MicrobeWorld

The Obama administration is finalizing guidelines that would scale back when the federal government recommends closing schools in response to the swine flu pandemic, several people involved in the deliberations said Monday.

More targeted guidance would mark a change in the government's approa... Read More

What is it? Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacteria that causes bubonic plague, the Black Death that killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe in the 14th century. Bubonic plague is usually transmitted by flea bites.

How does it develop? Pneumonic plague occurs when the bacteria... Read More

Deadly parasite jumped to humans from chimpanzees, perhaps through 1 mosquito

Irvine, Calif. – Researchers have identified what they believe is the original source of malignant malaria: a parasite found in chimpanzees in equatorial Africa.

UC Irvine biologist Francisco Ayala and colleagues... Read More

Biomolecular computers, made of DNA and other biological molecules, only exist today in a few specialized labs, remote from the regular computer user. Nonetheless, Tom Ran and Shai Kaplan, research students in the lab of Prof. Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute's Biological Chemistry, and Co... Read More

A virus discovered last year in a rare form of skin cancer has also been found in people with the second most common form of skin cancer among Americans, according to researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

Th... Read More

Researchers at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health are working with Argentina's National Institute of Infectious Diseases, the National Administration of Laboratories and Health Institutes (ANLIS), and Roche 454 Life Sciences to deco... Read More

France’s shellfish industry is dealing with a crisis for the second year in a row, as an unexplained ailment has decimated stocks of young oysters, AFP reported.

French oyster farmers saw between 40 and 100 percent of their baby oysters wiped out in 2008, which is considered much higher than ... Read More

The Mercury, the Pottstown, PA, local/regional paper recently published a podcast about the use of antibiotics on Pennsylvania's dairy farms. You can listen to the embedded mp3 below. The interview is with Robert Martin of the Pew Environmental Group.
{mp3remote}http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/... Read More

Brightly coloured birds can become infected with bacteria that eat their feathers.

That in turn can affect the health of the birds and dull their plumage.

The discovery comes from a study that found that 99% of all Eastern bluebirds surveyed in Virginia, US were infected with feather-degra... Read More

With the H1N1 flu pandemic on the loose, the spectre of an unvaccinated doctor or nurse has ignited an old debate: Should flu vaccines -- and specifically the H1N1 shot -- be mandatory for health workers?

The Association of Local Public Health Agencies in Ontario thinks so. Already on record... Read More

Researchers at Emory University are using a new and faster method of rapidly producing highly targeted monoclonal antibodies for use in diagnostic tests as well as a temporary therapy to stave off infectious diseases such as the H1N1 (swine flu) virus.

Rafi Ahmed, PhD, director of the Emory V... Read More

A team of scientists have reported the successful isolation of genetically diverse Marburg viruses from a common species of African fruit bat (Egyptian fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus). A paper published in the open-access science journal PLoS Pathogens provides new insight into the identity of... Read More

In their most recent experiments with Geobacter, the sediment-loving microbe whose hairlike filaments help it to produce electric current from mud and wastewater, Derek Lovley and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst supervised the evolution of a new strain that dramatically inc... Read More

A recent study published earlier this week from Washington State University suggests Nosema ceranae, a unicellular parasite, and pesticides embedded in old honeycombs are two major contributors to the bee disease known as colony collapse disorder. Now, the first descriptive epizootiological surv... Read More

"An international panel of scientists has agreed to a bar-code standard for plant DNA that will allow the precise identification of most of Earth's 300,000 species of plants, according to a research report due to be published this week.

The agreement is expected to generate a wide range of be... Read More

A recently published paper in Nature Medicine reports that a new strain of HIV has jumped from gorillas to humans. So far, only one person, a 62-year-old French woman from Cameroon, has been found to be infected with the virus, which closely resembles strains of simian immunodeficiency virus (SI... Read More

Officers with the U.S. Marshals Service have seized all skin sanitizers and skin protectants, including ingredients and components, at Clarcon Biological Chemistry Laboratory's facility in Roy, Utah, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The FDA also warned the public Saturday not to use any... Read More

Scientific American has a great read on how Ophiocordyceps unilateralis takes control of ants as way to create an ideal growing environment for the fungus.

"A tropical fungus has adapted to infect ants and force them to chomp, with surprising specificity, into perfectly located leaves before ... Read More

"A microscopic pathogen and pesticides embedded in old honeycombs are two major contributors to the bee disease known as colony collapse disorder, which has wiped out thousands of beehives throughout the United States and Europe over the past three years, new research at Washington State Univers... Read More

Scientists studying Staphylococcus bacteria, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), have discovered a potent staph toxin responsible for disease severity. They also found the gene for the toxin traveling with a genetic component of Staphylococcus that controls resistance to antibiotic... Read More