MicrobeWorld

Another story in the good-for-mice category, but it is interesting to see how researchers are 'souping up' the body's innate immunity to combat MRSA. Read More

For years, rotting seaweed has been causing E. coli contamination at a Michigan beach... now public officials have a novel idea; remove it. Read More

Martin de Smet , leader of the Médecins Sans Frontières malaria working group, has published a letter in the New Scientist claiming malaria is developing alarming resistance to artemisinins, especially in Cambodia, and that the world needs to pay closer attention to this situation.

Artemisini... Read More

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

The New Scientist has an interesting article about the amount of AIDS-HIV denialism that is present on the internet and who the people are that support this perspective.

"It is tempting to dismiss the so-called AIDS denialism movement out of hand, but it has a strong internet presence, with a... Read More

Researchers from the newly-established VGTI Florida and the University of Montreal have uncovered a possible method for eradicating HIV infection in the human body. The researchers have also revealed new information which demonstrates how HIV persists in the body - even in patients receiving dru... Read More

A new study suggests that vaccination with 1918 H1N1 influenza virus-like particles not only protected mice and ferrets against the lethal 1918 influenza virus, but also displayed cross-reactive immunity against the potentially pandemic H5N1 influenza virus. The researchers from the National Ce... Read More

In a new study researchers from Japan suggest that a synthetic antimicrobial peptide identified as L5 may prevent death in mice suffering from life-threatening bacterial infections, such as MRSA, by activating the host immune response. They report their findings in the June 2009 issue of the jo... Read More

Researchers from Georgia suggest that the cell-signaling protein, interferon type 1, reduced H5N1 influenza virus replication in mice and may offer some degree of protection in the early stages of infection. They report their findings in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of Virology. Read More

The City of Austin, Texas, has given it's official stamp of approval to carpenter David Bailey who has created a composting toilet that "flushes" with sawdust and relies on bacteria to transform human waste into soil.

"Known as a composting toilet, the East Austin commode relies on the alchem... Read More

Researchers in Britain have sucessfully tested a way to get mosquitoes to bring pesticide back to their eggs, similar to how honeybees pollinate flowers. Please, please let this work. Read More

Nestle's U.S. baking division said on Friday that it was voluntarily recalling its Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products after the FDA announced they are investigating reports of illnesses caused by E. coli O157:H7 in consumers who also reported having eaten raw cookie dough. Since March... Read More

Rhode Island Hospital infectious diseases specialist Leonard Mermel, DO, hypothesizes in a letter to the editor in the journal The Lancet that the swine influenza H1N1 strain circulating now may have enough similarity to the previously circulating H1N1 strain known as the Russian Flu in the 1970... Read More

This week the Scientific American team will join their Nature Publishing Group (NPG) colleagues in the existing NPG offices in Varick Street, New York City. The office move marks a major step in the integration of two of Macmillan Publishers' most dynamic publishing units. Scientific American wi... Read More

On 17 April, Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was called in to help diagnose a cluster of cases of serious respiratory illness of unknown cause in Mexico. This was molecular virologist Yan Li's forte; his team was the first to identify and report the SARS coronavi... Read More

In episode 37 of This Week in Virology, hosts Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove and guest Read More

Wired magazine has put together an 8-part image gallery that matches the extremophile microbe with it's environment.

"Once upon a time, scientists routinely found life in places where it wasn’t supposed to exist. That doesn’t happen anymore, and not because the pace of discovery has s... Read More

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

It’s common knowledge that a protective navy of bacteria normally floats in our intestinal tracts. Antibiotics at least temporarily disturb the normal balance. But it’s unclear which antibiotics are the most disruptive, and if the full array of “good bacteria” return promptly or remain altered f... Read More

"As manufacturers add the microbes to everything from infant formula and fruit juice to pizza, muffins and granola bars, experts caution that the word "probiotic" is widely misused by the industry and misunderstood by consumers.

While there are thousands of bacterial strains, only a few dozen... Read More