MicrobeWorld

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.

A... Read More

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 h... Read More

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... Read More

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 ... Read More

The World Health Organization says no evidence has emerged to show that a type of bird flu which has killed two Chinese men can be transmitted between people.

Two men in Shanghai, aged 87 and 27, fell sick in late February. A woman in Anhui province also contracted the virus in early March an... Read More

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 animal... Read More

Glowing bacteria inside squids use light and chemical signals to control circadian-like rhythms in the animals, according to a study to be published on April 2 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, houses... Read More

Doctors say the discovery of a 4-year-old carrier of the H7N9 bird flu virus who shows no symptoms of the potentially lethal virus is a worrying development that could make the spread of the infection more difficult to monitor.

The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau said the boy was detected fro... Read More

Michael Pollan, food author, activist and journalism professor, wrote this week’s cover story about the organisms with which we share our bodies — and how we’re dependent on them. His book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation” came out last month. His last article for the magazine was ab... Read More

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a medical instrument that will be able to quickly detect a suite of biothreat agents, including anthrax, ricin, botulinum, shiga and SEB toxin.

The device, once developed, approved by the Food and Drug Administration and commercialize... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 amphib... Read More

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 35-year-old woman in C... Read More

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 e... Read More

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 transfer modes of m... Read More

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 n... Read More

Health officials say they still don't understand how a lesser-known bird flu virus was able to kill two men and seriously sicken a woman in China, but that it's unlikely that it can spread easily among humans.

Two men in Shanghai became the first known human fatalities from the H7N9 bird flu ... Read More

In 2008 researchers from the University of Southern Denmark showed that the drug thioridazine, which has previously been used to treat schizophrenia, is also a powerful weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococci (Staphylococcus aureus).

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is... Read More

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, an... Read More

Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst report their findings at the 113th General Meeting of the A... Read More