MicrobeWorld

" An unexpected characteristic has emerged among many swine flu victims who become severely ill: They are fat."

"Doctors tracking the pandemic say they see a pattern in hospital reports from Glasgow to Melbourne and from Santiago to New York. People infected with the bug who have a body mass ... Read More

A paper in Nature reports that the antibiotic, rapamycin, currently used for suppressing the immune system in transplant patients and for treating some cancers, has the amazing attribute of extending the life span of mice

However, the NY Times reports that "the researchers do not know how rap... Read More

A new survey published by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the American Association for the Advancement of Science checks the pulse of how scientists and the public view the field of science. For example:

17% of the public thinks that U.S. scientific achievements rate a... Read More

Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have devised a laboratory test for predicting whether microbicides against HIV are safe for human use. The researchers have also discovered why several supposedly "safe" microbicides made women more susceptible to HIV infect... Read More

This recent paper prevents evidence that microbes (Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae) can evolve to anticipate environmental change. They show that pre-exposure to a stimulus that usually occurs before a second stimulus (i.e. lactose before maltose in E. coli) will improve the abilit... Read More

German and Slovakian researchers are attempting to solve two problems at once, the volatile market for grain waste and the growing demand for biofuel.

Not to long ago beer manufacturers in Europe simply sold their waste to farmers who either fed it to their animals or used it as fertilizer, "... Read More

Merry Youle from From the Small Things Considered Blog points readers to an article by Hans-Dieter Görtz on the fascinating relationships between ciliates and bacteria.

"Organisms such as ciliates that dine daily on bacteria run the risk of getting an infection. Indeed, ciliates—large, comple... Read More

DOE JGI Genome Biology head Nikos Kyrpides believes that science as a whole would benefit from the introduction of common standards for genomic data collection and analysis. In fact, he believes the lack of shared standards is currently hurting research, compromising data during critical procedu... Read More

In an article in the journal Cell, researchers discussed how they recently identified one mechanism used by mycobacterium tuberculosis to resist the immune system. Apparently TB can remain latent in someone's system for decades, resisting mutagens produced by the macrophage where it lives. Tough... Read More

'Late blight,' which actually appears early in the tomato growing season, is expected to hit hard this year. The fungal infection is actually the same on that destroyed entire potato crops in Ireland during the 1840's, and our cool, wet, cloudy spring is expected to create a particularly nasty o... Read More

An interesting example of how resiliant bacteria can be; a strain of Listeria has taken root at a Williamsburg cheese factory. In 2004 inspectors collected a test sample of bacteria that turns out ot be the same strain as that just collected. Basically, despite disinfection attempts, a strain es... Read More

In local news for MicrobeWorld, Vibrio infections in the Chesapeake Bay area are on the rise and several groups think this is the EPA's fault for not cleaning up the Bay properly. Read More

Apparently humans can transmit the pandemic strain A/H1N1 on to pigs. Early in the scare, we were worried that humans could catch the virus from pigs, but apparently a human-to-pig scenario is far more likely. Does anyone else thing that we owe pigs an apology (Especially Egypt)? Read More

Vegetales que vacunan
Se está probando un nuevo método para suministrar vacunas: introducirlas en vegetales genéticamente modificados para que estos puedan ser utilizados como v... Read More

Here's a quick and fun 12 question science quiz. Click on the "source" link above and see how you stack up against the American public according to a study released by the Pew Research Center.

Once completed you can also view the full report which states amongst other interesting findings th... Read More

"Professor Lewis Wolpert and Dr Rupert Sheldrake, have set up a wager on the predictive value of the genome. Professor Wolpert believes that all biological phenomena can in principle be explained in terms of DNA, proteins and other molecules, together with their interactions. He is convinced tha... Read More

Obesity is definitely an epidemic in our society, even around the world. Scientists at The Forsyth Institute have discovered a link between certain oral bacteria and obesity. I can't imagine that it's the entire explanation for overweight people, but there could definitely be some causality. Wha... Read More

An editorial published in Nature 460, 152 (9 July 2009) entitled "How to Stop Blogging" considers how to handle attendees who blog presentations of research for public view and the policy options meeting conveners are exploring.

Despite the title of the editorial, in the body of the piece is ... Read More

"Self-assembling and self-organizing systems are the Holy Grails of nanotechnology, but nature has been producing such systems for millions of years. A team of scientists has taken a unique look at how thousands of bacterial membrane proteins are able to assemble into clusters that direct cell m... Read More

Corn Amylase is a genetically modified crop developed by the Swiss firm Syngenta Seeds that was developed specifically for the production of ethanol. The seed itself has been modified with a heat-resistant protein from deep-sea bacteria to produce a kernel easily converted to ethanol without add... Read More