MicrobeWorld

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 a staph infec... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove,  Read More

A group of scientists based at several institutions in the US and beyond are getting set to kick off a crowdsourcing study called the "American Gut Project," aimed at assessing gut microbial communities in 10,000 or more individuals in the US in relation to their diet and lifestyle.

"The big ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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. T. Lebedev an... Read More

La mayoría de la población se imagina que la Amazonía y otros bosques tropicales son los mayores productores de oxigeno en nuestro planeta; sin e... Read More

Fido the dog and Ginger the cat need not worry about being replaced by a new baby — in fact, they could be helping parents raise healthier children.

A new study finds that children who lived with dogs or cats during their first year of life got sick less frequently than kids from pet-free zon... Read More

Hemorrhagic fevers are among the most graphic viral diseases, inspiring movies, novels, and a general fear of infection. They are characterized by an abrupt onset and a striking clinical course involving bleeding from the nose and mouth, vomiting with blood, and bloody diarrhea. The most famous ... Read More

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 efficac... Read More

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 ... Read More

Honeybees the world over are susceptible to the bacterial disease called "foulbrood", which can wipe out a hive faster than beekeepers can react to the infection. In the U.S., beekeepers have kept the disease at bay with regular preventive applications of the antibiotic oxytetracycline. Given wh... Read More

Jim Lahey, the founder of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, wanted to find out which organisms inhabited his sourdough and produced its tantalizing sulfuric aroma.

Meanwhile, in the East Village test kitchen of the Momofuku restaurants, David Chang and Dan Felder were fermenting pork tender... Read More

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 soli... Read More

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 i... Read More

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 hemorrhag... Read More

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.
C... Read More

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 ... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and W. Ian Lipkin

Vincent and Ian review a ... Read More

It's time to get your flu shot. Or is it?

The answer to that question depends on whom you ask.

The sign in the pharmacy window might suggest flu season is already here, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging everyone at least 6 months old to get a dose of prevention "... Read More

Suzanne writes:

Your most recent TWIV in Nebraska made me want to add a few verses to that old kids’ song…

“There’s a virus in the alga in the paramecium on the speck on the flea on the wart on the frog on the bump on the log in the hole in th... Read More