MicrobeWorld

Roughly 100,000 years ago, human evolution reached a mysterious bottleneck: Our ancestors had been reduced to perhaps five to ten thousand individuals living in Africa. In time, "behaviorally modern" humans would emerge from this population, expanding dramatically in both number and range, and r... Read More

In 1899, the country's microbiologists, or bacteriologists as they were known then, were focused on an outbreak of bubonic plague in New York harbor. As if that weren't enough, ongoing concerns prevailed about farm animal diseases being transmissible to humans through dairy and meat products. An... Read More

Science journalist and writer Carl Zimmer has a humorous post on how some journalists are attempting to tie the recent spate of cannibal attacks in the news to Toxoplasma gondii or other various parasites and microbes, and dispels the myths with some basic fact checking.

"In the past few week... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More

Peter writes:

Dear TWiM Team

I see that some action is now being taken in America against the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics as livestock growth promoters:

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Boasting more than 39,000 members worldwide – representing 26 disciplines along with a division dedicated to microbiology educators – ASM is a major actor in microbiological sciences. Professor David C Hooper MD, President of the Society, highlights the breadth of their influence


Could you... Read More

A simple, cheap dose of zinc helps the recovery of newborns suffering from bacterial infections such as pneumonia and meningitis, according to an Indian study reported on Thursday in The Lancet.

Doctors gave 10-milligram daily supplements of zinc to 332 babies who were being given antibiotic ... Read More

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 pos... Read More

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), poised to start testing beef trim for six non-O157 strains of pathogenic Escherichia coli next week, today released documents that spell out some expectations for the program and make clear that much remains to be learned about the risk.

In a notice to... Read More

This episode: Ant-zombie fungal parasite is counter-parasitized by another fungus!

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Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Read More

Kurt writes:

Dear Vincent,

Sorry I missed your visit to NU- my teaching duties in Evanston prevented it!

Several of my students attended both and had good reports all around. Your work on ISGs sounds like it is coming along well.

I just today l... Read More

Computer-designed proteins are under construction to fight the flu. Researchers are demonstrating that proteins found in nature, but that do not normally bind the flu, can be engineered to act as broad-spectrum antiviral agents against a variety of flu virus strains, including H1N1 pandemic infl... Read More

At an upcoming art exhibit, glowing images of heavenly objects — stars, galaxies, nebulae and remnants of supernovae — will have unusual frames: the clear rims of Petri dishes, the sort typically used to grow microbes.

There's no coincidence here. The images of these astronomical structures h... Read More

A TEAM from Murdoch University, The Australian Institute of Marine Science and James Cook University, examined the diversity and community structure of coral related bacteria on Ningaloo Reef before and after coral spawning.

Using DNA sequencing, three coral species Acropora tenuis, Pocillopo... Read More

Scientists at the University of Leeds are exploring ways to use magnetic bacteria to build biocomputers of the future. Meanwhile, another group of researchers, reporting in Science, write that they have unearthed deep-sea microbe that live off nutrients from the dinosaur age.

This NPR segment... Read More

It may not be the latest style in bovine bling, but researchers at Princeton University say a golden tattoo attached to a cow’s tooth could one day tell you something about your health.

The remote sensing device has the ability to detect a single bacterium, and to demonstrate, scientists at P... Read More

It’s all over the news: a healthy young woman in Georgia has been attacked by “Flesh Eating Bacteria.” Thankfully, she’s finally off of a ventilator. She’s still critically ill, even after undergoing several heroic surgical procedures to remove dead tissue. There will be a lot of rehab in her fu... Read More

Men’s offices have more bacteria than women’s offices.

Not only that: Offices in New York City house more bacteria than those in San Francisco.

These are among the findings of a new study in the journal PLoS One that looks at bacteria in more than 90 offices in three cities — San Francisc... Read More

In episode 61 of MicrobeWorld Video, filmed at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting in Vancouver, Canada on February 17th, 2012, Dr. Stan Maloy talks with Read More