MicrobeWorld

In 2009, the H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic struck, infecting millions and killing more than 18,000 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Though less severe than initially feared, the pandemic highlighted the potential threat of deadly viruses emerging from animals into humans, and t... Read More

The formation of the mineral dolomite is still puzzling scientists. Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence "The Future Ocean" and GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel together with colleagues from Switzerland and Spain have now shown that bacteria can facilitate the formation of... Read More

At first glance it appears to be a minuscule marble spinning around its vertical axis. Look closer, however, and you see a stationary spherical membrane of fluid, just 3 microns across. It is the stuff inside the droplet that is rotating. This self-contained centrifuge has been created by blasti... Read More

Health experts are calling for faster testing of the 9 million people worldwide estimated to be infected with tuberculosis each year after a study in China found drug-resistant strains were rife.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, gives the first nationw... Read More

The healthy human intestine is colonized with over 100 trillion beneficial, or commensal, bacteria of many different species. In healthy people, these bacteria are limited to the intestinal tissues and have a number of helpful properties, including aiding in the digestion of food and promoting a... Read More

Mutations in a gene linked to restless legs syndrome (RLS) in humans appear to disturb sleep in fruit flies.

The mutant flies wake up more often during sleep periods, which resembles a key feature of human RLS, acccording to a study by researchers at Emory University. The results are publishe... Read More

Protein knots, a structure whose formation remains a mystery, may have specific functional advantages that depend on the nature of the protein’s architecture.

“The presence of a knotted or slipknotted structure in a protein is relatively rare but really is very interesting,” says Kenneth Mill... Read More

People in the homes of children with skin and soft-tissue infections caused by the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus have a higher rate of methicillin-resistant S. aureus colonization than the general population, a new study finds.

S. aureus infection often is referred to as Staph infection. Met... Read More

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