food poisoning around the world, sometimes leading to severe illness and ...

Researchers in Japan have developed a low-intensity light source that allows cell biologists to visualize and handle live cells without destroying them during prolonged exposure. In addition to laying the foundation for new cell manipulations, the development will make advanced biology requiring fluorescence microscopy accessible to underfunded laboratories. Led by ...

So, there’s this thing. A big project. An investigative project, actually. I’ve been working on it for months, and finally I can tell you about it, because it all just published, in various venues, today. I’ve been working with a great new group, the Food and Environment Reporting Network — one ...

Scientists have discovered two viruses that appear to infect the single-celled microalgae that reside in corals and are important for coral growth and health, and they say the viruses could play a role in the serious decline of coral ecosystems around the world. Click "source" to read more.

We are still waiting with bated breath for the day scientists resurrect the woolly mammoth. Until then, we'll have to satisfy ourselves with resurrections of ancient plants and bacteria - which may be more amazing anyway, because they're even older. The dish in the above image holds a bacterium with ...

A group of diseases that kill millions of people each year can’t be touched by antibiotics, and some treatment is so harsh the patient can’t survive it. They’re caused by parasites, and for decades researchers have searched for a “magic bullet” to kill them without harming the patient. Now, a ...

Rice University researchers report too small a dose may enhance microbes’ immunity Rice University researchers have settled a long-standing controversy over the mechanism by which silver nanoparticles, the most widely used nanomaterial in the world, kill bacteria. Their work comes with a Nietzsche-esque warning: Use enough. If you don’t kill them, ...

t may sound like snake oil, but a new study suggests scorpion venom contains a substance that can fend off drug-resistant bacteria, including the deadly MRSA. Drug resistance is increasingly rendering our antibiotic arsenal ineffective against bacteria. According to a CDC study, MRSA caused 36 percent of staphylococcal infections in U.S. ...

I have been asked recently to write an article, somewhat along the lines of this one but longer, and with a somewhat different angle, asking a little bit different questions: What makes a science blog? Who were the first science bloggers and how long ago? How many science blogs are ...

Phase contrast image of fresh water unicellular algae Haematococcus pluvialis colelcted at 100X. This species is well known for its high content of the strong antioxidant astaxanthin, which is important in aquaculture, various pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Fourth Prize, 2009 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition® - Charles Krebs

In 2009 researchers from the UT Health Science Center San Antonio and other institutions crack the genetic code of Schistosoma mansoni, a flatworm that can live up to 10 years on average in humans. The parasite is endemic in many tropical areas of the world. Nature (16-Jul-2009)

By looking at signature chemical differences in the DNA of various immune cells called leukocytes, scientists have developed a way to determine their relative abundance in blood samples. The relative abundance turns out to correlate with specific cancers and other diseases, making the technique, described in two recent papers, potentially ...

MISA researchers from SARDI have isolated and evaluated a ‘super strain’ of a native microalgae species that could form the basis of a local biofuels industry. This breakthrough in biodiscovery comes after six years of ‘bioprospecting’ across thousands of kilometres of the State and into the waters of the Great Australian ...

If we can visualize a protein's shape, we can learn much more about how it functions and how we might block its activity. This was the guiding principle behind an NIH initiative launched 25 years ago to spur the discovery of HIV-related protein structures. Structures produced through the program have ...

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. "Investigating sRNAs as the master on/off switch of Vibrio cholerae virulence" - (http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/92827_en.html)

The HPV vaccine not only has resulted in a decrease in human papillomavirus infection in immunized teens but also in teens who were not immunized. The study is believed to be the first to show a substantial decrease in HPV infection in a community setting as well as herd protection -- ...

A third of the world’s human population is infected with a dormant tuberculosis bacteria, primarily people living in developing countries. The bacteria presents a lifelong TB risk. Recent research out of the University of Copenhagen demonstrates that the risk of tuberculosis breaking out is four times as likely if a ...

By interacting with the radioactive waste and the materials used to contain it, underground microorganisms may affect the safety of nuclear waste repositories, for better or for worse. Underground, time appears to stand still. That is one of the reasons why deep geological formations are considered the safest place to dispose ...

Bacterial genomes differ dramatically in size: from 140Kb to 13Mb (those numbers might be off now...please let me know if something has broken the record. Yes, I know the lower estimate can change based on semantics, but there are a bunch in that range). Although we have some clues as ...

Scientists' finding is a major breakthrough in understanding a decades-old problem of how bacteria detect environmental changes. A team of scientists led by Assistant Professor Ganesh S Anand and Professor Linda J. Kenney from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Department of Biological Sciences (DBS) and the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) has ...

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 resources such as virulence factors, biofilms, and ...

Scientists studying loss of bone and muscle mass among astronauts find that spaceflight’s effects on microscopic worms may help them live longer. The researchers discovered that spaceflight suppresses accumulation of toxic proteins that normally accumulate within aging muscle. In addition, they report that a group of genes are expressed at lower levels ...

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 recognized as a method of prayer as well ...

Happy Fourth of July! In honor of this historic holiday we’ve compiled a list showing how infectious diseases and vaccines have affected the lives of our most heralded leaders – the American presidents. These concise accounts are evidence that diseases can strike anyone, anywhere at any time, and even in ...

We’ve all heard the claims of probiotic yogurts and their benefits for human health, but aside from improving our belly dancing skills, what exactly are probiotic bacteria doing? An elegant study from the Jeffrey Gordon lab explored the effects of consuming fermented milk products (FMPs) containing probiotic bacteria on the human ...

One of the most economically devastating diseases in the world for those who raise cows, sheep, pigs, goats, deer and other cloven-hoofed animals is foot and mouth Disease (FMD). This incredibly contagious and fast-spreading disease causes fever, blisters on the feet and mouth (hence the name), loss of appetite, drooling, ...

Ancient DNA of the bacteria causing syphilis, the Treponema pallidum pallidum, can be recovered from the ancient bones of newborns. This is the conclusion reached by a study led by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), which was able to obtain the genetic material from the bacteria in more than one ...

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-cycle, but are ...

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 plant material such as switchgrass in order ...

The parasitic roundworms, also known as soil-transmitted helminths are a huge problem, impairing children physically, nutritionally and cognitively worldwide. The parasites, transmitted to people through contaminated soil include the giant intestinal roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), the whipworm (Trichuris trichiura) and the hookworms (Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale). According to a World Health Organization ...

In evolutionary processes, it is the simple, economical solutions that prevail over the complex and laborious ones. A team of researchers led by Walter Rossmanith from the MedUni Vienna has now investigated the key enzyme, “ribonuclease P”, which is found in every living organism. The surprising result is that the ...

A new advance in microscopy offers fast, detailed, 3D views of cells’ internal structures without the use of fluorescence or contrast agents. In a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, researchers at the University of Illinois who developed the technique report they were able to use it to visualize ...

About 500 years ago a group of Incas marched hundreds of miles through the treacherous Andes Mountains to the top of a distant volcano, where they buried three children alive as part of a religious ceremony. In 1999, an expedition led by explorer Johan Reinhard unearthed the mummies atop Argentina's ...

A new study reports that the superabundance of microbial life lining our GI tracts has co-evolved with us. These bacteria, which are essential for a healthy immune system, are ultimately our evolutionary partners, and may be affected negatively by increasingly hyper-hygienic environments. Click "source" to read more.

Dog owners and parents, take a deep breath. Get your children to take a deep breath. And most importantly, shake some carpets, fluff your pillows and get your infants to take a deep breath – or lick the floor. Because new research from UC San Francisco and the University of Michigan ...

Microbial inhabitants outnumber our body's own cells by about ten to one. These residents have become the subject of intensive research, which is beginning to elucidate their roles in health and disease. Two journal articles by, David A. Relman, Departments of Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, California "Structure, ...

The Human Microbiome Project has spent two years surveying bacteria and other microbes at different sites on 242 healthy people. The chart below hints at the complex combinations of microbes living in and on the human body. The New York Times - Science

Mice have a jungle of bacteria, viruses and fungi in their stomachs--and so do we. These microorganisms help both mice and us break down dinner. As we are finding, these bugs also help to regulate the immune system. But we are just starting to learn how these tiny organisms influence ...

Bacteria found in gold mines and frozen caves show the extreme flexibility of life, and hint at where else we might find it in the solar system. The first time Tullis Onstott ventured underground, he squeezed into an elevator with dozens of South African gold miners and descended a mile into ...

Have you ever forgotten to buy milk when you go to the grocery store? How about missing someone’s birthday? Because of the fast-paced world we live in, there are always going to be things that we forget to do. Some of them are more important than others. Bills need to ...

Lack of exposure to amniotic fluid could be the reason that preterm infants are more susceptible to a serious gastrointestinal inflammatory disease. In an early online report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine show ...

University of Georgia scientists have discovered a new flu-fighting role for a well-known component of the immune system. Kimberly Klonowski, assistant professor of cellular biology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and her colleagues found that administering a cell-signaling protein known as IL-15 to mice infected with ...

The very word infection brings to mind the arrival of a nasty pathogen countered by a host immune response, a battleground strewn with the carcasses of the losers. But how do you define infection? Is not the beginning of an endosymbiosis, even a mutually beneficial one, also an infection? Corals, ...

Since ancient times, mind control has been one of the holy grails of human manipulation. Militaries in particular have been looking for ways to create the "Manchurian Candidate" through a variety of means including hypnosis, electric shock, drugs and "neurosurgical techniques," which include lobotomies. On the flip side, advertising agencies ...

One thing that becomes more clear with each piece of research is that the human body is a hive of mostly harmless bacteria that live in any crevice they can reach while affecting their human host as little as possible. In some cases these bacteria can be very beneficial – ...

A new combination vaccine that protects infants from two deadly infections that can cause meningitis, meningococcal disease and Hib disease, was approved Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The vaccine, called Menhibrix, has been approved for children ages 6 weeks through 18 months old. It's given as a four-dose ...

New research shows that human herpesviruses (HHV)-6B and HHV-7, commonly know as roseola virus), account for one third of febrile status epilepticus (FSE) cases. Results of the FEBSTAT prospective study now available in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), suggest that ...

Researchers use stealthy nanoscale particles to infiltrate vaginal mucus and keep herpes at bay in mice. Tears and a runny nose can be unpleasant on a windy day, but these mucosal secretions play a vital role in protecting the body from viruses and other malicious microbes. Unfortunately, mucus is also adept ...

Kathleen Maguire, a Marlborough High School Senior, is presenting a poster at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Conference in San Francisco on June 16-19. In order to attend the conference, Maguire became a special member of the society. She is the first high school student to have a poster ...

UCC scientists have shown that brain levels of serotonin, the 'happy hormone' are regulated by the amount of bacteria in the gut during early life. Their research is being published June 12 in the international psychiatry journal, Molecular Psychiatry. This research shows that normal adult brain function depends on the presence ...

Researchers have created a reliable and fast flu-detection test that can be carried in a first-aid kit and may lead to real-time tracking of influenza. The prototype device, which isolates influenza RNA using a combination of magnetics and microfluidics and then amplifies and detects probes bound to the RNA, is described ...

A rare and unusual new species of yeast has been identified at three separate locations across the world, reported in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. The findings suggest a link between the distribution of specialized microbes and human migrations. The novel strain of yeast has been named Saccharomycopsis ...

For the first time, health officials in West Africa have begun a vaccination campaign to try to control cholera during an active epidemic. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Guinea, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; also known as Doctors Without Borders) has been administering the cholera vaccine Shanchol ...

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have discovered a parasitic mite has caused the deformed wing virus to proliferate in honey bee colonies. This association is now thought to contribute to the world-wide spread and probable death of millions of honey bee colonies. The current monetary value of honey bees as ...

Biorecognition at the molecular level is a rapidly advancing technology that has enlisted the help of synthetic polypeptides to come up with the ultimate antibody. The EU 'Synthetic superantibodies - Bioinspired engineering of artificial receptor structures' (Superantibodies) project merged two fundamental processes. Together, they have resulted in the development of synthetic ...

Family members of children with a staph infection often harbor a drug-resistant form of the germ, even though they don’t show symptoms, say researchers. The results are published in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Investigators focused on family members of nearly 200 children who had Staphylococcus aureus ...

Stanford researchers have helped open a new door of possibility in the high-stakes effort to save the world's coral reefs. Working with an international team, the scientists -- including Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellows Jeff Koseff, Rob Dunbar and Steve Monismith -- found a way to create future ...

In 2009, the H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic struck, infecting millions and killing more than 18,000 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Though less severe than initially feared, the pandemic highlighted the potential threat of deadly viruses emerging from animals into humans, and the importance of quick and effective public ...

The formation of the mineral dolomite is still puzzling scientists. Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence "The Future Ocean" and GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel together with colleagues from Switzerland and Spain have now shown that bacteria can facilitate the formation of dolomite. Not only in the Dolomites, ...

Mutations in a gene linked to restless legs syndrome (RLS) in humans appear to disturb sleep in fruit flies. The mutant flies wake up more often during sleep periods, which resembles a key feature of human RLS, acccording to a study by researchers at Emory University. The results are published in ...

Protein knots, a structure whose formation remains a mystery, may have specific functional advantages that depend on the nature of the protein’s architecture. “The presence of a knotted or slipknotted structure in a protein is relatively rare but really is very interesting,” says Kenneth Millett, a professor of mathematics at University ...

An international collaboration between scientists in University College Dublin and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has revealed for the first time that 15% of the proteins encoded by the human genome contribute to the process of secretion in cells. This finding has been made possible through the assessment of ...

Researchers have discovered that the pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine can generate antibodies that protect against a variety of flu strains. The discovery brings scientists closer to designing a “universal” influenza vaccine that reliably induces broadly cross-reactive antibodies at sufficiently high levels to protect against different influenza subtypes. “Our new finding is a ...

Herpes and other viruses that attack the nervous system may thrive by disrupting cell function in order to hijack a neuron's internal transportation network and spread to other cells. Princeton University researchers made the first observation in neurons that common strains of the herpes virus indirectly take control of a cell's ...

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a novel approach for eradicating drug-resistant bacteria from wounds and skin infections, using light to trigger the controlled release of nitric oxide. The UCSC team developed a photoactive compound that releases nitric oxide when exposed to light, and loaded it into a porous, ...

Microscopic pathogens have been causing mass coral die-offs around the world. But now researchers are using high-speed video to spy on the behavior of killer microbes and potentially learn how to better manage coral disease. “We finally have the tools to watch how bacteria behave in the ocean, which still kind ...

For 50 years scientists have been unsure how the bacteria that gives humans cholera manages to resist one of our basic innate immune responses. That mystery has now been solved, thanks to research from biologists at The University of Texas at Austin. The answers may help clear the way for a ...

In a fjord in Canada scientists have found a landscape similar to one of Jupiter's icy moons: Europa. It consists of a frozen and sulphurous environment, where sulphur associated with Arctic bacteria offer clues for the upcoming missions in the search for traces of life on Europa. It is not easy ...

Doctors can now get a peek behind the eardrum to better diagnose and treat chronic ear infections, thanks to a new medical imaging device invented by University of Illinois researchers. The device could usher in a new suite of non-invasive, 3-D diagnostic imaging tools for primary-care physicians. The research team, led ...

One year on from Europe’s worst recorded outbreak of Escherichia coli infection, governments have made little progress towards improving the monitoring and reporting systems that allowed the crisis to drag on for weeks. The disease, which was spread by contaminated fenugreek sprouts, swept across northern Germany in May and June ...

The discovery of a mummified Korean child with relatively preserved organs enabled an Israeli-South Korean scientific team to conduct a genetic analysis on a liver biopsy which revealed a unique hepatitis B virus (HBV) genotype C2 sequence common in Southeast Asia. Additional analysis of the ancient HBV genomes may be used ...

Mice and monkeys don't develop diseases in the same way that humans do. Nevertheless, after medical researchers have studied human cells in a Petri dish, they have little choice but to move on to study mice and primates. University of Washington bioengineers have developed the first structure to grow small human ...

New software combines ancient Chinese practices and modern medicine to measure health by analyzing images of the tongue. For 5,000 years, the Chinese have used a system of medicine based on the flow and balance of positive and negative energies in the body. In this system, the appearance of the tongue ...

Bruce Walker, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard, talks about his article in the July issue of Scientific American magazine called Controlling HIV, about rare individuals who never develop AIDS after being infected by HIV. Click "source" ...

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 the highly regarded ...

Princeton University Art of Science 2009 Online Gallery - "Worm Love" submission by Maria Ciocca, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine I am a graduate student in a lab that studies the process of asymmetric cell division in the development of model organisms, such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, pictured here. ...

Army scientists and industry collaborators have successfully protected laboratory animals from lethal hantavirus disease using a novel approach that combines DNA vaccines and duck eggs. The work appears in a recent edition of the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science. According to first author Jay ...

Bioengineers have developed a way to repeatedly encode, store, and erase digital data within the DNA of living cells. “It took us three years and 750 tries to make it work, but we finally did it,” says Jerome Bonnet, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, who worked with graduate student Pakpoom ...

A team of researchers, including a scientist from the Viral Immunology Center at Georgia State University, have found that a type of herpesvirus infection of the eye is associated with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease that causes blindness in the elderly. The scientists found that human cytomegalovirus, a type ...

Antibodies that help to stop the HIV virus have been found in breast milk. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center isolated the antibodies from immune cells called B cells in the breast milk of infected mothers in Malawi, and showed that the B cells in breast milk can generate neutralizing ...

When researchers conduct experiments on the way cells grow and respond to outside cues, they tend to use solutions that are much more dilute than the crowded environments found inside living cells. Now, new research from MIT shows that this dilute environment may skew the results of such experiments. Using a ...

Previous exposure to certain antibiotics could boost the risk of infection with drug-resistant strains of a severe fungal infection. Researchers report their findings in the May 2012 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Candida species are frequent causes of hospital acquired infection. Patients at greatest risk are those ...

Clinician researchers in China have developed a vaccine that acts simultaneously against HIV-1 and M. tuberculosis (Mtb). An estimated 14 million people worldwide are coinfected with the two pathogens. The research is published in the May 2012 issue of Clinical and Vaccine Immunology. Click "source" to read more.

E Pluribus Unum, the motto of the United States, could just as well apply to biofilm-forming bacteria. Bacterial biofilms are far more resistant than individual bacteria to the armories of antibiotics we have devised to combat them. Now Tim Holm Jakobsen and Michael Givskov of the University of Copenhagen, and ...

Despite their ecologic similarity, soils from three geographically distinct areas of the American southwest harbor vastly different collections of small, biosynthetic genes, a finding that suggests the existence of a far greater diversity of potentially useful products than was previously supposed. The research is published in the May issue of ...

Confocal micrograph of wheat stigma hairs (blue) infected with ergot fungus (light pink). The stigma is the female part of the plant. The plant is fertilised by the (male) pollen grain, which sticks to a stigma hair causing growth of a pollen tube into the plant's ovary, causing an embryonic ...

Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a microfluidic chip to test for latent tuberculosis. They hope the test will be cheaper, faster and more reliable than current testing for the disease. "Our assay is cheaper, reusable, and gives results in real time," said Ying Liu, a research specialist working with ...

National Institutes of Health-funded scientists have determined the genome sequences of a dozen strains of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria known to be resistant to vancomycin, an antibiotic of last resort. The researchers demonstrated -that resistance arose independently in each strain, and identified shared features among the strains that may have helped ...

Mathematics and Biology have a long history together. It goes back to early studies on epidemiology (such as John Snow‘s on cholera and the Broad Street pump), and includes Ross’s quantitative studies that show how malaria can be controlled by careful analysis of data. And, of course, there are many ...

A PhD student from CSIRO and the University of Queensland has found a better way to 'spell check' gene sequences and help biologists better understand the natural world. The student, Lauren Bragg, has contributed to the May issue of the journal Nature Methods highlighting her new approach and its software implementation ...

Imagine you are a tiny caddisfly pupa. When you emerge from your pupal case, it is dark, but not pitch black, and high above you, you see the faint glow of a starry sky. On new wings, you rise. Cue angelic voices. Suddenly, you struggle against an invisible barrier. Cue scary ...

In a tale worthy of Sherlock Holmes, scientists in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol, UK have solved a biochemical mystery that had previously proven elusive for 70 years: How the fungus Talaromyces stipitatus produces stipitatic acid (6), which is a tropolone, one of an atypical group ...

U.S. health officials are proposing all baby boomers get tested for hepatitis C, because they’re five times more likely than other adults to have the potentially fatal liver virus and many might not know they’re at risk. Of the more than 70 million baby boomers — those born from 1945 to ...

Living bacteria have been discovered deep beneath the ocean where they've had no new food or oxygen since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Buried inside 86 million-year-old red clay, they are surviving on tiny amounts of oxygen - so little that they barely qualify as life. Indeed, the discovery could have implications ...

A toxin-producing cyanobacteria with natural chlorophyll fluorescence (red) and DNA stain (green). Location: Orlando, FL, USA Photographer: Barry Rosen, , U.S. Geological Survey

A group of fungi-farming ants are not only loyal to particular species of fungus, the relationship is so close it appears the ants and the fungus may be evolving together, a new study indicates. Each species of farming ants exclusively grows a particular species of fungus to feed their colony, even ...

Bacteria communicate to decide when they have enough density to produce toxins together effectively—a finding that could help beat infections. Researchers in the University of Nottingham have shown for the first time that the effectiveness of the bacteria’s communication method, a process called “quorum sensing”, directly depends on the density of ...

In a search to find better ways to control viral enteric diseases in birds, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have unearthed a treasure trove of previously known and unknown viruses in poultry by using a powerful new molecular tool called metagenomics. Each year, disorders like poult enteritis mortality syndrome, poult ...

Innate differences in immunity can be detected at birth, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. And babies with a better innate response to viruses have fewer respiratory illnesses in the first year of life. "Viral respiratory infections are common during childhood," says first author ...

Community in the deep seabed uses so little oxygen that it is no longer clear where the lower bound for life lies. Most humans would struggle to last for much more than a minute under water without coming up for air, whereas some seals can manage more than an hour — ...

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have succeeded in engineering algae to produce potential candidates for a vaccine that would prevent transmission of the parasite that causes malaria, an achievement that could pave the way for the development of an inexpensive way to protect billions of people from ...

Researchers have identified a small number of specific genes that need to be silenced for cancer cells to survive. The discovery—detailed in the May 15 issue of Cancer Cell—means the genes may be good targets for new, more effective treatments. “We tracked down these genes and it’s the first time that it’s ...

What can a fish tell us about human brain development? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into ...

Learn about the bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms that maintain human health. The body contains 10 times more bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms than human cells. Most of these species are harmless—although they can still cause illness if they wind up in the wrong place. In addition, researchers are beginning to ...

Conjugative plasmids and transposons have been found guilty of spreading antibiotic resistance genes from pathogen to pathogen. But how do they get past the bacterial defenses against incoming foreign DNA? Most bacteria have some sort of restriction-modification system to take care of just such molecular invaders. With such a ...

The WHO releases action plan to tackle the spread of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes. The war to bring malaria to heel has made slow but steady progress during the past decade, with the overall mortality rate dropping by more than 25% since 2000. A key factor in this progress has been improved control ...

The epithelial cells that line the intestines fire bacteria-fighting “bullets” into the gut, Vanderbilt University researchers have discovered. The findings, featured on the cover of the April 10 issue of Current Biology, represent a new mechanism for defending the body against gut microbes. The surfaces of intestinal epithelial cells are covered by ...

Advances in the 1950s and 1960s, including unprecedented cooperation between Soviet and U.S. scientists, allowed polio to be eradicated throughout the Americas by 1994 and all of Europe in 1998. Eliminating the crippling scourge has been more difficult, however, in some parts of Africa and Asia.

Animals were wilder then. Horns were longer, temperaments fiercer. These wild things had forever been free when humans took control of their flocks and herds, 10.000 years ago. Through careful breeding and rearing, the first pastoralists of the Near East moulded the beasts into more docile versions of their former ...

Borrelia burgdorferi is a spirochete, a class of long, slender bacteria that typically take on a coiled shape. Infection with this bacterium causes Lyme disease. Credit: Tina Carvalho, University of Hawaii at Manoa, NIGMS photo gallery

It was all too evident during the Dust Bowl what a disastrous impact wind can have on dry, unprotected topsoil. Now a new study has uncovered a less obvious, but still troubling, effect of wind: Not only can it carry away soil particles, but also the beneficial microbes that help ...

An international research team led by Virginia Tech Associate Professor Boris Vinatzer and Giorgio Balestra of the University of Tuscia in Italy has used the latest DNA sequencing technology to trace a devastating pathogen back to its likely origin. Since 2008, Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (Psa) has been threatening the world's ...

The superbugs have met their match. Conceived at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), it comes in the form of a coating which has a magnetic-like feature that attracts bacteria and kills them without the need for antibiotics. The killer coating, which has shown to destroy 99 per cent of the bacteria and fungi ...

Oregon investigators recently mapped the trail of an outbreak of a nasty stomach bug among participants in a girls' soccer tournament to a reusable open top grocery bag stored in a hotel bathroom. Their findings, which illustrate the role that inanimate objects can play in spreading norovirus infection, appear in The ...

Nations are rivals in soccer and international relations, but science is a unifying force. Many of our biggest achievements seem to come from international collaborations. A team from 11 laboratories in nine countries identified the SARS cor­onavirus in 2003 with unprecedented speed. Scientists come from all over to chase the ...

Image of Streptococcus, a type (genus) of spherical bacteria that can colonize the throat and back of the mouth. Stroptococci often occur in pairs or in chains, as shown here. Tina Carvalho, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of malaria (Plasmodium yoelii nigeriensis) oocysts ( thick-walled structure in which sporozoan zygotes develop) developing on the midgut wall of the mosquito Anopheles. Credit: Hilary Hurd, Wellcome Images

There may be a new wave of computer technology on the way thanks to scientists at the University of Leeds and Japan’s University of Agriculture and Technology: Growing your own computer. Magnet-making bacteria may be used to create the next generation of hard drives, making them much smaller and much faster ...

Fiber supplements may help the body’s own killer cells fight bacterial infection and reduce inflammation, greatly decreasing the risk of colon cancer. Prebiotics are fiber supplements that serve as food for the trillions of tiny bacteria living in the gut. When taken, they can stimulate the growth of the “good” bacteria. The ...

The adult human body consists of trillions of cells. Cell proliferation is accomplished by means of cell division in which an existing cell serves as the exact blueprint for its progeny. This process follows the same basic principles in all higher organisms. First, the genetic information is precisely copied and ...

Gonorrhea, once a minor illness, is developing resistance to the last category of drugs that still works against it and could become untreatable. Mark Pandori was worried. It was 2008, and he had just read the latest in a string of reports from Japan. The articles all described patients infected with ...

Several years ago, land owners in the forested rolling hills of West Virginia started getting unannounced visitors. They would examine the land, the soil, the trees, and offer to lease part of the property for $7 per acre up-front, plus a share of the profits that would inevitably come ...

More than 1,100 cases of whooping cough have already been diagnosed this year in Washington state, nearly doubling the number seen in typical "peak" years. Washington state is gearing up for one of the worst epidemics of pertussis in nearly seven decades. Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is a ...

Millions of people around the world are living with HIV, thanks to drug regimens that suppress the virus. Now there's a new push to eliminate HIV from patients' bodies altogether. That would be a true cure. We're not there yet. But a report in Science Translational Medicine is an encouraging signpost ...

The government plans to speed up the process for tracking E. coli in meat, a move that will help authorities more quickly find the source of bacteria outbreaks and hasten food recalls. The new Agriculture Department program announced Wednesday would begin tracing the source of potentially contaminated ground beef as soon ...

The human vagina is a lively place, full of beneficial bacteria that discourage nasty microbes from invading. Now, new research finds this ecosystem is even more mysterious than previously realized. Not only do women vary widely in what sorts of microbes call the vagina home, the study finds, but the ecosystem ...

me transmissible in mammals, and an unprecedented recommendation by a government review panel to block publication, one of the studies was finally and fully published May 3, 2012 in the journal Nature. Publication caps an epic public conversation that pitted some infectious diseases experts against flu and public health researchers who ...

Diallyl sulfide, a compound in from garlic, was much more effective than two standard antibiotics at wiping out bacteria responsible for digestive system infections. It’s more bad news for vampires, but good news for the fight against food-borne illness: a compound in garlic is extremely effective at fighting Campylobacter, bacteria ...

On the left side of this blog, in amongst the Blogroll links, is a somewhat strange entry, “Mushrooms in Works of Art.” I’ll save you the trouble of clicking on it. This is the website of a registry that lists works of art, mainly Western, that display mushrooms. Now, why ...

A synthetic mixture of intestinal bacteria could one day replace stool transplants as a treatment for Clostridium difficile (C. difficile). C . difficile is a toxin-producing bacteria that can overpopulate the colon when antibiotics eradicate other, naturally protective bacteria living there. "A synthetic stool transplant has a lot of potential because ...

In a surveillance study of over 12 million bacteria, investigators at The George Washington University and Providence Hospital found E. coli antimicrobial resistance to ciprofloxacin, the most commonly prescribed antimicrobial for urinary tract infections in the U.S., increased over five-fold from 2000 to 2010. In addition, nearly one in four ...

Urban beach closures due to coliform outbreaks have become disturbing signs of summer, yet water-testing technology has never been fast enough to keep up with changing conditions, nor accessible enough to check all waters. Now, researchers at McMaster University have developed a rapid testing method using a simple paper strip that ...

Australian and US scientists have developed a new technology for studying the genetics of a common roundworm used to understand nerve development and nerve degeneration. Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) scientists at The University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, Australia have worked closely with researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in ...

Herbicide-resistant superweeds threaten to overgrow U.S. fields, so agriculture companies have genetically engineered a new generation of plants to withstand heavy doses of multiple, extra-toxic weed-killing chemicals. It’s a more intensive version of the same approach that made the resistant superweeds such a problem — and some scientists think it will ...

If you throw a rubber balloon filled with water against a wall, it will spread out and deform on impact, while the same balloon filled with honey, which is more viscous, will deform much less. If the balloon's elastic rubber was stiffer, an even smaller change in shape would be ...

Researchers at Cambridge University have shed new light on a common food poisoning bug. Using real-time video microscopy, coupled with mathematical modelling, they have changed our assumptions about Salmonella and how it infects human cells. The research was published in Interface. Salmonella is an important bacterium to study as it causes ...

Mucus often elicits strong revulsion, but to MIT biological engineer Katharina Ribbeck, it is a fascinating material. “Without it, we wouldn’t be able to smell, we wouldn’t be able to reproduce, and we would all be the victims of pathogens,” says Ribbeck, who studies the antiviral properties of mucins, the ...

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to be a global concern with devastating repercussions, such as increased healthcare costs, potential spread of infections across continents, and prolonged illness. However, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) could change the playing field of man versus bacteria. Charles Serhan, PhD, director of the BWH Experimental Therapeutics ...

Scientists have discovered skeletons in the cyanobacterial closet. A never-before-seen species of cyanobacterium loads its cells with little bonelike lumps that may act as ballast, helping to anchor the beastie in its home waters of a Mexican lake. The discovery, described in the April 27 Science, is the first report ...

Bacteria provide a well-known playground for scientists and the evolution of these earliest life forms has shed important perspective on potential therapies for some of the most common, deadly diseases. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have now discovered that, the gas nitric oxide (NO), produced in ...

After two decades of examining a microscopic algae-eater that lives in a lake in Norway, scientists on Thursday declared it to be one of the world's oldest living organisms and man's remotest relative. The elusive, single-cell creature evolved about a billion years ago and did not fit in any of the ...

Scientists have discovered multiple gene switches in Salmonella that offer new ways to curb human infection. The discovery of the mechanisms of gene regulation could lead to the development of antibiotics to reduce the levels of disease caused by Salmonella. The breakthrough was made by Professor Jay Hinton, Stokes Professor ...

A bacterium historically associated with cat scratch fever and transmitted predominately by fleas may also play a role in human rheumatoid illnesses such as arthritis, according to new research from North Carolina State University. Bartonella is a bacterium that is maintained in nature by fleas, ticks and other biting insects. It ...

High-throughput RNA sequencing has yielded some unexpected results in the past few years — including some that seem to rewrite conventional wisdom in genetics. But a few of those findings are now being challenged, as computational biologists warn of the statistical pitfalls that can lurk in data-intensive studies. The latest case ...

In 2007 the World Health Organization set a goal to reduce measles deaths by 90% worldwide between 2000 and 2010. Death rates did fall 74% during that time, according to a new report in the British medical journal The Lancet. But the highly infectious disease is still a major public ...

Photomicrograph of Chlamydia grown in culture. The sample was taken from rhesus monkey kidney cells and stained with giemsa. The cell nuclei appear red and the infective 'elementary bodies' of the Chlamydia, which develop in 'blisters' in the cells, fluoresce green. Chlamydia is a very common sexually-transmitted pathogen, which is ...

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of California San Francisco have advanced scientists' ability to view a clear picture of a single cellular structure in motion. By identifying molecules using compressed sensing, this new method provides needed spatial resolution plus a faster temporal resolution than previously possible. Despite ...

Scientists have found why a certain type of bacteria, harmless in healthy people, is so deadly to patients with cystic fibrosis. The bacterium, Burkholderia cenocepacia, causes a severe and persistent lung infection in patients with CF and is resistant to nearly all known antibiotics. Cystic fibrosis is a chronic disorder characterized ...

Tall, with dark-green pointy leaves, the neem tree of India is known as the "village pharmacy." As a child growing up in metropolitan New Delhi, Sonia Arora recalls on visits to rural areas seeing villagers using neem bark to clean their teeth. Arora's childhood memories have developed into a scientific ...

By cultivating detoxifying bacteria in its gut, a pest called the bean bug can become instantly resistant to a common insecticide. Japanese scientists have found that the bean bug, a major pest of soybean crops, swallows bacteria that breakdown an insecticide chemical. The bacteria allow the bug to continue munching on ...

Characterizing the most virulent versions of MRSA may help researchers to battle the bug with vaccines. Researchers have identified a gene that makes some strains of an antibiotic-resistant bacterium more virulent, and have found that the gene is becoming more prevalent. Epidemics of infection with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) come in waves. ...

Lake Bonney in Antarctica is perennially covered in ice. It is exposed to severe environmental stresses, including minimal nutrients, low temperatures, extreme shade, and, during the winter, 24-hour darkness. But, for the single-celled organisms that live there, the lake is home. To study them, Dr. Rachel Morgan-Kiss from the University ...

Just as banks store away only the most valuable possessions in the most secure safes, cells prioritise which genes they guard most closely, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have found. The study, published online today in Nature, shows that bacteria have evolved a mechanism ...

Genomes are complicated. Even the concept of a “gene” isn’t as straightforward as you might expect. Genes are the units of heredity, the bits of DNA and RNA that do something inside a cell. But DNA doesn’t do much of anything by itself; genes need proteins to copy themselves and ...

Worried parents are phoning their pediatricians, fearful of the spread of a nasty new strain of hand, foot and mouth virus, a common childhood disease. It hit Alabama last month, is in Northern California now and may be headed to a day care near you soon. The hand, foot and mouth virus ...

Back in 2000 measles was eliminated from the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But now a new CDC study tells us there were 17 outbreaks and 222 cases of the highly infectious disease reported in 2011. An outbreak is defined as three or ...

Fungi get a bad rap, but they can actually be quite useful. German researchers are developing new ways of using fungus to clean soil and water. Fungi have earned their reputation as a homeowner's nightmare. Once they've settled into wood and been exposed to moisture, all that's left are brittle remains ...

A study published in BioMed Central's Biology Direct journal reports the existence of a previously undetected group of viruses and, more importantly, a new type of viral genome that could have huge implications for theories of viral emergence and evolution. Viruses are the most abundant organisms on earth, yet little is ...

The culprit behind a failed hip or knee replacements might be found in the mouth. DNA testing of bacteria from the fluid that lubricates hip and knee joints had bacteria with the same DNA as the plaque from patients with gum disease and in need of a joint replacement. This study ...

The release of life forms in cold storage for eons raises new concerns about the impacts of climate change. Locked in frozen vaults on Antarctica and Greenland, a lost world of ancient creatures awaits another chance at life. Like a time-capsule from the distant past, the polar ice sheets offer a ...

If you've ever had a bacterial infection like staph or strep throat, your doctor may have prescribed penicillin. But if you've had the flu or a common cold virus, penicillin won't work. That's because antibacterials only kill bacteria, and both the flu and the common cold are viruses. So for ...

A dash of lime juice and a dose of sunshine make a cheap, effective combination for safer drinking water in impoverished countries. Adding lime juice to water being treated with a solar disinfection method removes detectable levels of harmful bacteria such as E. coli significantly faster than solar disinfection alone, researchers ...

Environmental microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory heads the Earth Microbiome Project, an initiative to sample and analyze DNA from bacteria, viruses, algae and fungi across the world. Our environment is full of microbes that affect everything from human health to climate change, and ...

Harvard Medical School researchers have engineered a photosynthetic cyanobacterium to boost sugar production, as a first step towards potential commercial production of biofuels and other biotechnologically and industrially useful carbon compounds. As feedstock producers, cyanobacteria have advantages over plants, particularly land plants. They need little fertilizer. They don’t compete with ...

An HIV prevention trial that pre-dates the shift to antiretroviral (ARV)-based approaches is nonetheless helping to answer some of the most relevant and topical questions the field is facing today. More than three years after reporting the primary results of HPTN 035, one of the last trials of the so-called ...

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg, Germany, have compared the microbial ecosystems in the intestines termites and cockroaches, with fascinating results. The research is published in the April Applied and Environmental Microbiology. It may be hard for people outside of certain scientific domains to muster anything but ...

This is a live image of the of Diatom Arachnoidiscus under 40x magnification. The picture shows the diatom's silicified cell wall, which forms a pillbox-like shell (frustule) composed of overlapping halves that contain intricate and delicate markings. The picture was obtained with new video enhanced polychromatic (VEP) polscope after background ...

In pristine and ancient samples of bacteria, uncontaminated by human activity, researchers find resistance to several antibiotic treatments, both natural and man-made. More than 400 meters below the Earth’s surface, in a virtually untouched 4-million-year-old cave, scientists have discovered antibiotic-resistant bacteria, whose existence could explain why the modern drugs we use ...

Journalist Helen Branswell recalls her 2011 trip to India, where she documented the efforts of health care workers to find and vaccinate the country's many children against polio. Unfortunately, in rare cases the vaccine actually causes polio. Read her in-depth report on the tricky transition to a different, safer vaccine ...

NASA is clearly looking far into the future for a way to handle both human waste and a need for fuel on either long space flights or when attempting to colonize another planet. To that end, they’ve assigned life support engineer Jonathan Trent the task of coming up with a ...

Biologists have decoded the language of worms to discover that different roundworm species communicate by using the same types of chemical cues. All animals seem to have ways of exchanging information—monkeys vocalize complex messages, ants create scent trails to food, and fireflies light up their bellies to attract mates. Yet, despite ...

A colour-enhanced scanning electron micrograph image showing a cluster of Clostridium difficile on a surface. Clostridium difficile is a species of Gram-positive bacteria that causes severe diarrhea and other intestinal disease when competing bacteria in the gut flora have been wiped out by antibiotics. Annie Cavanagh. Wellcome Images. The Cell: ...

Imported plants, which are now valued at more than $500 billion annually, may be a boon for the U.S. economy, but are having a devastating effect on the environment. A study conducted by researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis finds that almost ...

In a French meadow, a creature that specialises in corrupting the bodies of other animals is getting a taste of its own medicine. Leptopilina boulardi is a wasp that lays its eggs in fly maggots. When the wasp grub hatches, it devours its host form the inside out, eventually bursting out ...

The mysterious deaths of millions of bats in the United States and Canada over the past several years were caused by a fungus that hitchhiked from Europe, scientists reported Monday. Experts had suspected that an invasive species was to blame for the die-off from "white nose syndrome." Now there's direct evidence ...

Worries over vaccine risks can allow preventable contagious diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, to make a comeback. A new study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, shows how to predict ways in which population vaccinating behavior might unfold during a vaccine scare. "These findings might help in evaluating and ...

Cells on the move reach forward with lamellipodia and filopodia, cytoplasmic sheets and rods supported by branched networks or tight bundles of actin filaments. Cells without functional lamellipodia are still highly motile but lose their ability to stay on track, report researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in ...

This sculpture made of purple and clear glass beads depicts bacteriophage Phi174, a virus that infects bacteria. It rests on a surface that portrays an adaptive landscape, a conceptual visualization. The ridges represent the gene combinations associated with the greatest fitness levels of the virus, as measured by how quickly ...

A Chagas disease epidemic is not likely in North America, but kissing bug bites do cause severe allergic reactions for some victims. Transmitted by bloodsucking kissing bugs, tropical Chagas disease—which afflicts millions in Central and South America—may affect more people in the U.S. than previously thought. Although doctors officially have recorded ...

Ants work together to battle a deadly fungus by diluting the infection across the colony. In the 2011 blockbuster thriller Contagion, a virus infects and kills 26 million people around the world. But even those who evade the virus are infected with something else: crippling fear. To contain the ...

Two scientists recently hit the headlines when they created mutant strains of H5N1 influenza, which can spread between mammals (see ‘Fears grow over lab-bred flu‘). But although Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, spoke publicly to explain and defend the work, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, of the School ...

Dictyostelium discoideum is a soil-living amoeba. A group of 100,000 form a mound as big as a grain of sand. The hereditary information is carried on six chromosomes with sizes ranging from 4 to 7 Mb resulting in a total of about 34 Mb of DNA, a multicopy 90 kb extrachromosomal ...

Bacteria engineered to act as genetic clocks flash in synchrony. Here, a "supernova" burst in a colony of coupled genetic clocks just after reaching critical cell density. Superimposed: A diagram from the notebook of Christiaan Huygens, who first characterized synchronized oscillators in the 17th century. Credit: Jeff Hasty, UCSD (NIGMS Image ...

To the surprise of investigating researchers, an animal model of Epstein Barr virus protected lupus-prone mice against development of the autoimmune disease. Earlier work had suggested that EBV might promote the development of autoimmunity. Click "source" to read more.

A disease that has killed millions of bats across multiple states and Canada has been found in Missouri, marking its advent west of the Mississippi River and spelling possible trouble for agriculture in the region, officials said Monday. White nose syndrome has been confirmed in three bats in two caves in ...

Electronic tattoos promise to help people monitor health in all kinds of ways, from heart rates to blood sugar and more. Now here’s one that can monitor your tooth-brushing skills. A tooth-based sensor can detect different types bacteria in your saliva that can cause a variety of health problems. The sensor ...

A Flinders University researcher is digging deep to discover how certain bacterial strains found in wheat can stimulate a plant’s natural defence fighting mechanisms. Biotech graduate and PhD candidate Tanya Bernardo has spent the past four years studying a beneficial bacterium living in wheat, and the role it plays in helping ...

Scientists from the University of Utah School of Medicine have discovered that a mouse protein called IFITM3 contributes to the body's defense against some types of viral infections by binding to an enzyme responsible for regulating the pH of a cell's waste disposal system. This finding, published in the March ...

Mosquitoes are already blood-sucking machines, but new research indicates that the dengue virus, which the mosquitoes transmit to humans, makes them even thirstier for blood. The virus specifically turns on mosquito genes that make them hungrier for a blood meal; the activated genes also enhance mosquitoes' sense of smell, something ...

Scientists in Cork have identified a novel therapy for the bacteria which cause infections in cystic fibrosis patients. The research was carried out the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre [APC], a Science Foundation Ireland funded research centre based in UCC, Teagasc Moorepark Research Centre and CIT. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease which is ...

Women who have been infected by two different strains of HIV from two different sexual partners -- a condition known as HIV superinfection -- have more potent antibody responses that block the replication of the virus compared to women who've only been infected once. These findings, by researchers at Fred Hutchinson ...

Liquid fuels produced by engineered bacteria may one day replace the fossil fuels we use in our homes and vehicles. We burn fuel to drive our cars and heat our homes; we release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Imagine, though, if researchers could reverse the process by capturing CO2 and turning ...

To the ranks of horses, donkeys, camels and other animals that have served humanity as pack animals or beasts of burden, scientists are now enlisting bacteria to ferry nano-medicine cargos throughout the human body. They reported on progress in developing these "backpacking" bacteria -- so small that a million would ...

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have identified a number of tiny but powerful "genetic regulators" that are hijacked by avian and swine flu viruses during human infection. The discovery, published this week in the Journal of Virology, could reveal new targets for broad-spectrum antivirals to combat current – and ...

A person’s mere presence in a room can add 37 million bacteria to the air every hour, a new study finds. The bacterial material is largely left behind by previous occupants and stirred up from the floor when someone enters. “We live in this microbial soup, and a big ingredient is our ...

A tiny prototype robot that functions like a living creature is being developed which one day could be safely used to pinpoint diseases within the human body. Called 'Cyberplasm', it will combine advanced microelectronics with latest research in biomimicry (technology inspired by nature). The aim is for Cyberplasm to have an ...

This is a magnified view of an Arabidopsis thaliana leaf eight days after being infected with the pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis, which is closely related to crop pathogens that cause 'downy mildew' diseases. It is also more distantly related to the agent that caused the Irish potato famine. The veins of ...

Escherichia coli -- a bacteria considered the food safety bane of restaurateurs, grocers and consumers -- is a friend. Cornell University biomolecular engineers have learned to use E. coli to produce sugar-modified proteins for making pharmaceuticals cheaper and faster. Matthew DeLisa, Cornell associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and his ...

Oral bacteria that escape into the bloodstream are able to cause blood clots and trigger life-threatening endocarditis. Further research could lead to new drugs to tackle infective heart disease, say scientists who recently presented their work at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Dublin. Click "source" to read more.

“Allergic diseases have reached pandemic levels,” begins David Artis’s new paper in Nature Medicine. Artis goes on to say that, while everyone knows allergies are caused by a combination of factors involving both nature and nurture, that knowledge doesn’t help us identify what is culpable — it is not at ...

New biological research reveals how an invading virus hijacks a cell's workings by imitating a signaling marker to defeat the body's defenses. By manipulating cell signals, the virus destroys a defensive protein designed to inhibit it. This finding, from studies in human cell cultures, may represent a broader targeting strategy ...

When poet Walt Whitman wrote that we "contain multitudes," he was speaking metaphorically, but he was correct in the literal sense. Every human being carries over 100 trillion individual bacterial cells within the intestine -- ten times more cells than comprise the body itself. Now, David Artis, PhD, associate professor of ...

Exposure to germs in childhood is thought to help strengthen the immune system and protect children from developing allergies and asthma, but the pathways by which this occurs have been unclear. Now, researchers have identified a mechanism in mice that may explain the role of exposure to microbes in the ...

Bacteria are often the ideal machines in industry. The inputs they require are cheap substances such as amino acids and sugar, and their outputs are valuable products such as bioplastics. The production processes involved are cheap and in many cases sustainable. But these bacteria were not of course designed for our ...

Cross-section through the center of a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of P22 phage, which is a virus that infects Salmonella bacteria. P22 contains many copies each of nine different viral proteins and a single copy of a double-stranded DNA genome (shown in green). The centrally located portal protein (red) is used ...

An intra-tumor injection of a virus prevented further growth of some pancreatic tumors and eradicated others in mouse models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. However, some tumors continued growing despite this treatment, proving resistant to the viruses. The research is published in the March Journal of Virology. About 95 percent of ...

The H5N1 influenza has proven extraordinarily deadly. More than 50 percent of the 500 cases that have been documented since the virus first emerged in 1997 have been fatal. Thus, H5N1 is viewed as a serious threat to world public health. A major difficulty in developing antibodies to combat this ...

Infectious diseases kill roughly 13 million people worldwide, annually, a toll that continues to rise, aided and abetted by resistance genes. Now a study, published in the March Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy finds reservoirs of resistance in agricultural soils. These contained more diverse populations of drug resistant bacteria, with greater ...

Green onions cause about five percent of outbreaks of food poisoning from produce, worldwide. Now a team of researchers from the University of Delaware, Newark, shows that high pressure treatment of green onions can kill various strains of Escherichia coli O157:H7, and Salmonella enterica, two major sources of food poisoning. ...

Australia’s prolonged whooping cough epidemic has entered a disturbing new phase, with a study showing a new strain or genotype capable of evading the vaccine may be responsible for the sharp rise in the number of cases. A team of Australian scientists, led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), ...

There’s a moment in the history of medicine that’s so cinematic it’s a wonder no one has put it in a Hollywood film. The scene is a London laboratory. The year is 1928. Alexander Fleming, a Scottish microbiologist, is back from a vacation and is cleaning up his work space. ...

Life is tough out there. If chemistry (via oxidizing radicals) doesn’t get you, sunlight (via UV irradiation) will. No wonder that cells, both prokaryotic and eukaryotic, have an intense preoccupation with keeping their DNA intact. In most organisms, a considerable portion of the genome is devoted to making sure that ...

Better resistance to parasites and a less fussy diet are allowing aggressive signal crayfish from the US to threaten white-clawed crayfish native to Yorkshire. The Yorkshire crayfish suffers from two parasites: plague, which is carried by the American invader, and porcelain disease that makes it sluggish and suppresses its appetite before ...

A growing body of evidence underscores the importance of human gut bacteria in modulating human health, metabolism, and disease. Yet bacteria are only part of the story. Viruses that infect those bacteria also shape who we are. Frederic D. Bushman, PhD, professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine ...

A simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria -- even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax -- in minutes, scientists are reporting in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. They describe a range of potential uses for this new killer ...

This confocal micrograph shows the mumps virus protein (turquoise) in the endoplasmic reticulum of a cultured cell. This is a region of the cell that processes proteins. This particular protein is possibly involved in determining how effectively the virus can infect people. By looking at how it works, new and ...

Photosynthesis maintains Earth's habitability for life as we know it, and shapes the way we search for habitable worlds around distant stars. Scientists have discovered a microbe that can use low-energy light to perform photosynthesis. This discovery could alter theories about the types of stars that could support Earth-like worlds. Click ...

The larger the catalog of sequenced genomes, the greater the chance for seeing horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in action. Although reports of HGT between prokaryotes and eukaryotes have appeared sporadically, it seems that incontrovertible evidence is only beginning to appear now. Indeed, the genomes of nematodes reveal that genes have ...

In the spring of 1835, Charles Darwin was bitten in Argentina by a “great wingless black bug,” he wrote in his diary. “It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, about an inch long, crawling over one's body,” Darwin wrote, “before sucking they are quite thin, but afterwards round & ...

In the E coli outbreak in Germany in May 2011, treatment with azithromycin was associated with a lower frequency of long-term carriage of the bacteria and shorter duration of shedding of the bacteria in stool specimens, according to a study in the March 14 issue of JAMA. "Since May 2011, ...

The same bacterium responsible for most stomach ulcers may play a role in the development of Type 2 diabetes among overweight and obese adults, New York University researchers are reporting today. And in the same way that antibiotics eradicate the bacterium and heal ulcers, antibiotics might eventually prove useful in diabetes ...

Deadly fungal infection causing decline or extinction in more than 200 amphibian species. A common West Coast frog, the Pacific chorus frog, may be spreading the deadly fungal infection that is devastating other amphibians, a new study suggests. Not only did the tiny chorus frogs survive an epidemic of the disease, called ...

More than 90 percent of humans have antibodies to the Epstein Barr virus. Best known for causing mononucleosis, or "the kissing disease," the virus has also been implicated in more serious conditions, including Hodgkin's, non-Hodgkin's and Burkitt's lymphomas. Yet little is known about exactly how EBV triggers these diseases. Now a ...

In a study released today in Nature Genetics, researchers have found that Chlamydia has evolved more actively than was previously thought. Using whole genome sequencing the researchers show that the exchange of DNA between different strains of Chlamydia to form new strains is much more common than expected. The team highlights ...

A new electron microscope that works without a lens may create the highest resolution images ever seen. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which looks through an object to see atomic features within it, has been constrained for over 70 years by the relatively poor lenses that are used to form the image. The ...

Exposing the latent virus to the immune system may be first step to an elusive cure. A study has boosted the prospects of a cure for HIV. For the first time, results have shown that a drug can safely kick-start production of the dormant virus in patients, so that it might ...

Actin (purple), microtubules (yellow), and nuclei (green) are labeled in these cells by immunofluorescence. This image won first place in the Nikon 2003 Small World photo competition. Torsten Wittmann, Scripps Research Institute

Scientists from the Schepens Eye Research Institute, a subsidiary of Mass. Eye and Ear and affiliate of Harvard Medical School, have found for the first time that a bacterial pathogen can literally mow down protective molecules, known as mucins, on mucus membranes to enter and infect a part of the ...

Cell showing overproduction of the ARTS protein (red). ARTS triggers apoptosis, as shown by the activation of caspase-3 (green) a key tool in the cell's destruction. The nucleus is shown in blue. Sarit Larisch and Hermann Steller, Rockefeller University

The research findings, published this week in two papers in the journal Science provide new insights into the behavior of bacteria. International collaborative research by Trinity College Dublin geneticists has established a blueprint as to how bacteria respond to environmental and nutritional changes at a global and dynamic level that will ...

Do bacteria, like higher organisms, have a built-in program that tells them when to die? The process of apoptosis, or cell death, is an important part of normal animal development. In a new study published March 6 in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, Hanna Engelberg-Kulka and colleagues (at Hadassah ...

This image of laboratory-grown cells was taken with the help of a scanning electron microscope, which yields detailed images of cell surfaces. Tina Carvalho, University of Hawaii at Manoa. - NIGMS Image Gallery

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of rust on a rose leaf. Rose rust is a disease specific to roses and is caused by the parasitic fungus Phragmidium tuberculatum and some other closely related species. This disease occurs during spring and persists until the leaves fall. This images shows rose rust and ...

An unusual case could tell researchers more about the genetic changes that occur when a common bacteria, normally carried without any problems, on rare occasions causes potentially life-threatening infections. Eight mutations occurred in the common bacteria Staphylococcus aureus as it turned from an innocuous resident inside one person’s nose into a ...

Discovery paves the way for new synthesis of antibiotics. Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used powerful X-rays to help decipher how certain natural antibiotics defy a longstanding set of chemical rules – a mechanism that has baffled organic chemists for ...

This pair of confocal micrographs demonstrates how a disease-causing strain of E. coli bacteria brings about diarrhoea by breaking down the waterproof barriers between the cells. The bacteria are seen as small red dots attached to the surface of intestinal cells making tiny pedestals out of one of the cell's ...

Researchers have discovered critical new details about the structure of a virus that causes potentially fatal brain swelling and paralysis in children, pointing toward designs for antiviral drugs to treat the disease. The virus, called enterovirus 71, causes hand, foot and mouth disease, and is common throughout the world. Although that ...

What if bacteria could talk to each other? What if they had a sense of touch? A new study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara suggests both, and theorizes that such cells may, in fact, need to communicate in order to perform certain functions. The findings appeared recently in the journal ...

Nancy A. Moran, an internationally renowned expert on evolution, will give the 2012 Alfred M. Boyce Lecture at the University of California, Riverside on Monday, March 5. The lecture is titled "Genome evolution in endosymbiotic bacteria,". Endosymbiotic bacteria are bacteria that live only within specialized host cells. Symbiotic associations between insects ...

A protein called tubulin (green) accumulates in the center of a nucleus (outlined in pink) from an aging cell. Normally, this protein is kept out of the nucleus with the help of gatekeepers known as nuclear pore complexes. But NIGMS-funded researchers found that wear and tear to long-lived components of ...

Fruit bats in Guatemala are hosting a novel subtype of influenza A virus, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The virus — designated H17 — appears to have diverged from known influenza viruses long ago, shedding light on their evolution. Therefore, it ...

Nearly all motile bacteria can sense and respond to their surroundings—finding food, avoiding poisons, and targeting cells to infect, for example—through a process called chemotaxis. This allows the bacteria to move towards chemicals they are attracted to, and away from ones that repel them. Because chemotaxis plays a critical role ...

Not all that glitters is gold. Sometimes it is just bacteria trying to get ahead in life. Many sea creatures glow with a biologically produced light. This phenomenon, known as bioluminescence, is observed, among others, in some marine bacteria which emit a steady light once they have reached a certain ...

A bacterial gene discovered in the genome of the coffee berry borer beetle, a major pest, seems to allow the beetle to occupy a unique ecological niche and feed exclusively on coffee beans. The finding, published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a rare example ...

Why is it that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can cause tuberculosis with as little as 10 cells, whereas Vibrio cholerae requires the host to ingest up to tens of millions of cells to cause cholera? This is the question that two research teams, from the Pasteur Institute, in France, and the Instituto ...

A new, nanometer-sized biosensor can detect a single deadly bacterium in tainted ground beef. How? Researchers attached nanoparticles, each packed with thousands of dye molecules, to an antibody that recognizes the microbe E. coli O157:H7. When the nanoball-antibody combo comes into contact with the E. coli bacterium, it glows. Here ...

As Schmallenberg virus is confirmed on 74 farms in the UK, our environment correspondent Richard Black looks at what the virus is, what it does and how it can be tackled. What is Schmallenberg virus? Schmallenberg virus is a disease of farm animals that was first seen last year in northern Europe. ...

A while ago, I wrote about how Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers and are implicated in certain stomach cancers, cause the cells of the stomach wall to die. H. pylori kills cells very sneakily, by releasing a chemical that causes them to commit suicide. It turns out ...

Bacteria have evolved different systems for secreting proteins into the fluid around them or into other cells. Some, for example, have syringe-like exterior structures that can pierce other cells and inject proteins. Another system, called a type VI secretion system, is found in about a quarter of all bacteria with ...

A bacteria strain that causes a hard-to-treat staph infection probably developed its antibiotic resistance in food animals, a team of scientists announced Tuesday. The strain of staph, known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA CC398, most often infects farm workers who come in contact with infected pigs, turkeys, or cows. The ...

Have you ever been tempted to order steak tartare but decided against it for fear of getting sick? This little cell phone scanner can take a look at it for you and let you know if it does in fact harbor any E. coli bacteria. It attaches to a typical cell ...

A U.K.-based research team has created a fuel cell that can power a lightbulb, with the aid of a high flying bacteria found in the Earth’s atmosphere. Bacterially-run fuel cells may provide a cheap, portable source of energy for villages without electricity and they're a potential source of green, nearly ...

Shiga toxin is an extremely potent toxin that is produced when the bacterium contains a bacteriophage carrying the toxin gene. It is closely linked with Haemolytic Uraemic Syndrome and acute renal failure in children. After ingestion via contaminated food or water the E. coli bacteria colonize the gut and produce ...

This simulation shows a dynamic molecular model of the bacterial cytoplasm, giving us a spectacular glimpse of the crowded conditions of the interior of a cell over a brief 15-microsecond time span. The model includes 50 of the most abundant types of macromolecules reported in Escherichia coli, for a total ...

A CDC study led by microbiologist Terrence Tumpey has found that the H3N2 virus that infected several people in the United States last year, may have more pandemic potential than has been thought. The study is based on research conducted by the CDC on ferrets. The team has published the ...

A blue laser beam turns on a protein that helps this human cancer cell move. Responding to the stimulus, the protein, called Rac1, first creates ruffles at the edge of the cell. Then it stretches the cell forward, following the light like a horse trotting after a carrot on a ...

Renato Dulbecco, an Italian-born virologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology for providing crucial early discoveries into the genetic nature of cancer, died Feb. 19 at his home in La Jolla, Calif. He was four days shy of his 98th birthday. The death from undisclosed causes was ...

Tissue infected with a close relative of HIV can ramp up production of a type of T cell that actually weakens the body’s attack against the invading virus. The discovery, in lymph nodes draining the intestinal tract, could help explain how the HIV virus evades the body’s immune defenses. The findings, ...

Two studies showing how scientists mutated the H5N1 bird flu virus into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic will be published only after experts fully assess the risks, the World Health Organization said Friday. Speaking after a high-level meeting of flu experts and U.S. security officials in Geneva, ...

Life inside the human body sometimes looks like life on the high seas in the 1600s, when pirates hijacked foreign vessels in search of precious metals. For Neisseria bacteria, which can cause gonorrhea and meningitis, the booty is not gold or silver but plain old iron. Until recently, scientists did ...

Disease-causing bacteria’s efforts to resist antibiotics may get help from their distant bacterial relatives that live in the soil, new research at Washington University School of Medicine suggests. The researchers found identical genes for antibiotic resistance in soil bacteria and in pathogens from clinics around the world. The matches prove ...

The NemaSym Research Coordination Network is an opportunity for scientists to collaborate on nematode research. Nematodes, commonly called roundworms, inhabit every ecosystem on Earth. About 30,000 species have been described so far; scientists also suspect that as many as 1 million species exist. Many of these roundworms are linked with bacteria ...

Two worm sperm shimmy across a microscope slide. Unlike most cells that rely on motor proteins to propel themselves forward, worm sperm use tiny fibers at their front ends. Putting the fibers together and taking them apart sets the cells in motion. In a new advance, researchers disassembled the worm ...

Two metres below the surface of the Atacama Desert there is an 'oasis' of microorganisms. Researchers from the Center of Astrobiology (Spain) and the Catholic University of the North in Chile have found it in hypersaline substrates thanks to SOLID, a detector for signs of life which could be used ...

Team develops first 3D look at interaction between immune sensor and protein that helps bacteria move. To invade organisms such as humans, bacteria make use of a protein called flagellin, part of a tail-like appendage that helps the bacteria move about. Now, for the first time, a team led by scientists ...

Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have introduced bacterial genes into a fungus so it can produce chemicals useful to the pharmaceutical industry. The fungus in question is Trichoderma and it uses chitin, a raw material which makes up the shells of crustaceans, including crabs, that is generally abundant ...

If not for a virus, none of us would ever be born. In 2000, a team of Boston scientists discovered a peculiar gene in the human genome. It encoded a protein made only by cells in the placenta. They called it syncytin. The cells that made syncytin were located only ...

Scientists have developed a technique which could form the basis of a non-invasive diagnostic for Adenovirus – the virus responsible for a large number of common illnesses. The biosensor technology developed by researchers at the University of Leeds can not only detect the presence of the virus, it can also identify ...

This tropical scene, reminiscent of a postcard from Key West, is actually a petri dish containing an artistic arrangement of genetically engineered bacteria. The image showcases eight of the fluorescent proteins created in the laboratory of Roger Y. Tsien, a cell biologist at the University of California, San Diego. Tsien, ...

I have a soft-spot for plant biology. In my final year at university, having exhausted all of the bacteria-related biochemistry lectures, I took a bacteria-related lecture course with the plants department. It was a smaller department, and seemed a lot friendlier and nicer. Also the biscuits in the tea-room were ...

Scientists believe they have found a way to beat sleeping sickness using a bacterium against the tsetse fly host that spreads the disease to humans. In the same way that we have friendly bacteria in our intestines, the tsetse fly harbours bacteria in its midgut, muscle and salivary glands. Experts in Belgium ...

North Carolina State University chemists have created a compound that makes existing antibiotics 16 times more effective against recently discovered antibiotic-resistant "superbugs." These so-called superbugs are actually bacterial strains that produce an enzyme known as New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM-1). Bacteria that produce this enzyme are practically impervious to antibiotics because NDM-1renders ...

Substances which suppress the immune system while simultaneously keeping viral infections in check would be an ideal drug for organ transplant recipients. Scientists of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now demonstrated that specific substances with such an activity profile caused a state of stress in cells ...

When it comes to infectious agents, it doesn’t get much worse than prions. These misfolded proteins are highly resistant to a wide variety of extreme disinfectant procedures. They have been identified as the culprits behind mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease in animals and humans, and are also implicated ...

Bacteria, unlike people, get more orderly when they're in large crowds. In this computer simulation, a few E. coli bacteria start out oriented perpendicular to the walls of a container (blue rods). As they multiply, the growing mass arranges into tidy columns parallel to the container walls (red rods). The ...

An international research team led by a University of California, Davis, immunologist has taken an important step toward an effective vaccine against salmonella, a group of increasingly antibiotic-resistant foodborne bacteria that kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year. The researchers’ discovery will be published the week of Feb. 13 ...

In the hunt for drugs that target diseases in the developing world, ‘open innovation’ is creating a buzz. Pharmaceutical companies are making entire libraries of chemical compounds publicly available, allowing researchers to rifle through them for promising drug candidates. The latest push for open innovation, unveiled last month as part of ...

Scientists have shown how some cells in the body can repel attacks from HIV by starving the virus of the building blocks of life. Viruses cannot replicate on their own; they must hijack other cells and turn them into virus production factories. A study, published in Nature Immunology, showed how some parts ...

Vials of E. coli bacteria found in the refrigerator of a Jonesboro apartment have been safely removed, authorities said. A maintenance man cleaning out the unit at the Willow Creek Apartments on Friday found 25 vials marked "E. coli" in a foam box in a refrigerator, officials said. The maintenance man ...

Some bacteria can form spores (survival capsules) that are particularly resistant to heat. Since sporogenous bacteria can also cause food poisoning and a reduction in food quality, they constitute a significant threat to the food industry. If spores are to pose a risk, they have to "wake up" from a state ...

Snottites have captivated cave-goers and scientists alike since the earliest publication on cave microbes by Hoeg in 1946. These biofilms cover the walls with a thick snot-like film, from which they derive their particularly appropriate name. A variety of cave systems, the Frasassi caves in Italy, the Cueva de Villa ...

A person who visited the Super Bowl village in downtown Indianapolis last Friday was infected with measles, according to Indiana health officials, who also confirmed a second case of the highly infectious virus. Health officials learned of two additional probable cases in the state, according to Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. ...

Confocal micrograph showing Shigella bacteria (pink) invading the intestinal lining. The bacteria infects the cells by high-jacking the cell's internal actin skeleton (green) to facilitate its entry into the cell and spread into adjoining cells, using polymerizing actin comet tails as several can be seen doing here. Shigella intestinal infection ...

Researchers at the College of Life Sciences have identified fexinidazole as a possible, much-needed, new treatment for the parasitic disease visceral leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is named after William Leishman, a Glasgwegian doctor serving with the British Army in India, who first identified the parasite in the early 1900s. The disease is the ...

This scanning electron micrograph shows mycoplasma (colorized pink), a genus of bacteria that lack a cell wall. Without a cell wall they are unaffected by many common antibiotics, such as penicillin, or other beta-lactam antibiotics that work by targeting cell wall synthesis. These mycoplasma are shown on the surface of ...

Clues to how life evolved, not only on this planet but also possibly on alien worlds, might be found in underwater caves in the Bahamas, researchers say. The caves in question are called "blue holes," so-named because from the air, their entrances appear circular in shape, with different shades of blue ...

Scientists studying how life arose on Earth are stumped by several key steps in that eventual process, but a Harvard scientist studying the earliest cells says that seemingly intractable problems in this field have sometimes proved to have simple, even elegant solutions. Those pondering the earliest stirrings of life expect that ...

In the past decade, microbiologists began realizing that communities of microbes process energy and materials, which affects their environments. To understand how microbial communities function in a natural ecosystem, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists developed a novel kinetic model that represents microbial community dynamics in soil pores. "Modeling the dynamics of ...

This color-enhanced photomicrograph shows different species of bacteria that cause dental plaque - a colorless film that forms on teeth caused by the growth of bacterial colonies. Plaque develops naturally, and in most cases can be easily removed with regular brushing. However, if left it can harden and cause dental ...

Salmonella remains a serious cause of food poisoning in the UK and throughout the EU, in part due to its ability to thrive and quickly adapt to the different environments in which it can grow. New research involving a team of IFR scientists, funded by BBSRC, has taken the first ...

A team of scientists studying the effects of electron-beam irradiation on iceberg lettuce and spinach has had its research published in the February issue of the leading microbiology journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, said the study’s lead investigator. The study quantified the theoretical health-risk reduction from virus-related foodborne illness through the ...

By attaching fluorescent proteins to the genetic circuit responsible for B. subtilis's stress response, researchers can observe the cells' pulses as green flashes. In response to a stressful environment like one lacking food, B. subtilis activates a large set of genes that help it respond to the hardship. Instead of leaving ...

A new study by food safety researchers at Drexel University demonstrates that plasma can be an effective method for killing pathogens on uncooked poultry. The proof-of-concept study was published in the January issue of the Journal of Food Protection. Although recent high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness have involved contaminated fresh produce, ...

There are 16,000 types of parasitic roundworms causing illnesses in humans and animals. Controlling their effects on health becomes more difficult as the medicines used to treat them become less effective. A University of Georgia nematode expert offers one perspective on new research suggesting genetic changes in the worm cause ...

What looks like a Native American dream catcher is really a network of social interactions within a community. The red dots along the inner and outer circles represent people, while the different colored lines represent direct contact between them. All connections originate from four individuals near the center of the ...

In late 2010, NASA set the Internet buzzing when it called a press conference to discuss an astrobiological finding that would impact the search for extraterrestrial life. Many speculated that some primitive life had been found on Mars or one of Saturn’s moons. But the evidence was found on Earth; ...

Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have linked Borna disease virus (BDV) with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder and dementia. Genetic fragments and antibodies to this RNA virus, which causes behavior disorders in a range of mammals and birds, have been found to be prevalent ...

Norovirus, a pathogen that often causes food poisoning and gastroenteritis, was responsible for 18.2 percent of all infection outbreaks and 65 percent of ward closures in U.S. hospitals during a two-year period, according to a new study published in the February issue of the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), ...

A deadly plague bacterium is able to transform the lungs into a breeding ground for other microbes—often escaping detection until it is too late for medical treatment. Most other microbes that infect the lungs trigger an antimicrobial response within a few hours after infection. This early inflammatory response is generally sufficient ...

Could some cases of asthma actually be caused by an allergic reaction to a common environmental bacteria? New research findings published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that this idea may not be as far-fetched as it seems. In a research report appearing in the February 2012 print issue, ...

A spore from the bacterium Bacillus subtilis shows four outer layers that protect the cell from harsh environmental conditions. Bacillus subtilis is a ubiquitous bacterium commonly recovered from water, soil, air, and decomposing plant residue. The bacterium produces an endospore that allows it to endure extreme conditions of heat and ...

Scientists have shown for the first time how a new virus evolves, clarifying how easy it is for diseases to quickly gain dangerous mutations. Published in the journal Science, the research shows how the virus Lambda evolved to find a new way to attack host cells, an innovation that took four ...

The use of probiotic bacteria, isolated from naturally-occurring bacterial communities, is gaining in popularity in the aquaculture industry as the preferred, environmentally-friendly management alternative to the use of antibiotics and other antimicrobials for disease prevention. Known to the public for their use in yogurt and other foods to improve human ...

Under the microscope, an E. coli cell lights up like a fireball. Each bright dot marks a surface protein that tells the bacteria to move toward or away from nearby food and toxins. Using a new imaging technique, researchers can map the proteins one at a time and combine them ...

A team of biologists at the University of York has made an important advance in our understanding of the way cholera attacks the body. The discovery could help scientists target treatments for the globally significant intestinal disease which kills more than 100,000 people every year. The disease is caused by the ...

This montage of tiny, transparent C. elegans—or roundworms—may offer insight into understanding human infertility. Researchers used fluorescent dyes to label the worm cells and watch the process of sex-cell division, called meiosis, unfold as nuclei (blue) move through the tube-like gonads. Such visualization helps the scientists identify mechanisms that enable ...

About 16 million Americans have oral HPV, a sexually transmitted virus more commonly linked with cervical cancer that also can cause mouth cancer, according to the first nationwide estimate. HPV — human papilloma virus — is increasingly recognized as a major cause of oral cancers affecting the back of the tongue ...

The arms race between a virus and the bacteria it attacks has helped scientists better understand one of the mysteries of evolution: How new traits evolve. In a series of experiments, the bacteria-infecting viruses repeatedly acquired the ability to attack their host bacteria through a different "doorway," or receptor on ...

The tiny water bacterium Caulobacter crescentus secretes a sugary substance so sticky that just a tiny bit could hold several cars together. First, it attaches to a surface at the end of its cell body, which has a propeller-like flagellum. On contact, the flagellum stops moving with help from nearby ...

A species of small, transparent roundworms have a highly evolved language in which they combine chemical fragments to create precise molecular messages that control social behavior, reports a new study from the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) at Cornell and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The research, published in the January ...

MIT researchers have discovered that certain photosynthetic ocean bacteria should beware of viruses bearing gifts: These viruses are carrying genetic material taken from their previous bacterial hosts that tricks the new host into using its own machinery to activate the genes, a process never before documented in any virus-bacteria relationship. ...

A new method for identifying bacteria that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) will lead to much faster, more effective treatment as well as a reduction in costs. The procedure, described in the Journal of Medical Microbiology, could eventually be used for the identification of micro-organisms in other bodily fluids, including ...

New research at Harvard explains how bacterial biofilms expand to form slimy mats on teeth, pipes, surgical instruments, and crops. Through experiment and mathematical analysis, researchers have shown that the extracellular matrix (ECM), a mesh of proteins and sugars that can form outside bacterial cells, creates osmotic pressure that forces ...

A molecule embedded in the membrane of human liver cells that aids in cholesterol absorption also allows the entry of hepatitis C virus, the first step in hepatitis C infection, according to research at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. The cholesterol receptor offers a promising new target ...

Eben Bayer is on a mission: he wants simply to eradicate the polystyrene packaging industry. The trouble with 1-phenylethane-1,2-diyl, as the resourceful 26-year-old entrepreneur from Vermont sees it, is that, as no known microorganism can biodegrade it, it pollutes the oceans and clutters landfills -- making up around 30 per ...

This colorized negative stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM), captured by F.A. Murphy in 1968, depicts a Marburg virus virion, which had been grown in an environment of tissue culture cells. Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a rare, severe type of hemorrhagic fever which affects both humans and non-human primates. Caused by ...

This photograph depicts the colonial growth pattern displayed by Salmonella typhimurium bacteria cultured on a Hektoen enteric (HE) agar medium; S. typhimurium colonies grown on HE agar are blue-green in color, for this organism is a lactose non-fermenter, but it does produce hydrogen sulfide, (H2S), therefore there can be black-colored ...

Authorities say more than 660 people have been treated for typhoid in Zimbabwe’s capital but that the outbreak of the bacterial disease appears to be waning. Harare health director Dr. Prosper Chonzi says about 70 people were in the hospital Tuesday. Another 20 were sent home after treatment. He says no ...

An element commonly found in nature might be a way to neutralize the potentially lethal effects of a compound known as Shiga toxin.. Published in the journal Science, a new study shows how manganese completely protects against Shiga toxicosis in animal models. Produced by certain bacteria, including Shigella and some strains ...

A new analysis by open-science advocates present a 'clear refutation' of a controversial finding that appears to undermine assumptions about how essential phosphorus is for life. A strange bacterium found in California’s Mono Lake cannot replace the phosphorus in its DNA with arsenic, according to researchers who have been trying to ...

Like a major city, our cells use a complex transportation network to deliver molecular goods to different destinations. A protein called kinesin (blue) is in charge of moving cargo around inside cells and helping them divide. It's powered by biological fuel called ATP (bright yellow) as it scoots along tube-like ...

Three babies have died at a hospital in Northern Ireland following the outbreak of a bacterial infection. An investigation was launched Thursday after the deaths of two infants at the Royal Hospital in Belfast were linked to the Pseudomonas infection, which can affect the chest, blood and urine of victims. News ...

Human tears are thought to be unique in the animal kingdom, in that they're often tied to our emotional state -- but that's not the only special property they possess. Proteins in tears can protect against harmful bacteria, and now a team of UC Irvine researchers has shown how. Click "source" ...

Acaricide, a chemical used against Varroa mites that infect honeybees, appears to render bees more susceptible to deformed wing virus infections, according to research published in the January issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Like the mites, these viruses have been identified as potential causes of colony collapse ...

Researchers from the University of Utah have identified a process by which the most common types of urinary tract infection-causing bacteria are able to trigger bladder cell shedding and disable immune responses. According to this new study, published in the Jan. 19, 2012, issue of Cell Host & Microbe, α-hemolysin, ...

Although there is an effective vaccine for hepatitis B and public health officials have a strong sense of who is at highest risk for the infectious liver disease, tens of thousands of people in the United States contract the virus every year. According to a new study by researchers at ...

Fernan Federici, a researcher in the Haseloff Lab at Cambridge University and one of the Synthetic Aesthetics residents, studies how cells grow and develop into complex shapes and structures. Using confocal microscopy, he tracks the growth of plant cells and tissues, creating models of how cell structures form and beautiful ...

A new vaccine to protect against meningococcus B, a common cause of bacterial meningitis, shows promise in clinical trials, researchers in Chile report. Vaccines that protect from four other strains of Neisseria meningitides, a bacteria that causes meningococcal disease, are already in use or in the last stages of development, according ...

The death toll from white-nose syndrome is now 5.7 million to 6.7 million bats since 2006, and the disease is still spreading quickly, U.S. officials report. It's been six years since the dawn of white-nose syndrome — a bat-killing fungus that's sweeping west across North America — but the disease is ...

Of the pathogens that keep worried scientists awake at night, few rival Ebola for ruthless efficiency. The virus contains just seven genes, yet it manages to kill up to 90 percent of the people it infects. Patients typically develop fever and fatigue, then progress to seizures, delirium, and bleeding from ...

We've been lucky. The avian influenza (H5N1) virus that first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 -- which killed six and caused 18 serious illnesses -- has not acquired the ability to spread easily from person to person. Virtually all of the reported cases have involved contact with infected birds ...

Scanning Electron Micrograph of Burkholderia cepacia. Burkholderia cepacia is the name for a group or “complex” of bacteria that can be found in soil and water. B. cepacia bacteria are often resistant to common antibiotics. B. cepacia poses little medical risk to healthy people. However, people who have certain health ...

By altering how plants turn sunlight into chemical energy, scientists hope to produce biofuels that make economic sense. For years researchers have been trying to figure out the best ways of making plants produce biofuels. But there is a funda­mental problem: photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into stored ...

The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch—in the form of a cholera vaccine—can help in the long-term fight for better health. A developing nation, Haiti has long struggled to maintain modern public-health projects. Even before the January ...

Scientists have long seen evidence of social behavior among many species of animals, both on the earth and in the sea. Dolphins frolic together, lions live in packs, and hornets construct nests that can house a large number of the insects. And, right under our feet, it appears that nematodes ...

Newspapers and other media are reporting with regular frequency that restrooms, ATM machine pads, money bills, and other sites carry many different microbes upon their surfaces including potentially pathogenic bacteria and viruses. Headlines call attention to such scary-sounding news and alarm the general public. We can expect that this practice ...

An outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Wisconsin has been linked to a decorative fountain found in a hospital lobby, according to a new study released Tuesday online in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Eight people were tested in 2010 after exhibiting symptoms of the Legionnaires' disease, which include fever, chills, ...

Twitter, blogs and other social media can be powerful tools for tracking infectious diseases as they spread in poor countries with weak institutions and infrastructure conclude researchers who followed social media during Haiti’s post-earthquake cholera outbreak in 2010. Twitter posts and news about cholera gathered from the Internet in the ...

Modified probiotics, the beneficial bacteria touted for their role in digestive health, could one day decrease the risk of Listeria infection in people with susceptible immune systems, according to Purdue University research. Arun Bhunia, a professor of food science; Mary Anne Amalaradjou, a Purdue postdoctoral researcher; and Ok Kyung Koo, a ...

Bacteria are notorious for developing resistance to antibiotics through rapid mutation and natural selection. Radiation is a sure way to stimulate mutations. Could the radiation that will be contaminating the environment surrounding the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant for hundreds of years produce bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics? Researchers, Shigeyuki ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute demonstrated for the first time that the Anopheles mosquito's innate immune system could be genetically engineered to block the transmission of the malaria-causing parasite to humans. In addition, they showed that the genetic modification had little impact on the mosquito's fitness under ...

For years, medical professionals and the livestock industry have made great efforts not to overuse antibiotics, but drug-resistant microorganisms continue to thrive. Hua Wang thinks she knows why: Antibiotic usage is just one of the factors causing resistance, she said. "Antibiotic resistance is a complex issue. Just targeting one source is not ...

The FDA is sending mixed signals: It unveiled new limits this week on one class of livestock antibiotics, two weeks after scrapping a 34-year push to limit two others. All three can promote drug-resistant bacteria, aka superbugs. If you didn't keep up with the Federal Register over the holidays, you're not ...

A team of scientists from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have identified a novel compound that inhibits viruses from replicating. The findings, which are published online in the Journal of Virology, could lead to the development of highly targeted compounds to block the replication of poxviruses, such as the ...

To eke out even the barest subsistence on Mars, a living thing would have to adapt to a formidable set of environmental challenges: an arid, often extremely cold landscape with miniscule amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and no organic matter to eat. During a recent foray into a similarly ...

A bacteria-filled filter is being perfected to prevent bad industrial smells from spreading over a whole town. THE GIST A biofilter laden with bacteria is designed to stop bad industrial smells at the source. The bacteria can eat most of the compounds that produce the worst odors. Several pig farming operations ...

An experimental herpes vaccine protected young women against only one of the two types of the sexually transmitted virus, dashing hopes for widespread use of the treatment, researchers reported in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. For reasons that aren’t clear, the vaccine protected against herpes simplex ...

Under a high magnification of 21930x, this scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted some of the ultrastructural morphologic features displayed by this group of Gram-positive Micrococcus luteus bacteria. The specimen was obtained from a pure culture that was raised on a polycarbonate filter, for the purpose of identification of the organism. Being ...

WE ARE now privy to the ways bacteria outsmart antibiotics, thanks to a technique which measures the evolution of antibiotic resistance. A team led by Erdal Toprak and Adrian Veres at Harvard University developed the "morbidostat", a device that constantly monitors the growth of bacteria in the presence of an antibiotic, ...

For NASA’s Martian rovers, it seems that bigger is better. The $2.5 billion (£1.6 billion) Curiosity — which is currently whizzing towards the red planet following its November 2011 launch — is five times bigger than twin predecessors Spirit and Opportunity. In fact it’s taller than most basketball players at ...

Virus-bacterium associations were examined in the natural environment of a termite's hindgut. Three general scenarios were seen. In the first (1) there was a one-to-one association: one type of virus matched one type of bacterium host. In the second (2) the host bacterium was associated with a diverse group of ...

Viral diseases are still one of the biggest challenges to medical science. Thanks to thousands of years of co-evolution with humans, their ability to harness the biology of their human hosts to survive and thrive makes them very difficult to target with medical treatment. Scientists at the University of North Carolina ...

Bacteria that cause Legionnaire’s disease have been found throughout Hong Kong’s brand new, $670-million government headquarters. The checks were prompted after the education secretary came down with the potentially fatal illness last month. Health authorities said Monday that water samples taken from his new office’s bathroom found traces of legionella bacteria ...

The sporophyte of the fern Pteris vittata, which tolerates and accumulates very high levels of the deadly toxin arsenic. Researchers from Purdue University have identified a gene (ACR3) from P. vittata that is necessary for the plant's tolerance to arsenic. Jody Banks, professor of botany and plant pathology, and David ...

One of the most vexing challenges in the battle against dengue virus is that getting infected once can put people at greater risk for a more severe infection down the road. Now, for the first time, an international team of researchers has pulled apart the mechanism behind changing dengue virus genetics ...

Large areas of northern Uganda are experiencing an outbreak of nodding syndrome, a mysterious disease that causes young children and adolescents to nod violently when they eat food. The disease, which may be an unusual form of epilepsy, could be linked to the parasitic worm responsible for river blindness, a ...

A bacterium recently discovered near Death Valley has some very unusual properties according to a report published in the December 23 issue of Science magazine. While some ‘bugs’ are like migratory birds, making tiny magnets that they use to guide their navigation, this is the first bacterium to be found ...

The USA300 strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, colorized in gold, shown outside a white blood cell. Staphylococcus aureus: USA:300 is a strain of gram-positive coccus bacteria responsible for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), or Staph infection in humans. This strain of S. aureus is resistant to β-lactam antibiotics. When cultured, this ...

A physician and researcher at the Sainte Justine University Hospital Center (Sainte-Justine UHC), a University of Montreal affiliate, saved the life of a child and, by doing so, became the first to find a new use for a drug in the fight against deadly E. coli bacteria. In fact, after ...

Note the wheel-like appearance of some of the rotavirus particles. The observance of such particles gave the virus its name ('rota' being the Latin word meaning wheel). Bar = 100 nanometers. Rotaviruses are nonenveloped, double-shelled viruses, making the virus stable in the environment. Photo Credit: F.P. Williams, U.S. EPA Rotavirus is a ...

Ultraviolet rays help prevent the spread of chickenpox, meaning people in milder climates are more at risk of catching the disease, according to new research. The discovery could lead to new ways of preventing chickenpox and its more severe relative, shingles. A researcher at St George’s, University of London has found ...

The mould fungus Penicillium crustosum occurs relatively frequently in food and animal fodder stored in temperate conditions. This mould produces powerful neurotoxins, for example penitrem A, which causes symptoms that are difficult to distinguish from those of other neurological diseases. Angel Moldes-Anaya's doctoral research has shown that penitrem A is ...

A common oral bacteria, Fusobacterium nucleatum, acts like a key to open a door in human blood vessels and leads the way for it and other bacteria like Escherichia coli to invade the body through the blood and make people sick, according to dental researchers at Case Western Reserve University. Yiping ...

One of the main causes of health problems and one of the reasons for using therapeutic antibiotics in rearing piglets is the occurrence of the pathogenic gram-positive bacterium Streptococcus suis. A special organic acid mix might help with containing the problem. To tackle the problem of Streptococcus suis in piglets ...

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of e.coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. And all without having to add expensive enzyme additives. The upshot? The cost of switchgrass-based biofuel ...

Scientists have discovered a new signal that helps invading bacteria communicate but also helps targeted rice plants coordinate defensive attacks on the disease-causing invaders, a finding that could lead to new methods of combating infection not just in plants, but in humans. Findings from the study, conducted by a team of ...

It sounds almost like science fiction: A parasite manipulates a fish’s behavior to make it seek out warmer water, probably by altering its brain chemistry. In the warmer environment, the parasite’s growth — and its capacity to infect other hosts — kicks into overdrive. Those are the findings of a new ...

Scientists have found the 'key' that HIV uses to enter our cells' nuclei, allowing it to disable the immune system and cause AIDS. The finding, recently published in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens, provides a potential new target for anti-AIDS drugs that could be more effective against drug-resistant strains ...

Let’s start out with a little quiz. What examples can you name of endosymbiotic bacteria so tightly packed that they’re nearly wall-to-wall within cells of their host? If you said legume root nodules, you can claim a prize. (Ask someone else for it, as we don’t have any.) You would ...

Jeff Withey, Ph.D., assistant professor of immunology and microbiology in WSU's School of Medicine, recently received two grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, to use zebrafish to study the spread of cholera and characterize signals that induce the disease ...

The investigation of a 2009 multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), an important cause of bacterial gastrointestinal illness, led to a new culprit: ready-to-bake commercial prepackaged cookie dough. Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online, a new report describing the outbreak offers recommendations for prevention, including a ...

Water discharged into lakes and rivers from municipal sewage treatment plants may contain significant concentrations of the genes that make bacteria antibiotic-resistant. That's the conclusion of a new study on a sewage treatment plant on Lake Superior in the Duluth, Minn., harbor that appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & ...

Lara Thompson was 26 when her life fell apart. She was living in Rhode Island and working in HIV prevention research when she unexpectedly developed nausea and diarrhea. It was early 2008, a few weeks after New Year’s, and she thought she might have picked up a stomach virus at a ...

Disease outbreaks are often associated with hot weather. Because many bacteria typically multiply more rapidly in warmer conditions, it's a commonly held notion that warm-weather outbreaks are a straightforward consequence of greater numbers of the microbial culprit. But a team of researchers, led by the University of South Carolina's Pamela Morris, ...

A bacterium whose name was inspired by the Star Wars films has provided new clues into the evolution of our own cells and how they came to possess the vital energy-producing units called mitochondria. The University of Sydney research investigated the bacterium Midichloria mitochondrii- named after helpful Star Wars microbes, called ...

Coxsackie viruses. Coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of a group of Coxsackie viruses. These viruses were named after the town in the USA where they were isolated. They are entero- viruses, part of the Picornaviridae group. This group contains small, non-enveloped, icosahedral- shaped viruses. Coxsackie viruses, of which there are ...

Three different disease-causing viruses -- poliovirus, coxsackievirus, and hepatitis C -- rely on their unwilling host for the membrane platforms enriched in a specific lipid, phosphatidylinositol 4 phosphate (PI4P) on which they can replicate, Rutgers University researchers said on Dec. 7, at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting ...

A study involving 84 volunteers showed that an experimental norovirus vaccine provided considerable protection against infection and symptoms of gastroenteritis, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine reported in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine). The authors added that theirs is the first study to show protection from norovirus illness due ...

The trifecta of biological proof is to take a discovery made in a simple model organism like baker's yeast and track down its analogs or homologs in "higher" creatures right up the complexity scale to people, in this case, from yeast to fruit flies to humans. In a pair of ...

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy have discovered a brand new tick-borne infection. Since the discovery, eight cases have been described around the world, three of them in the Gothenburg area, Sweden. In July 2009 a 77-year-old man from western Sweden was out kayaking when he went down with ...

This transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed the ultrastructural appearance of a number of virus particles, or “virions”, of a hantavirus known as the Sin Nombre virus (SNV). In November 1993, the specific hantavirus that caused the Four Corners outbreak was isolated. Using tissue from a deer mouse that had been trapped ...

An experimental vaccine grown in tobacco plants against deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever protected more than 80 percent of mice given a lethal dose of the virus, and may protect humans as well, researchers said. The vaccine, unlike previous experimental vaccines, is also stable enough to stockpile in case of bioterrorism, according ...

Visions of aliens danced in a lot of heads last December, when NASA held a press conference, promising an "astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." What scientists disclosed was the discovery of a bacteria, pulled from California's Mono Lake, that added deadly arsenic to the ...

The fungi of the Candida genus, known to millions of patients worldwide for their ability to cause serious infections, were once all thought to be asexual. Even after scientists discovered that the mating habits of Candida albicans were many and varied, they remained convinced that many of the more infectious ...

If used on a large scale, their method could change the nature of hospital-acquired infections 'toward being more susceptible to antibiotics rather than more resistant,' say researchers. Israeli researchers are laying the groundwork for a spray which they say will make it easier to get rid of the antibiotic-resistant germs that ...

Traumatic brain injury is associated with a profound suppression of the patient's ability to fight infection. At the same time the patient also often suffers hyper-inflammation, due to the brain releasing glucocorticoids in response to the injury. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care shows that ...

Some of the nastiest smelling creatures on Earth have skin that produces the greatest known variety of anti-bacterial substances that hold promise for becoming new weapons in the battle against antibiotic-resistant infections, scientists are reporting. Their research on amphibians so smelly (like rotten fish, for instance) that scientists term them ...

In the human world of manufacturing, many companies are now applying an on-demand, just-in-time strategy to conserve resources, reduce costs and promote production of goods precisely when and where they are most needed. A recent study from Indiana University Bloomington scientists reveals that bacteria have evolved a similar just-in-time strategy ...

Researchers for the past year have been studying a group of potent HIV-neutralizing antibodies. Now biologists have discovered a way to deliver the antibodies to mice. The breakthrough by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has effectively protected the mice from HIV infection. This new approach to HIV prevention—called ...

When drugs are developed to combat infection, bacteria fight back by coming up with a deterrent. A newly developed compound makes the bacteria vulnerable again. A particularly ingenious weapon in bacteria’s arsenal is the drug efflux pump—proteins located in the membranes of bacteria that can recognize and expel drugs that have ...

A new swine flu strain has infected 10 Americans since the summer, and health authorities, both here and abroad, are on the alert for more cases. The new flu strain combines parts of a rare influenza virus — H3N2 – circulating in North American pigs, and the H1N1 virus from ...

Bacteria and fungi are remarkably mobile. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that the two organisms enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship to aid them in that movement - and their survival. Fungal spores can attach themselves to bacteria, "hitching a ride" wherever the bacteria travel. And while this ...

Declaring the eradication of polio will be far more difficult than it was for smallpox, according to a review published in the Journal of General Virology. Further research into the complex virus - host interactions and how the vaccine is used in the final stages of the eradication programme is ...

A study to be published in the online journal mBio® on November 29 shows that adding antibiotics to swine feed causes microorganisms in the guts of these animals to start sharing genes that could spread antibiotic resistance. Livestock farms use antibiotic drugs regularly, and not just for curing sick animals. Antimicrobial drugs ...

This transmission electron micrograph (TEM), taken at a magnification of 150,000x, revealed the ultrastructural details of an avian influenza A (H5N1) virion, a type of bird flu virus which is a subtype of avian influenza A. At this magnification, one may note the stippled appearance of the roughened surface of ...

Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free. The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is ...

More parents are opting out of school shots for their kids. In 8 states, more than 1 in 20 public school kindergartners aren't getting all the vaccines required for attendance, an AP analysis found. Click "source" to view video.

Under a magnification of 3841X, this scanning electron micrograph SEM) revealed some of the ultrastructural morphologic details exhibited by a number of Gram-positive bacilli, or “rod-shaped”, Mycobacterium fortuitum bacteria. M. fortuitum is classified as a “rapidly-growing” Mycobacterium, due to the fact that it can be grown on laboratory culture medium ...

A lot of work has been done over the years to nail down the origins of life, with much speculation given to whatever first bit of “life” appeared from what was before, nothing but non-living material. Unfortunately, evidence of such life has long vanished leaving researchers to try to piece ...

An electron micrograph depicts the Trichomonas vaginalis parasite adhering to vaginal epithelial cells collected from vaginal swabs. A non-adhered parasite (right) is pear-shaped, whereas the attached parasite is flat and amoeboid. Credit: Image courtesy of: Antonio Pereira-Neves and Marlene Benchimol, Santa Ursula University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Trichomoniasis (trick-oh-moe-nye-uh-sis) is one ...

Madison, Wisconsin - Tilting the scales in an ongoing debate, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found new evidence that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is associated with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the brain cancer that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy. The findings confirm what only a handful of scientists have found, but in a manner ...

Many insects suck the juices of plants, much to the dismay of gardeners and farmers. But plants are more than just a source of food; they’re also a source of bugs for bugs. Ayelet Caspi-Fluger from the Newe-Ya’ar Research Center has found that sap-sucking whiteflies can transfer bacteria into ...

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and the US Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have isolated and analyzed an antibody that neutralizes Sudan virus, a major species of ebolavirus and one of the most dangerous human pathogens. "We suspect that we've found a key spot for neutralizing ebolaviruses," ...

Life is full of choices, not only for people but also for the cells that we’re made of. Scientists in Manchester are studying a simple life form to uncover the basis of cells’ choices, as Michael Regnier reports. Cells are constantly making decisions about what to do, where to go or ...

The 2011 Olympus BioScapes competition brings the beauty of micro-organisms out of the lab. Here is a gallery of our favourite images from the contest, including petite plankton, dinky Drosophila and miniscule mould spores. Click "source" to view images from the 2011 Olympus Bioscapes competition.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a short Small Things Considered essay describing the diverse roles that odors can play in microbiology. Articles here and there written by others attest to a growing interest in sociomicrobiology. As for myself, I have long suspected that microbes are constantly sending and responding ...

Last year, federal officials warned that Americans were on the verge of “a post-antibiotic era.” And that’s exactly what the Pentagon’s far-out research agency is after. As long as they’ve got a replacement at the ready, of course. In the military’s latest round of small business solicitations, Darpa is making a ...

Entamoeba, an amoeba that includes pathogens of the intestinal tracts of a range of hosts - humans are included. They have no mitochondria and seem to have adapted secondarily to an anoxic way of life. Cytoplasm of a thick and dense consistency, and like that of pelobionts (to which we ...

Preventing pathogenic bacteria from sensing nutrient starvation may present a new therapeutic approach to increasing antibiotic efficacy and preventing drug resistance, researchers claim. A team led by McGill University investigators has found that blocking an active mechanism used by bacteria to respond to starvation by slowing their growth significantly reduces ...

New research suggests a pattern of outpatient antibiotic overuse in parts of the United States - particularly in the Southeast - a problem that could accelerate the rate at which these powerful drugs are rendered useless, according to Extending the Cure, a project of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics ...

University of California, Berkeley, scientists have shown that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial - able to kill bacteria - for as long as a week after treatment. Devices able to produce such plasmas are cheap, which ...

Viruses are not usually regarded as living cells. A virus 'particle' requires a living host cell in order to reproduce. Although we usually think of viruses as causing diseases, they also are an integral part of natural ecosystems controlling the size of bacterial populations by preying on them. This image ...

Infectious disease experts support 'Get Smart About Antibiotics Week,' Nov. 14-20 With antibiotic-resistant infections increasingly common, and a dangerous lack of new infection fighters in the drug development pipeline, it's more important than ever to use existing antibiotics appropriately. This week, infectious disease experts are helping to educate consumers, health care ...

We’re in a sad and weird place in biomedical science. In the 1940’s we got penicillin, in the following 30 years another 13 different classes of antibiotic were introduced. Since 1970 the number of new classes has dropped to a worrying 2. Since then we have found new ways ...

Bacterial cells are fundamentally different to the cells of multicellular animals such as humans. They are far smaller, with less internal organisation and no nucleus (they have DNA but it is not packaged safely within a membrane). Because of this bacteria are almost exclusively single-celled organisms, with their own autonomy ...

What do monocytes, lymphocytes, and neutrophils all have in common? Well, yes, they are all leucocytes and part of our immune system, but what else? They all can be prompted to migrate to the site of infection by a specific class of cytokines known as chemotactic cytokines, or chemokines for ...

Think of the weirdest creatures you’ve even seen in a sci-fi film. Now think of this: there are far stranger, albeit smaller, critters living in your own home. And Rob Dunn at North Carolina State University wants you to go on safari to find them. Research has been done on ...

Whooping cough is a respiratory disease caused by Bordetella pertussis, which induces mucosal IgA antibodies that appear to be relevant in protection. Serum IgA responses are measured after pertussis infection and might provide an additional role in pertussis diagnostics. However, the possible interfering role for pertussis vaccinations in the induction ...

The geneticist and entrepreneur hopes to use synthetic biology to transform microscopic algae into cells that eat up carbon dioxide, spit out oil and provide meals. Microbes will be the (human) food- and fuel-makers of the future, if J. Craig Venter has his way. The man responsible for one of the ...

The discovery that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria is quite recent and was proved fairly conclusively in 1984 when the Australian scientist Barry Marshall drank a petri-dish full of the bacteria Helicobacter pylori and five days later developed serious gastritis, which cleared after antibiotic treatment. As stomach ulcers ...

Infectious diseases specialists from Austin Health are working closely with microbiologists from the University of Melbourne to understand how Staph is becoming resistant to all antibiotic therapies. The treatment of serious infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus (Golden Staph) is complicated by the development of antibiotic resistance. Seriously ill patients, vulnerable ...

It gave us the first ever eradication of an infectious disease; now it may help defeat cancer. Smallpox vaccine has doubled the survival time of people with advanced liver cancer. The vaccine that eradicated smallpox consists of a live virus, Vaccinia, with a surprising taste for tumours. It prefers to infect ...

Researchers have achieved a major breakthrough in the battle against the H1N1 influenza virus with the aid of a gpu accelerated supercomputer. A team from the Institute of Process Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-IPE) is using Nvidia Tesla gpus to create the world's first computer simulation of a ...

One major issue facing the world today is starvation. According to World Hunger statistics, there are over 900 million people in the world that are classified as being ‘hungry.’ These people are malnourished and in a dangerous situation. Growing up in Bombay, Arjun Khakhar witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of ...

Researchers studying how biodiesel can be generated using E. coli as a catalyst have determined the bacteria have what it takes to produce high volumes of the fuel. Now they need to figure out how to tweak its cellular controls in order to kick it into high gear. When it comes ...

Key to the development of disease in many bacterial infections is expression of a bacterial toxin. Toxins come in many shapes and forms but all have a pretty similar goal, to directly induce damage to the cells of the host. Toxins seem to conflict with the idea that pathogens are ...

Parents are buying lollipops licked by children with chickenpox to infect their kids in order to avoid the vaccine. Click "source" to view video.

While some researchers look for new species in such exotic places as the deep sea, tropical regions, or extreme environments, a team headed by Tufts researchers turned their attention towards nests of an invasive paper wasp. What they found was a new species of fungus. Philip T. Starks, associate professor of ...

UCLA life scientists have identified a gene that slows the aging process. The biologists, working with fruit flies, activated a gene called PGC-1, which increases the activity of mitochondria, the tiny power generators in cells that control cell growth and tell cells when to live and die. "We took this gene ...

Obese rhesus monkeys lost on average 11 percent of their body weight after four weeks of treatment with an experimental drug that selectively destroys the blood supply of fat tissue, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reports in Science Translational Medicine. Body ...

It is one of the most serious allegations that could be made about a doctor: manipulating patients' histories to make money. So it is no wonder that the charges, levied by editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in January against medical researcher Andrew Wakefield, are still getting close scrutiny. ...

Bacteria will eat anything. Their highly diverse biochemistry, and ability to adapt quickly to change means that they can adapt to take up nutrients from a range of sources, including hot acid lakes and the interior of underground thermal vents. However bacteria also predate each other, and one particular bug, ...

A research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has provided the first look at a genetic structure that may play a critical role in the reproduction of the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAV), more commonly known as the “fish flu.” A scourge in fish farms with ...

Skin secretions found in Australian frogs may hold the key to designing powerful new antibiotics that are not prone to bacterial resistance in humans, say researchers. Antimicrobial peptides (small proteins) found in skin secretions are used by frogs to help fight bacterial infections. Scientists working at the University of Melbourne and ...

WHEN Carl Zimmer asked on his blog whether tattoos were common among scientists, he unwittingly became the curator of a set of incredible images, and of intimate stories that reveal a love affair with science. We are familiar with the idea that people tattoo themselves with a name or symbol ...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham are leading an ambitious research project to develop an in vivo biological cell-equivalent of a computer operating system. The success of the project to create a 're-programmable cell' could revolutionise synthetic biology and would pave the way for scientists to create completely new and useful ...

“Predator” bacteria (green) surround “prey” bacteria (red) in this petri dish version of the Serengeti. Rather than eating their prey, however, predator cells release a chemical that activates a suicide gene in the prey. Prey cells also release a chemical, but one that promotes survival of the predators. Researchers genetically ...

Research shows infection by the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, found in 10-20 per cent of the UK's population, directly affects the production of dopamine, a key chemical messenger in the brain. Findings from the University of Leeds research group are the first to demonstrate that a parasite found in the brain ...

From the North Pole to the Arctic Ocean, the frozen soils within this region keep an estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon out of the Earth's atmosphere. This sequestered carbon is more than 250 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the United States in the year ...

In 1960, Australian immunologist Frank Burnet won a Nobel Prize for his contributions to immunology. Etsuko Uno and colleagues at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, explain Burnet's clonal selection theory in an animation of the body's response to Streptococcus pyogenes, the bacterium that ...

Biologists have built a better antibody in an effort to neutralize the many subtypes of HIV. The work builds on earlier efforts that involved using highly potent antibodies isolated from HIV-positive people. Now, a team from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has used one of these naturally occurring antibodies ...

Researchers have discovered an underworld of genetic exchange among bacteria, one more vast than previously imagined. A comparison of thousands of bacterial genomes from around the world found genes flowing easily between species separated by hundreds, even thousands of miles. Whether the bacteria were related or not didn’t matter — ...

Multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDR-AB) was found in the environment of 48 percent of the rooms of patients colonized or infected with the pathogen, according to a new study published in the November issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC -- the Association for Professionals ...

A new research technology is revealing how humans develop immunity to malaria, and could assist programs aimed at eradicating this parasitic disease. Dr Alyssa Barry from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Infection and Immunity division is using 'protein microarray' technology to screen human blood serum samples for immunity to proteins ...

After 70 years, antibiotics are still the primary treatment for halting the spread of bacterial infections. But the prevalence of antibiotic resistance is now outpacing the rate of new drug discovery and approval. A microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has discovered a different approach: Instead of killing the bacteria, ...

Outbreaks of meningitis can quickly reach epidemic proportions across a number of African countries, afflicting tens of thousands of people. Now a new vaccine appears capable of completely eradicating the disease. "The vaccine results are exceeding all our expectations," says Dominique Caugant, Chief Scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Click ...

Scientists have identified the genetic blueprint of the giant intestinal roundworm, Ascaris suum, revealing potential targets to control a devastating parasitic disease. The disease, known as ascariasis, affects more than one billion people in China, South East Asia, South America, and parts of Africa—killing thousands of people annually and causing chronic ...

Much as people can exchange information instantaneously in the digital age, bacteria associated with humans and their livestock appear to freely and rapidly exchange genetic material related to human disease and antibiotic resistance through a mechanism called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Click "source" for entire article.

This scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a grouping of Vibrio vulnificus bacteria; Mag. 13184x. Vibrio vulnificus is a bacterium in the same family as those that cause cholera. It normally lives in warm seawater and is part of a group of vibrios that are called "halophilic" because they require salt. V. ...

Do bacteria age? Most biology textbooks will say that they don’t. However, research challenged that view for the first time in 2005, and a debate has ensued over the past 6 years. But a new model, published today (October 27) in Current Biology, re-examines earlier experiments and suggests that aging ...

Scientists investigating the stranding of hundreds of dolphins in the northern Gulf of Mexico since early last year reported Thursday that they have identified Brucella bacteria in five of 21 tested and are trying to determine whether the deaths may be linked to last year's BP oil spill. "We believe ...

One of the things that makes inhalational anthrax so worrisome for biodefense experts is how quickly a relatively small number of inhaled anthrax spores can turn into a lethal infection. By the time an anthrax victim realizes he or she has something worse than the flu and seeks treatment, it's ...

A genetically engineered version of the virus that causes herpes shows promise as a treatment for a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer, according to a new study in animals. The virus targeted and killed triple-negative breast cancer cells in mice. Triple-negative breast cancer is a form of breast cancer that ...

The spark that ignites multiple sclerosis may come from within. A new study in mice points to normal intestinal bacteria as a trigger for the immune disorder. In patients with multiple sclerosis, the body’s immune system attacks the brain, stripping away a protective sheath called myelin from nerve cells. This causes ...

A new malaria vaccine has been created to target different forms of the disease and help those most at risk. The parasites that cause malaria come in many different forms. This new vaccine works by triggering a range of antibodies to fight the different malaria parasites. Many existing vaccines target only a ...

Researchers in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech have identified the first strains of hepatitis E virus from farmed rabbits in the United States. It is unknown whether the virus can spread from rabbits to humans. Caitlin Cossaboom of Salisbury, Md., a second-year student in the combined ...

Bacteria are capable of producing a wide range of exciting and important materials, and one of the most unusual is probably bacterial plastics. Used by the bacteria as an energy store, these bioplastics are of particular interest as not only could they be a non-oil-based form of plastic but they ...

As the realisation that radiation emitted by the sun can give rise to skin cancer has increased, so also has the use of sunscreen creams. These creams, however, can give rise to contact allergy when exposed to the sun, and this has led to an increasing incidence of skin allergy. ...

With Salmonella-tainted ground turkey sickening more than 100 people and Listeria-contaminated cantaloupes killing 15 this year, the ability to detect outbreaks of food-borne illness and determine their sources has become a top public health priority. A new approach, reported online Oct. 14 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology by a ...

New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that obesity may make annual flu shots less effective. The findings, published online Oct. 25, 2011, in in the International Journal of Obesity, provide evidence explaining a phenomenon that was noticed for the first time during the 2009 H1N1 ...

This digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an untreated water specimen extracted from a wild stream mainly used to control flooding during inclement weather, revealed the presence of unidentified organisms, which included bacteria, protozoa, and algae. In this particular view, a microorganism is featured, the exterior of which is covered ...

For a long, long time, phage lambda (λ) has known that its E. coli host was not simply ‘a well-stirred bag of enzymes’ (something we’ve come to appreciate only relatively recently). This is vital information for lambda since it needs to interact with two particular host proteins in order to ...

India has not had a case of polio in nine months, raising hopes the country is on the verge of defeating the disease, health officials said Monday. Ridding itself of polio would be a major symbolic milestone for a nation desperate to move past its image as a Third World country ...

Fans of the Iron Man movies will remember the amazing scenes of Tony Stark manipulating a holographic interface as he discovers the element vibranium. Now a real lab has concocted a similar method of studying molecules using augmented reality. Arthur Olsen's Molecular Graphics Lab at the Scripps Research Institute ...

Maryland's Eastern Shore is known for vast soybean and corn farms, but if Patrick Kangas had his way it would be covered in slime. Kangas, a researcher at the University of Maryland, helped create a system that uses fields of slimy algae to clean up the Chesapeake Bay by removing pollutants ...

Researchers at Boston University have made discoveries that provide the foundation towards novel approaches to control insects that transmit deadly diseases such as dengue fever and malaria through their study of the Wolbachia bacteria. Their findings have been published in the current issue of Science Express. "Wolbachia are widespread, maternally-transmitted intracellular ...

Researchers from Emory University have discovered that norovirus in groundwater can remain infectious for at least 61 days. The research is published in the October Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Human norovirus is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis. The disease it causes tends to be one of the more ...

Scientists in the US have used a common virus to produce materials that resemble skin and bone. In addition to providing new insights into how such materials develop in the natural world, the work also brings synthetic production of tissue in the laboratory closer to reality. In nature, completely different ...

A new study is believed to have resolved a major debate about when oxygen began to be produced on Earth and how long it took before oxygen levels were enough to support the growth of life. Winthrop Professor Mark Barley, from The University of Western Australia's Centre for Exploration Targeting, and ...

A human antibody given to monkeys infected with the deadly Hendra virus completely protected them from disease, according to a study published by National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and their collaborators. Hendra and the closely related Nipah virus, both rare viruses that are part of the NIH biodefense research ...

The intestinal ecosystem is even more dynamic than previously thought, according to two studies by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers published in the latest issue of Science. Taken together, these studies provide a new understanding of the unique intestinal environment and suggest new strategies for the prevention of inflammatory bowel disease ...

The New Yorker once called virologist Nathan Wolfe "the world's most prominent virus hunter." Wolfe, the director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, spends his days tracking emerging infectious diseases before they turn into deadly pandemics. In The Viral Storm, Wolfe describes how most of those emerging infectious diseases originally start ...

This is a photomicrograph of Fusobacterium russii cultured in a thioglycollate medium for 48 hours. Like the genus Bacteroides, Fusobacterium are anaerobic, gram-negative bacteria that are normal inhabitors of the intestine. Fusobacterium spp. are associated with pleuropulmonary and oral infections. Photo credit: CDC/Dr. V. R. Dowell, Jr.

Giant pandas don't digest bamboo by themselves. Microorganisms in their guts may help the endangered animals to subsist on plants despite a gut that is better suited to eating meat, finds an analysis published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are among the ...

An influential federal health-care task force is expected to oppose testing for the human papillomavirus to detect cervical cancer in women over age 30, according to an analysis released Monday. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which recently took a high-profile stand against certain uses of screening tests for prostate ...

Could bacteria be responsible for colon cancer? In papers published in the journal Genome Research, two research teams, working independently, describe a group of bacteria that are linked to higher rates of the disease. Called Fusobacterium, this type of bacterium is very rarely found among the usual gut bugs, but ...

Here's a theory for a comedian to consider: dinosaurs done-in by avian flu. Silly as that may be, we imagine that viruses have been infecting organisms since life first appeared on Earth, but this is mostly just a hunch. New research is studying whether special environments (not related to dinosaurs) ...

That's right, poop — on your phone. If it's on your phone, it's very likely on your hands too, say researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Queen Mary, University of London. Researchers analyzed 780 swab samples — 390 from mobile phones and 390 from the ...

Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) is a thermoplastic polyester which occurs naturally in bacteria as Ralstonia eutropha and Bacillus megaterium. Even though PHB is biodegradable and is not dependent on fossil resources, this bioplastic has been traditionally too expensive to produce to replace petroleum-based plastics. New research reported in BioMed Central's open access ...

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Snow mapped cases of cholera in Soho, London, and traced the source of the outbreak to a contaminated water pump. Now, in a twenty-first century equivalent, scientists funded by the Wellcome Trust working in Kathmandu, Nepal, have combined the latest in gene sequencing technology and ...

What if buildings had lungs that could absorb carbon emissions from the city and convert them into something useful? What if they had skin that could control their temperature without the need for radiators or air-conditioning? What if buildings could come "alive?" Science fiction? "Not as such," claims Dr Rachel Armstrong, senior ...

CNN's Becky Anderson takes a look at new research involving teeth to study the "Black Death."

Two new studies demonstrate how viruses, such as the one responsible for polio, use good bacteria in the human (or mouse) gut to evade detection by the immune system. In one study, Sharon Kuss and her colleagues from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, show that the poliovirus, as ...

Statins can be effective at lowering cholesterol, but they have a perplexing tendency to work for some people and not others. Gut bacteria may be the reason. A research team led by a Duke University scientist has identified three bile acids produced by gut bacteria that were evident in people who ...

A unique and innovative analysis of how social media can affect the spread of a disease has been designed and implemented by a scientist at Penn State University studying attitudes toward the H1N1 vaccine. Marcel Salathé, an assistant professor of biology, studied how users of Twitter -- a popular microblogging ...

These bacteria induce the assembly of actin-rich tails in the host cell cytoplasm, which enable them to move rapidly. Motile bacteria spread from cell to cell by forming membrane-enclosed protrusions that are engulfed by neighboring cells. (B) Fluorescence micrograph of the bacteria moving in a cell that has been stained ...

Bacteria in the ocean are communicating and cooperating in a phenomenon which could be having a significant impact on the planet's climate. In the water, bacteria coalesce on tiny particles of carbon-rich detritus as they sink down through the depths. And, now, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists have discovered that ...

The bacteria responsible for the Black Death that killed a third of Europe’s population from 1347 to 1351 has changed little since then as health and hygiene advances held it in check, scientists said. Researchers extracted DNA from the teeth of four skeletons exhumed from a cemetery near the Tower of ...

The bacteria in your mouth could one day be used as an early test for pancreatic cancer, a new study suggests. In a small study, pancreatic cancer patients were found to have different levels of certain bacteria in their saliva than healthy people did. While researchers weren't sure if the differences ...

The FDA recently okayed the first therapeutic cancer vaccine, and other drugs that enlist the immune system against tumors are under study Conventional treatments for cancer—surgery, chemotherapy and radiation—have increased survival rates since the 1970s, but many survivors still do not achieve a normal life span. Researchers believe the results would ...

Hospital associated infections (HAI) are often in the headlines, but what is the burden of mortality, morbidity and costs due to HAIs? In this week's PLoS Medicine, Marlieke de Kraker, Peter Davey and Hajo Grundmann, on behalf of the BURDEN (Burden of resistance and disease in European nations) study group, ...

This is a guest post from a member of the iGEM competition team from Imperial College London. They recently won the iGEM regional championships and will be going to Boston in November to compete for the Worldwide Championships. This post describes the work they did over the summer, and how ...

This scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a number of Leptospira sp. bacteria atop a 0.1. µm polycarbonate filter. Leptospira interrogans causes leptospirosis, a usually mild febrile illness that may result in liver or kidney failure. Leptospira is a flexible, spiral-shaped, Gram-negative spirochete with internal flagella. Leptospira interrogans has many serovars based ...

I confidently believe that increasing the use of social media for outreach by scientists will positively affect how the public views and understands science. I stand by my statement that part of our job is to improve science communication, and as the world turns to the internet, social media is ...

A virus found in the sea off Chile is the biggest in the world, harbouring more than 1,000 genes, surprised scientists reported on Monday. The genome of Megavirus chilensis is 6.5 percent bigger than the DNA code of the previous virus record-holder, Mimivirus, isolated in 2003.

This E. coli colony creates a stunning synchronised light show using small molecules to sense and talk to one another. The phenomenon known as quorum sensing allows microbes to work together and behave more like a multicellular organism.

The imaging sensor chips that form the heart of built-in cell phone cameras are helping engineers transform the way cell cultures are imaged by serving as the platform for a “smart” petri dish. Since the late 1800s, biologists have used petri dishes primarily to grow cells. In the medical field, they ...

A colorized scanning electron micrograph of Mycobaterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that cause TB. Tuberculosis (TB) Tuberculosis, commonly known as TB, is a contagious and an often severe airborne disease caused by a bacterial infection. TB typically affects the lungs, but it also may affect any other organ of the body. ...

Dozens of giant craters spewing fresh water and brimming with bacteria have been found at the otherwise barren bottom of the Dead Sea, new research shows. In 2010 the first diving expedition to the springs revealed "a fantastic hot spot for life" in the lake, which lies on the border of ...

As winter approaches and many animals prepare to enter hibernation, biologists in Maine and throughout the Northeast are gearing up once again to monitor for a bat-killing fungus that scientists fear could wipe out some bat species in the region. Since 2006, biologists have watched with alarm as white-nose syndrome has ...

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have located the H1N1 virus in animals by conducting nasal swab tests and taking blood samples from domestic pigs in the Cameroon region of Africa. In one northern Cameroon village, researchers found two pigs with an active infection and throws of others with ...

The discovery gleans important clues about the last universal common ancestor, the mysterious great-grandparent of all living things. Discovering life's last universal common ancestor, or LUCA for short, is one of the great unresolved quests of science. Researchers scouring for traces of the elusive LUCA look for shared traits that exist ...

Bacteria are single-celled organisms that inhabit almost every environment on the planet, including the bodies of humans and animals. The cell wall maintains the structural integrity of the cell, and enables the bacteria to survive in its chosen environment. In disease-causing bacteria (pathogens) it also plays a role in the ...

Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has jumped on the zombie bandwagon, with a post on their website in May 2011 entitled "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse." The post, a tongue-in-check way to promote real disaster preparedness, went viral that week. Of course, the CDC was not suggesting we ...

This thin section transmission electron micrograph (TEM) depicts numerous virions revealed in a preparation of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). HIV is the virus that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. CDC estimates that about 56,000 people in the United States contracted HIV in 2006. There are two types of ...

Measurable changes in brain function and communication between brain regions may be a consequence of virus-induced injury during the early stages of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. These abnormalities and their implications in disease prognosis are detailed in an article in the neuroscience journal Brain Connectivity. Diminished cognitive function will develop ...

Having to obtain informed consent for the use of left-over human tissue samples could be hampering essential biobank research says a research group on the British Medical Journal website. Joanna Stjernschantz Forsberg and colleagues at Uppsala University in Sweden, argue that the requirement for informed consent for biobank research is problematic ...

The human papillomavirus is contributing to the growing number of head and neck cancers in the United States, according to a new study Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study found that the number of cases of oropharyngeal cancer - cancers of the tonsil, back of the mouth ...

Biologists have described only a few thousand different viruses so far, but a new study reveals a vast world of unseen viral diversity that exists right under our noses. A paper to be published Tuesday, October 4 in the online journal mBio explores ordinary raw sewage and finds that it ...

Medical researchers in Spain say an experimental vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has produced a 90 percent immune response among a small group of healthy human test subjects. The promising results pave the way for further clinical trials on HIV-infected volunteers. Researchers at the Spanish National Research Council's ...

Researchers in South East Asia have identified a novel mechanism whereby the organism Burkholderia pseudomallei – the cause of melioidosis, a neglected tropical infectious disease – develops resistance to ceftazidime, the standard antibiotic treatment. The change also makes the drug-resistant bacterium difficult to detect. B. pseudomallei is found in water ...

The CDC is warning clinicians that a rare enterovirus caused six clusters of respiratory illness – including several deaths – from 2008 to 2011. Three of the clusters, involving 39 people, occurred in the U.S., the agency said in the Sept. 30 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report; another 56 ...

Honorable Mention for Illustration: NSF 2004 International Science & Engineering Visulization Challenge X-ray crystallographic data was used from real DNA molecules to paint a unique portrait of the double helix. The image omits the chemical bonds that crisscross the center of the molecule, so that the structural features of the helix, ...

Illustration First Place Winner NSF International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge At first glance, it could pass for a piece of crochet, a fluffy gray and orange ball. But its real-world counterpart is far more destructive: It claims an estimated 2 million lives a year and has wreaked more global havoc ...

Aiming to enhance the interface between chemistry, biology, and information technology, a research team has developed a technique to encode messages in patterns of bacteria and reveal them through fluorescence. "We think our technique can potentially be used for easy-to-read biological barcoding, as a deterrent to counterfeiting, or, of course, for ...

Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have for the first time identified a 'programmed cell death' pathway in parasitic worms that could one day lead to new treatments for one of the world's most serious and prevalent diseases. Dr Erinna Lee and Dr Doug Fairlie from the institute's Structural ...

The Nation's largest celebration of science and engineering, the USA Science & Engineering Festival, is returning to Washington, D.C., April 28-29, 2012. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, hosts of the Discovery Channel's hit TV series MythBusters, and Bill Nye the Science Guy are among the science superstars signed up to ...

Last month a mysterious orange film (“goo” in the media vernacular of the time) washed up on the shores of a northwest Alaskan village called Kivalina. Experts suspected crustacean eggs; locals were unnerved. In retrospect, reports that the substance “dried into a powder” should have been suspicious, as should reports ...

Analog — rather than digital — circuits could enable models of biological systems that are more efficient, more accurate and easier to build. As the world has become less analog and more digital — as tape decks and TV antennas have given way to MP3 players and streaming video — electrical ...

A forced partnership between parasite and host allows Toxoplasma gondii to invade the bloodstream, break into the brain, and prompt behavioral changes from recklessness to neuroticism. The highly contagious protozoa that infects more than half the world’s population evades the body’s defenses by hacking immune cells, making it the first known ...

Type IV pilus filaments on Gram-negative bacterial pathogens control movement, attachment, immune escape, and natural transformation. Pili are attractive targets for vaccines and therapeutics because of the key role they play in bacterial virulence as well as their prominent cell surface exposure, as shown in this scanning electron micrograph of ...

Many viruses infecting humans including influenza virus, hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, rabies and measles viruses contain a ribonucleic acid (RNA) genome. These viruses are dependent on RNA as genetic information and they duplicate in human cells to make copies, thereby infecting other cells and spreading the virus. Researchers ...

This transmission electron micrograph (TEM) depicts some of the ultrastructural details displayed by H3N2 influenza virions responsible for casing illness in Indiana and Pennsylvania in 2011. The cases of human infection with swine-origin H3N2 influenza resulted from existing influenza viruses exchanging genetic material through a process called “reassortment.” Reassortment typically ...

James Bond preferred vodka martinis shaken, not stirred, displaying impressive discriminatory power. Bacteria may be similarly discerning. Zhang et al. (1) abandoned the standard lab practice of growing bacteria in shaking homogeneous liquid cultures in favor of fabricated microenvironments and report, on page 1764 of this issue, that bacteria can ...

New research has further undermined an already widely questioned supposed link between a virus and chronic fatigue syndrome. Between 1 million and 4 million Americans are thought to have chronic fatigue syndrome, a mysterious disorder that causes prolonged and severe fatigue, body aches and other symptoms. In 2009, a team of scientists ...

A compound tested by UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators destroys several viruses, including the deadly Spanish flu that killed an estimated 30 million people in the worldwide pandemic of 1918. This lead compound -- which acts by increasing the levels of a human antiviral protein -- could potentially be developed into ...

Fresh insight into how viruses such as SARS and flu can jump from one species to another may help scientists predict the emergence of diseases in future. Researchers have shown that viruses are better able to infect species that are closely related to their typical target species than species that ...

Tiny rod-shaped bacteria called Vibrio cholerae cause cholera infections. Credit: Tina Carvalho, University of Hawaii at Manoa Related article: "The Quake that Brought Back Cholera" (http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidelifescience/cholera.html) Allison MacLachlan Posted August 10, 2011 NIH, National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Scientists have found a way to prevent HIV from damaging the immune system and say their discovery may offer a new approach to developing a vaccine against AIDS. Researchers from the United States and Europe working in laboratories on the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) found it is unable to damage the ...

The deepest point on the surface of Earth is the Dead Sea in Israel. Now a joint Israeli-German team of scientists found several systems of freshwater springs on the Dead Sea floor. Their presence has been speculated for decades as concentric ripples on the water surface are visible near the ...

A new study raises concerns about the spread of drug-resistant gonorrhea in Ontario. A strain of gonorrhea that responds poorly to the last class of drugs available to treat the bacteria is gaining ground among the strains spreading in the province, data presented Tuesday at an infectious diseases conference in ...

Most of the renewable energy sources that are under consideration involve an obvious source of energy — light, heat, or motion. But this is the second time this year there has been a paper that has focused on a less obvious source: the potential difference between fresh river water and ...

Bright red-orange photoluminescence observed from porous silicon nanoparticles with human HeLa cells, magnified 1000 times and viewed in the reflection from a silicon wafer. Prepared from high-purity silicon wafers, these nanoparticles provide a nontoxic and biodegradable alternative to conventional quantum dots for in-vitro and in-vivo fluorescence imaging. The cell nuclei ...

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed polymers that fluoresce in the presence of bacteria, paving the way for the rapid detection and assessment of wound infection using ultra-violet light. When contained in a gel and applied to a wound, the level of fluorescence detected will alert clinicians to the ...

Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. is working to combat a group of bacteria largely neglected by drugmakers with a medicine analysts say may have $2 billion in sales potential. The drug, CXA-201, last month entered the final stage of tests generally required for U.S. approval and is about a year ahead of rivals ...

Blood-sucking ticks are not just a nuisance, they can also transmit dangerous diseases. One of them is Lyme disease, which is caused by bacteria of the genus Borrelia, and requires a course of treatment with antibiotics lasting several weeks. LMU researchers have come up with a quicker alternative. "Evaluation of ...

At a magnification of 1125X, this photomicrograph revealed some of the ultrastructural morphology exhibited by a Histoplasma capsulatum fungal macroconidium. The reproductive spores produced by H. capsulatum can be either macroconidia or microconidia. It is the macroconidia that exhibits finger-like projections from its surface, whereas, the microconidia are much smaller, ...

With an alarming increase of dengue virus cases being reported in all corners of the country, government authorities are scurrying to control the epidemic from spreading further. Control cells have been established in Punjab, while medicines and fumigation of international standards are being, reportedly, imported. So far 4,044 cases of dengue ...

Antibiotic eye drops, which are commonly prescribed after intraocular injections for choroidal neovascularization, have been linked to resistant strains of ocular flora as well as multiple-drug resistance, according to a study published in the September issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology. "Our findings indicate the need for more judicious use of ...

A team of researchers from the University of Houston (UH) and St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital (SLEH) are working to develop improved screening methods to detect a potentially lethal, drug-resistant superbug that has made its way to Texas. Specifically, the research team looked at a multi-drug resistant bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae, ...

Scientists hope cloning technique that produced genetically modified cats will aid human and feline medical research. It is a rite of passage for any sufficiently advanced genetically modified animal: at some point scientists will insert a gene that makes you glow green. The latest addition to this ever-growing list – which ...

A gene interferes with the caterpillar's molting hormone and influences the insect's desire to climb. A single gene in a caterpillar virus sends its victims running for the treetops, where they die and their bodies liquefy, sending an ooze of virus particles on their brothers and sisters below. This species ...

Maggie Koerth-Baker over at Boing Boing dug up a great thread at Quora asking users to share their favorite iconic scientific photos. The page has grown into a beautiful collection of images ranging from Darwin's illustration of finch beak variations from the Galapagos Islands to the Hubble Deep Field. Click "source" ...

For germaphobes, seeing the movie “Contagion” will probably induce chronic hand-washing and self-imposed solitary confinement. The Matt Damon-led thriller is about a disease outbreak that pretty much consumes the entire world. To promote the film, Warner Bros. Canada embraced the film’s theme and created two small billboards made ...

Like humans, mice that live in their natural habitat encounter bacteria and other pathogens that exercise their immune system, yet the lab mice typically used in immunology studies are raised in isolation from most diseases. A study on natural killer cells in wild mice published in Molecular Ecology examines the ...

Watching Hands: Artists Respond to Keeping Well September 24, 2011 – January 13, 2012 Watching Hands: Artists Respond to Keeping Well showcases the work of six artists who interpret the act of hand washing in innovative and unexpected ways. Recent H1N1 prevention campaigns have highlighted the importance of hand washing as ...

A breakthrough in the fight against drug-resistant infections is one step closer following the discovery of the structure of NDM-1: a vicious form of bacteria that is currently resistant to the most powerful antibiotics available. Medical Research Council (MRC) scientists at the Research Complex at Harwell (RCaH) in Oxfordshire, led ...

Can wounds be helped to heal faster? Yes, says a Norwegian company whose product's active ingredient, beta-glucans, comes from common baker's yeast. Beta-glucans have been called nature's super-medicine. Norwegian researchers have been pioneers in producing these substances from the cell walls of everyday baker's yeast. Beta-glucans are now widely used in ...

Colorized electron micrograph of red blood cell infected with malaria parasites (blue). The small bumps on the infected cell show how the parasite remodels its host cell. Uninfected cells (red) have smoother surfaces. Credit: NIAID/RML Related story: "Scientists Find Genetic Basis for Key Parasite Function in Malaria - NIH Researchers Show Parasites ...

A fungus that has become a major threat to hospital patients may have a hidden weakness, according to research that highlights the bug's ability to bind to human tissue. Candida albicans is widespread among humans, but normally does not affect health other than as vaginal or oral yeast infections, also called ...

Two children have been infected by new types of swine flu. Unlike flu viruses in the past that have jumped from pigs to humans, these have a gene from the pandemic 2009 H1N1 (swine) flu. The CDC is continuing to investigate, but so far no other cases have been reported. The ...

Even today, the legacy of the Cold War leaches into the waters of Colorado. Uranium, freed from the earth and destined for nuclear weapons, now contaminates the groundwater beneath several Colorado mines. But at some of these mines, a most unusual clean-up crew is at work. Lashing about with long ...

Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a "twilight zone" where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better ...

Engineers at UCLA have developed an inexpensive, portable, lensless microscope. This microscope may find its use in improving health care and sanitation in areas where sophisticated equipment is unavailable or unusable. The details of the microscope were published in the open-source journal Biomedical Optics Express. BBC News reports that the microscope ...

People favoring meat tend toward different 'microbiota' than those on plant-sourced diets, study found You are what you eat -- especially when it comes to the microbes that live in your gut. New research shows that people who eat a diet that's high in fats and animal proteins have a certain group ...

An investigation into the mysterious inner workings of the malaria parasite has revealed that it survives and proliferates in the human bloodstream thanks in part to a single, crucial chemical that the parasite produces internally. According to scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford Medical School, reporting ...

University of Florida researchers have modified a toxic chemical produced by tiny marine microbes and successfully deployed it against laboratory models of colon cancer. Writing August 31 in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, UF medicinal chemists describe how they took a generally lethal byproduct of marine cyanobacteria and made it more specifically ...

Bacterial cells of the bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) which is one of the causal agents of mastitis in dairy cows. Its large capsule protects the organism from attack by the cow’s immunological defenses. Magnified 50,000X. Freeze Drying Replication. Credit: Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC)

From SARS to swine flu, virus outbreaks can be unpredictable -- and devastating. But now a new application through the ubiquitous social networking site Facebook, developed in a Tel Aviv University lab, is poised to serve as a better indicator of how infections spread among populations. Dr. Gal Almogy and Prof. ...

The digestive system is home to a myriad of viruses, but how they are involved in health and disease is poorly understood. In a study published online August 30 in Genome Research, researchers have investigated the dynamics of virus populations in the human gut, shedding new light on the gut ...

Understanding how bacteria infect cells is crucial to preventing countless human diseases. In a recent breakthrough, scientists from the University of Bristol have discovered a new approach for studying molecules within their natural environment, opening the door to understanding the complexity of how bacteria infect people. The research, led by ...

A team of German and Canadian scientists has shown that today's plague pathogen has been around at least 600 years. The Black Death claimed the lives of one-third of Europeans in just five years from 1348 to 1353. Until recently, it was not certain whether the bacterium Yersinia pestis -- known ...

Probiotic bacteria have the potential to alter brain neurochemistry and treat anxiety and depression-related disorders according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research, carried out by Dr Javier Bravo, and Professor John Cryan at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in University College Cork, along with ...

University of Illinois scientists have engineered a new strain of yeast that converts seaweed into biofuel in half the time it took just months ago. That's a process that's important outside the Corn Belt, said Yong-Su Jin, a University of Illinois assistant professor of microbial genomics and a faculty member ...

The United Nations warned Monday of a possible resurgence of the deadly bird flu virus, saying wild bird migrations had brought it back to previously virus-free countries and that a mutant strain was spreading in Asia. A mutant strain of H5N1, which can apparently sidestep defenses of existing vaccines, is spreading ...

Researchers at Harvard work to edit the genome, with eye toward industrial uses It’s a branch of biology often defined as the quest to build life from scratch. Synthetic biology, the effort to engineer novel bacteria for useful purposes, holds the promise of lab-built organisms that could secrete biofuels or clean ...

Ever since scientists first began growing human cells in lab dishes in 1952, they have focused on improving the chemical soup that feeds the cells and helps regulate their growth. But surfaces also matter, says Laura Kiessling, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who observes that living ...

It may be possible to eliminate the deadly dengue fever by infecting mosquitoes with a bacterium called Wolbachia that prevents the mosquitoes from transmitting the dengue virus to humans. A new mathematical model, developed by Nick Barton (Institute of Science and Technology, Austria) and Michael Turelli (University of California, ...

This is a scanning electron micrograph of Plasmodium gallinaceum, which causes malaria in poultry, invading the midgut of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Credit: NIAID "Fighting Drug-Resistant Malaria" Rick Fairhurst and Others at NIAID Go Global By Kristofor Langlais, NICHD, for the NIH Catalyst (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Malaria/research/Pages/fightingMalaria.aspx)

Canadian researchers have discovered that a tumor cell marker is a receptor for measles virus, suggesting the possible use of measles virus to help fight cancer. Their findings appear in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens. Viruses cause infection by attaching to specific proteins on cell surfaces called receptors. Dr. Chris Richardson ...

The Food and Drug Administration has cleared a new diagnostic test that will help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of AIDS patients stricken with cryptococcosis, a fungal meningitis. The test was developed through a collaboration between Tom Kozel, professor of microbiology of the University of Nevada School of ...

Coriander oil has been shown to be toxic to a broad range of harmful bacteria. Its use in foods and in clinical agents could prevent food-borne illnesses and even treat antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the authors of a study published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The researchers from the University ...

One of many varieties of colorful lichens that grow on Ocotillo along the coast of Baja, Calif. Lichens are actually made up of two plants: an algae and a fungus, living in a symbiotic relationship. In desert environments, lichen will dry out completely and remain dormant until rain or dewfall provides ...

It’s summertime. And that means it’s also peak season at Oregon’s most visited caves. Many find it a perfect way to explore nature and beat the heat at the same time. But as thousands of cavers and tourists head underground, scientists are concerned about a deadly threat to ...

Apple growers in the eastern U.S. have a despised enemy known as apple scab — a disease caused by a fungus that forms ugly brown or greenish-black pockmarks on the fruit’s skin. A scabby apple is unfit for grocery stores because consumers are notoriously picky about blemished fruit. Growers have kept ...

All of us use water and in the process, a lot of it goes to waste. Whether it goes down drains, sewers or toilets, much of it ends up at a wastewater treatment plant where it undergoes rigorous cleaning before it flows back to the environment. The process takes time, ...

To help scientists understand how the Penicillium stoloniferum virus interacts with its hosts, and how it replicates and matures over its lifecycle, the virus structure was solved at the very high-resolution of 7.3 angstroms. Running the automated AUTO3DEM software on a San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) supercomputer, the full 3-D ...

Chronic infectious diseases like HIV survive by forming reservoirs. These small populations of a bacterium or virus persist despite attacks from the immune system or drug treatment. While these reservoirs are not always well understood, researchers believe they have begun to decode how a reservoir of infection can persist in HIV-positive ...

Researchers have discovered a key mechanism used by intestinal cells to defend themselves against one of the world's most common hospital-acquired bacterial infections -- a mechanism they think they can exploit to produce a therapy to protect against the effects of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The scientists made their discovery while investigating ...

Plants and fungi co-operate and trade with each other on a biological 'underground market', changing their trading partners if they don't get a fair deal. The finding was made by an international team, including Oxford University scientists, examining how plants trade energy-rich carbohydrate they make using photosynthesis for phosphorus fungi collect ...

From the Black Death to the measles, rapidly spreading diseases have taken a toll on humanity for centuries. Here's a look at the biggest and deadliest pandemics ever. A collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media. CLICK "SOURCE" TO VIEW IMAGE.

Bacteria from fecal material -- in particular, dog fecal material -- may constitute the dominant source of airborne bacteria in Cleveland's and Detroit's wintertime air, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The CU-Boulder study showed that of the four Midwestern cities in the experiment, two cities had significant ...

A team of Swinburne researchers has shown that low-temperature microwaves can be used to open up pores in bacterial cells, which could lead to significant improvements in the design of drug delivery systems. The study, co-authored by Dean of Swinburne’s Faculty of Life and Social Sciences Professor Russell Crawford, has ...

Winner from the 2008 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge presented in the Sept. 26, 2008 issue of Science. The winning photography entry, "Glass Forest," depicts at the microscale level a community of diatoms, unicellular algae characterized by a peculiar glass-like cell wall, attached to the basal segment of a marine invertebrate ...

A research team from Rollins College in Florida and the University of Georgia has identified human sewage as the source of the coral-killing pathogen that causes white pox disease of Caribbean elkhorn coral. Once the most common coral in the Caribbean, elkhorn coral was listed for protection under the United ...

New research shows how a brain parasite can manipulate rodent fear responses for the parasite's own benefit. The study, authored by Patrick House and Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University and released this week in PloS One, addressed how the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii makes infected rodents more likely ...

Marburg hemorrhagic fever (Marburg HF) is a rare, severe type of hemorrhagic fever which affects both humans and non-human primates. Caused by a genetically unique zoonotic (that is, animal-borne) RNA virus of the filovirus family, its recognition led to the creation of this virus family. The five subtypes of Ebola ...

As the gatekeepers of ion flow through cell membranes, ion channels are of key interest in numerous cellular processes. Now, a new study describes an innovative new computational model that realistically simulates the complex conditions found in biological systems and allows for a more accurate look at ion channel function ...

Researchers at the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), St. Paul's Hospital and the University of British Columbia have identified a new treatment target for a virus that causes severe lung infections and an estimated 10% of common colds. The virus, called human respiratory syncytial virus or ...

The Gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus are the most common pathogens in hospital-acquired infections. The costs related to infections caused by these strains in the hospital setting are enormous and represent a major healthcare burden. Furthermore, the more recent combination of extraordinary virulence and multiple antibiotic resistance in ...

A 16 year old Florida girl has died after a rare parasite infected her brain during a swim in a river near her home. Health officials have not determined a cause of death, but they suspect that Nash may have caught the parasite that causes the infection, amoebic encephalitis, during ...

Researchers in Singapore have re-engineered a harmless strain of bacteria to fight another common, drug-resistant microbe that spreads in hospitals and is deadly to patients with weak immune systems. To fight the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium, the scientists used a strain of the E.coli bacteria that is normally present in the human ...

Campylobacter bacteria are the number-one cause of food-related gastrointestinal illness in the United States. To learn more about this pathogen, ARS scientists are sequencing multiple Campylobacter genomes. This scanning electron microscope image shows the characteristic spiral, or corkscrew, shape of C. jejuni cells and related structures. Photo by De Wood; ...

Public awareness about the role and interaction of microbes is essential for promoting human and environmental health, said scientists presenting research at the Ecological Society of America's (ESA) 96th Annual Meeting. Researchers shed light on the healthy microbes of the human body, the prevention of mosquito-borne diseases in cities and ...

Salmonella cells have hijacked the protein-building process to maintain their ability to cause illness, new research suggests. Scientists say that these bacteria have modified what has long been considered typical cell behavior by using a beta form of an amino acid -- as opposed to an alpha form -- during ...

Viruses fill the ocean and have a significant effect on ocean biology, specifically marine microbiology, according to a professor of biology at UC Santa Barbara and his collaborators. Craig A. Carlson, professor with UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, is the senior author of a study of marine ...

An outbreak strain of Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes diarrhea and sometimes life-threatening inflammation of the colon, is common in Chicago-area acute care hospitals, an investigation published in the September issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology suggests. In response to Illinois Department of Public Health reports of rising rates ...

Thousands of tons of toxic mercury are released into the environment every year. Much of this collects in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, and enters the food chain ending up in the fish we eat. New research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology, ...

This microscopy image provided by Dr. Carl June, shows immune system T-cells, center, binding to beads which cause the cells to divide. The beads, depicted in yellow, are later removed, leaving pure T-cells which are then ready for infusion to the cancer patients. Scientists are reporting the first clear success ...

MidAmerica Nazarene University biology major Steffani Burks is conducting innovative research under the direction of biology professor Dr. Rion Taylor. The senior from Marshfield, Mo. is studying the effect of different wavelengths (or colors) of light on a certain bacteria. The goal is to gain new understanding and eventually publish ...

Poultry farmers who adopt organic practices and stop giving their birds antibiotics significantly reduce the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics in their flocks, according to a study released Wednesday. Public health experts have become increasingly concerned about germs becoming resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. In fact, an outbreak of salmonella ...

Algae-based fuel is one of many options among the array of possible future energy sources. New University of Virginia research shows that while algae-based transportation fuels produce high energy output with minimal land use, their production could come with significant environmental burdens. For farmers looking to maximize profits, algae would produce ...

Our bodies are perfectly capable of renewing billions of cells every day but fail miserably when it comes to replacing damaged organs such as kidneys. Using the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea -- famous for its capacity to regrow complete animals from minuscule flecks of tissue -- as an eloquent example, researchers ...

An antibody that mimics features of the influenza virus's entry point into human cells could help researchers understand how to fine-tune the flu vaccine to protect against a broad range of virus strains. Such protection could potentially reduce the need to develop, produce, and distribute a new vaccine for each ...

Thailand is facing a health crisis from antimicrobial resistance which could lead to a more complicated healthcare situation and higher costs in treating bacterial infections, health experts have warned. The National Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Centre monitored the situation at 28 hospitals nationwide during 2000-2010 and found worrying signs of antibiotic resistance ...

When you're a tiny creature in a vast ocean it pays to hang out with the right crowd, regardless of whether they are related to you or not, a new study into the amazingly diverse world of marine microbes has found. For bacteria at least, it seems that what matters more ...

Little brown bat; close-up of nose with fungus, New York, Oct. 2008. Credit: Photo courtesy Ryan von Linden/New York Department of Environmental Conservation What is white-nose syndrome? In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed several ...

For the whole first half of his 20-year practice, oral surgeon Dr. Eric Carlson saw one basic type of male mouth cancer patient. In file cabinet in his home office, he has thousands of slides: men in their 50s and 60s who were heavy smokers, heavy drinkers, hard livers. Many were ...

A clinical trial has shown that diagnostics company NanoLogix‘s (OTCBB: NNLX) rapid bacteria-detection test kits for Group B strep are, in fact, rapid. The trial at the University of Texas Health Science Center found that the company’s technology detects Group B Streptococcus (GBS) within four to six hours of incubation, according ...

Published in the Open-Access journal PloS Pathogens on August 4th, researchers showed that cells of the innate immune system are capable of "memory", and of mounting rapid protection to an otherwise lethal dose of live vaccinia virus. The study contests prior belief that only B cells and T cells are ...

The treatment of hepatitis C virus infections has taken a major step forward with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of two new drugs, telaprevir and boceprevir, for managing the disease. Blocking the same viral protein as the first ­anti-HIV drugs, they are also the latest chapter in an ...

There’s a course at Yale University in which undergraduates travel to the Amazon rain forest to collect fungi. The fungus samples are often nothing you’ve encountered. One of them, however, which will be featured in a paper accepted by a scientific journal, might solve the problem of polyurethane building up in ...

A new tick-borne bacterium infecting humans with ehrlichiosis has been discovered in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It was identified as a new strain of bacteria through DNA testing conducted at Mayo Clinic. The findings appear in the Aug. 4 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors at Mayo Clinic, the ...

Human skin is teeming with microbes -- communities of bacteria, many of which are harmless, live alongside the more infamous microbes sometimes found on the skin. Nina Rountree from North Carolina State University and colleagues set out to dispel the myth that all bacteria on the skin are disease-causing germs. ...

Voyage To Inner Space - Exploring the Seas With NOAA Collect Location: Southeast of Charleston, South Carolina Photo Date: 2003 August 10 Photographer: Jerry McLelland, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Credit: Charleston Bump Expedition 2003. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration; Dr. George Sedberry, South Carolina DNR, Principal Investigator

It's been called a crisis in amphibian biology: more than a third of amphibian species are at risk of extinction. Habitat loss and climate change are both causes, but so is an invasive disease that's been called the smallpox of the amphibian world. Researchers from D.C., Virginia, and Maryland recently ...

Many medical devices, ranging from artificial hip joints to dentures and catheters, can come with unwelcome guests – complex communities of microbial pathogens called biofilms that are resistant to the human immune system and antibiotics, thus proving a serious threat to human health. However, researchers may have a new way ...

Soil-dwelling bacteria of the genus Frankia have the potential to produce a multitude of natural products, including antibiotics, herbicides, pigments, anticancer agents, and other useful products, according to an article in the June 2011 issue of the journal "Applied and Environmental Microbiology." University of New Hampshire professor of microbiology and ...

All known biological sensory systems, including the familiar examples of the five human senses -- vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch -- have one thing in common: when exposed to a sustained change in sensory input, the sense eventually acclimates and notices subsequent changes without continuing to compare each new ...

A new species of toxic microalgae, which produces ciguatoxins, has been discovered by researchers at Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) in the Canary Islands. This is the first one that has been described in Spain and is probably responsible for the cases of ciguatera that have been recorded in Canary ...

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green). Avian influenza A viruses do not usually infect humans; however, several instances of human infections and outbreaks have been reported since 1997. When such infections occur, public health authorities monitor ...

There has been an increase in the number of Shigella bacteria illnesses in Saskatchewan over the past few months. Officials with the Ministry of Health say 10 to 15 cases are normally reported in the province each year but in the last four months, 13 cases have been recorded, mostly in ...

The future of regenerative medicine lies in harnessing the potential of the human body to renew and repair itself. Now, scientists at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), the world’s first bioengineering and nanotechnology research institute, have developed a new genetic engineering technique that promises safer stem cell therapy ...

Salmonella is a gram-negative, rod-shaped bacilli that can cause diarrheal illness in humans. They are microscopic living creatures that pass from the feces of people or animals to other people or other animals. The Salmonella family includes over 2,300 serotypes of bacteria which are one-celled organisms too small to be seen ...

The recent outbreak of E. coli infections that began in Germany sickened more than 4,000 people in 16 countries and caused an unusually high number of cases of hemolytic-uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication that destroys red blood cells and damages the kidney. An international team of researchers seeking to understand ...

When miners abandoned Michigan's Copper Country, they left a lot of the red metal behind, and not in a good way. Waste from the mining operations still contains a high fraction of copper, so high that almost nothing can grow on it -- and hasn't for decades, leaving behind moonscape ...

Individual bacteria in this photo are oblong and colored brown. As an alternative to using antibiotics for fighting E. coli infections in newborn and weaned pigs, scientists are finding promising results from introducing mixes of beneficial bacteria, obtained from other pigs, into the gut of young pigs. Photo by Eric ...

There's bad news in the fight against the "superbug" methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. A gene that gives the bacteria resistance to important antibiotics can easily spread, according to a study published in a scientific journal last week. The gene, called cfr, carries a slight to negligible "fitness cost" for ...

Over the past 30 years, around 200 species of amphibians have disappeared due to chytridiomycosis, a fungal infection. The scientific community has attempted to fight the pathogen, without success. Now, an international research group has reviewed every technique in order to prevent the effects of this disease and local extinctions. Click ...

Application of the mycopathogen, Beauveria Bassina, that make spores to introduce a fungus on tarnished plant bugs as an alternative to chemical control. Research and develop microbial control strategies for tarnished plant bugs on alternate hosts using entomopathogenic fungi. (http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/docs.htm?docid=7580) Photo credit: USDA

The Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong has confirmed that a dog has tested positive for hendra virus. Queensland chief veterinary officer, Dr Rick Symons, says it's an unprecedented situation. "This is the first time outside of a laboratory that an animal other than a flying fox or a horse, ...

Jacinta Conrad, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston, likens her research into how bacteria move to "tracking bright spots on a dark background." Using a digital camera affixed to a microscope, Conrad and her collaborators videotape hours of moving bacteria. They then analyze ...

Maryse Lebrun, Research Director at Inserm, and her fellow researchers at the Laboratoire Dynamique des interactions membranaires normales et pathologiques (CNRS, France), have characterised a protein complex that allows the agents that cause malaria and toxoplasmosis to infect host cells. This is a highly original mechanism, since the parasite supplies ...

A recent study by researchers at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and the Oregon State University provides strong evidence that mitochondria share a common evolutionary ancestor with a lineage of marine bacteria known as SAR11, arguably the most abundant group of microorganisms on Earth. Billions of years ago, an astounding evolutionary ...

Eggs of Hymenolepis diminuta. These eggs are round or slightly oval, size 70 - 85 µm X 60 - 80 µm, with a striated outer membrane and a thin inner membrane. The space between the membranes is smooth or faintly granular. The oncosphere has six hooks. There ...

In a significant discovery that can be a major breakthrough in biotechnology, Indian mycologists have discovered fungi spores, considered as being able to withstand a temperature of 100-115 degrees celsius. Spores are reproductive cells capable of developing into a new individual without fusion with another reproductive cell. The team ...

A new target for nitric oxide has been revealed in studies of how it inhibits the growth of Salmonella. This bacterium is a common cause of food-poisoning. "Nitric oxide is naturally produced in the nose and the gut and other tissues in the body to ward off infection," explained the ...

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered a way to block the damaging actions of Chlamydia, the bacteria responsible for the largest number of sexually transmitted infections in the United States. The team, which included Duke University microbiologists and chemists, designed a molecule that takes away the bacteria's self-defense ...

The collaborative atmosphere that surrounded the public release of genome sequences in the early weeks of this year's European Escherichia coli outbreak has turned into a race for peer-reviewed publication. A paper published in PLoS One today, by Dag Harmsen from the University of Münster, Germany, and his colleagues, contains the ...

Microbiologists have uncovered a sneaky trick by the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa to oust rivals. It deploys a toxin delivery machine to breach cell walls of competitors without hurting itself. Its means of attack helps it survive in the outside environment and may even help it cause infection. P. aeruginosa is a ...

Frogs might be cute to look at but they might be hazardous to your children's health, which is why The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning parents to keep young kids away from water frogs and their habitats. At least 241 people in the United States were sickened ...

The Chesapeake Bay houses a huge diversity of fish, birds, plants, and mammals. But to understand this vital habitat, University of Delaware scientists studied its tiniest inhabitants -- viruses -- and found that they play an extremely important role in the workings of the ecosystem. The research, published in the ...

Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium known to cause peptic ulcers, is also the primary cause of gastric cancer, which is a leading cancer killer globally. A large clinical trial at seven sites across Latin America has now found that a standard three-drug regimen for treating H. pylori is more effective, at least ...

Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections are caused primarily by a single strain—USA300—of an evolving bacterium that has spread with “extraordinary transmissibility” throughout the United States during the past five years, according to a new study led by National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists. CA-MRSA, an emerging public health concern, ...

A gene in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria that confers multidrug resistance faces only a low barrier to spreading, according to a new study published in a scientific journal Tuesday. The gene, called cfr, carries a slight "fitness cost" in the absence of the antibiotics it protects against, according to ...

By altering the genetic makeup of normally "unexcitable" cells, Duke University bioengineers have turned them into cells capable of generating and passing electrical current. This proof-of-concept advance could have broad implications in treating diseases of the nervous system or the heart, since these tissues rely on cells with the ability to ...

This image depicts a number of what were “suspected” smallpox scab fragments, from the archives of the Virginia Historical Society (VHS). These fragments came to light when the Museum was in the process of putting together an exhibit entitled, “Bizarre Bits”, chronicling its collection dating back as far as 1831. These ...

Australia is in the grip of a grim flu outbreak, with the number of influenza cases four times higher than a year ago. Experts believe the rise could be linked to the sudden deluge of wet weather and floods earlier this year when there was an unusually high number of flu ...

Despite ongoing battles over state laws governing raw milk, the number of states allowing on-farm or retail sales of raw milk for human consumption remains the same now as three years ago, according to a recent survey conducted by the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. Raw milk is milk ...

Mathematical modeling of infectious diseases is an important tool in the understanding and prediction of epidemics. Knowledge of social interactions is used to understand how infectious diseases spread through populations and how to control epidemics. New research published in BMC Medicine shows that a model, which included dynamic information about ...

Rice University scientists have defined the structure -- down to the atomic level -- of a virus that causes juvenile diarrhea. The research may help direct efforts to develop medications that block the virus before it becomes infectious. The new paper by Professor Yizhi Jane Tao, postdoctoral researcher Jinhui Dong and ...

Under a low magnification of 5X, this photograph depicted a number of Legionella pneumophila colonies that had been cultivated on Feeley-Gorman (FG) agar. Note the “cut-glass” appearance displayed by the round, off-white colored colonies. FG agar is used particularly in the cultivation of Legionella spp. bacteria, and is composed of ...

In the wake of May's European E. coli outbreak, microbiologists worldwide have sped up efforts to prevent a similar disaster from happening again. Among them, a team of collaborators from universities in the U.S. and Canada may be on the trail of a tiny protein that could render E. coli ...

The numbers of people becoming infected with measles and water-borne diseases is growing at an alarming rate in the Horn of Africa and some neighboring countries, says WHO (World Health Organization). Cases of severe diarrhea in Kenya and Ethiopia are a serious concern, the organization adds. Severe drought in the Horn ...

Two strains of Streptococcus bacteria, that have evolved to cause potentially fatal infections in either horses or humans, use the same box of tricks to cause disease. Exploiting their genetic similarities could lead to novel vaccines for both man and beast, according to a review published in the Journal of ...

Feared by realtors and homeowners alike, dry rot due to the fungus Serpula lacrymans causes millions of dollars worth of damage to homes and buildings around the world. This brown rot fungus' capacity to break down the cellulose in wood led to its selection for sequencing by the U.S. Department ...

A novel virus that spread through a California monkey colony in late 2009 also infected a human researcher and a family member, UCSF researchers have found, the first known example of an adenovirus "jumping" from one species to another and remaining contagious after the jump. In a study by the UCSF ...

Viruses are the most abundant parasites on Earth. Well known viruses, such as the flu virus, attack human hosts, while viruses such as the tobacco mosaic virus infect plant hosts. More common, but less understood, are cases of viruses infecting bacteria known as bacteriophages, or phages. In part, this is due ...

This digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted large numbers of Gram-positive Enterococcus faecalis sp. bacteria. “Enterococci, leading causes of nosocomial bacteremia, surgical wound infection, and urinary tract infection, are becoming resistant to many and sometimes all standard therapies. New rapid surveillance methods are highlighting the importance of examining enterococcal isolates at ...

Hospitals struggle to prevent the infections that complicate treatment for cancer, joint replacement, heart surgery and other conditions. Hospital-acquired infections are often resistant to multiple antibiotics, leading to approximately 100,000 deaths and more than $30 billion in additional health care costs yearly. New drugs are being developed to combat these ...

With few leads to go on, researchers pursue the childhood malady nodding syndrome. The boy was perhaps seven or eight, although he could have been older: among other things, the disease that afflicts him stunts growth. When a seizure began, his mother summoned Sudhir Bunga, who found the boy sitting under ...

This digitally-colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) revealed the presence of hepatitis B virions. The large round virions are known as Dane particles. Hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. Toxins, certain drugs, some diseases, heavy alcohol use, and bacterial and viral infections can all cause hepatitis. Hepatitis is also the name ...

Purdue University biologists identified a new way in which bacteria hijack healthy cells during infection, which could provide a target for new antibiotics. Zhao-Qing Luo, the associate professor of biological sciences who led the study, said the team discovered a new enzyme used by the bacterium Legionella pneumophila - which ...

A study the latest issue of Nature Cell Biology sheds light on the mechanism controlling telomere length in budding yeast. In this publication, scientists from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research could show that telomere localization is influenced by post-translational modifications of telomeric proteins. In the absence of these ...

Adjuvanted vaccines used during the 2009 swine flu pandemic did not increase the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome substantially, if at all, finds a large Europe-wide study published online in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). An adjuvant is a substance added to a vaccine to stimulate the immune system to respond ...

Authorities have confirmed another horse has died from the hendra virus, this time in far north Queensland. Thirty other horses have been quarantined on the property west of Cairns, which is owned by Liberal National Party candidate Michael Trout. Queensland's chief biosecurity officer Dr Jim Thompson says the animal that died yesterday ...

OU researchers work to help battle the scarlet fever outbreak in Hong Kong that is blamed on a mutant germ. The disease recently killed two children in Hong Kong and has sickened more than 9,000 throughout China. Click "source" for entire article.

A Guelph General Hospital patient died over the weekend with C. difficile he acquired at the facility. As well, the hospital confirmed Monday that it has two additional patients with hospital-acquired C. difficile. “The cause of the death is being directly linked to C. difficile,” said Richard Ernst, the hospital’s president ...

Johns Hopkins expert calls for testing and mandatory reporting A Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert is calling for all sexually active American women age 40 and older to get tested for the parasite Trichomonas vaginalis after new study evidence found that the sexually transmitted disease (STD) is more than twice as ...

Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen have discovered why malaria parasites are able to hide from the immune defences of expectant mothers, allowing the parasite to attack the placenta. The discovery is an important part of the efforts researchers are making to understand this frequently fatal disease and ...

Just as corn and peanuts stunned the world decades ago with their then-newly discovered multi-beneficial uses and applications, Texas AgriLife Research scientists in Corpus Christi think microalgae holds even more promise. "It's a huge, untapped source of fuel, food, feed, pharmaceuticals and even pollution-busters," said Dr. Carlos Fernandez, a crop physiologist ...

An automatic and portable detector that takes just fifteen minutes to analyze a sample suspected of contamination with anthrax is being developed by US researchers. The technology amplifies any anthrax DNA present in the sample and can reveal the presence of just 40 microscopic cells of the deadly bacteria Bacillus ...

In 1840, renowned English botanist George Gardner reported a strange sight from the streets of Vila de Natividade in Brazil: A group of boys playing with a glowing object that turned out to be a luminescent mushroom. They called it "flor-de-coco," and showed Gardner where it grew on decaying fronds ...

Infection with the gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori provides reliable protection against allergy-induced asthma, immunologists from the University of Zurich have demonstrated in an animal model together with allergy specialists from the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Their results published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation ...

The EFSA Task Force established to coordinate investigations to track down the possible source of the French and German outbreaks of E. coli O104:H4 has concluded that one lot of fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt and used to produce sprouts is the most likely common link between the two outbreaks. ...

Key weapons in the fight against malaria, pyrethroid insecticides, are losing their edge. Over the past decade, billions of dollars have been spent on distributing long-lasting pyrethroid-treated bed nets and on indoor spraying. Focused in Africa, where most malaria deaths occur, these efforts have greatly reduced the disease's toll. But ...

Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of a rapid and accurate test to tell the difference between bacterial and viral infections. Those common afflictions often have similar symptoms but vastly different treatments - antibiotics work for bacterial infections but not for viruses. The report appears in ACS' journal Analytical ...

A powerful new class of therapeutics, known as recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines (RASV), holds great potential in the fight against fatal diseases including hepatitis B, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, AIDS and pneumonia. Now, Qingke Kong and his colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, have developed a technique ...

Modern techniques can cut the number of animals used and improve data quality. Scientists are increasingly turning to non-invasive imaging to further the '3Rs' of work in animals — replacement, refinement and reduction. Although the use of animals in modern medicine and biology is essential, researchers are actively working to reduce ...

Joined-up approach would have helped in German E. coli outbreak. Germany is still recovering from one of the world's worst outbreaks of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli, which as of 18 June had sickened more than 3,200 people and caused 39 deaths1. The unusually deadly bacteria moved undetected through the food supply from ...

CHILDREN could be vaccinated with bacteria mixed in milk and people in the developing world given unprecedented access to immunisations under a scheme proposed by an Australian Nobel laureate, Barry Marshall. Professor Marshall believes various strains of Helicobacter pylori - the bacterium that won him his Nobel Prize, when he helped ...

The use of a recombinant bacterial vector vaccine is an attractive vaccination strategy to induce an immune response to a carried protective antigen. The superiorities of live bacterial vectors include mimicry of a natural infection, intrinsic adjuvant properties, and the potential for administration by mucosal routes. Escherichia coli is a ...