MicrobeWorld

Bacteria are all over us, inside and out. Jiri Hulcr recently found 1,458 species of bacteria "new to science" in a small sample of human belly buttons. What we know about our little passengers and how they affect our bodies is dwarfed by what we do not. That can be disconcerting to think about,... Read More

A synthetic version of the Schmallenberg virus has been made in the laboratory by Scottish scientists. The research raises hopes for developing a vaccine for the livestock disease, which causes lambs and calves to be stillborn. Schmallenberg virus (SBV) was discovered little more than a year ago... Read More

Pili are hair like appendages that are found on the outer membrane of bacteria. They are important for bacteria to attach to solid surfaces, are used as an apparatus in transfer of DNA from one cell to another, as well as twitching motility, and cell-cell adhesion.
In 2011 a group of scientist ... Read More

Bacteria, viruses and parasites from land animals such as cats, cows and humans are sickening and killing sea mammals. Scientists have been finding a daunting number of land-based pathogens in seals, dolphins, sharks and other ocean dwellers that wash ashore dead or dying, according to an articl... Read More

Seeing the mosquito-transmitted chikungunya virus pathogen at very high resolution while it’s bound to antibodies could lead to vaccines for the disease. The infection causes symptoms similar to dengue fever, followed by a prolonged disease that affects the joints and causes severe arthritis. In... 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

Our gut is home to trillions of bacteria, numbering more than the cells in the rest of our body, and these bacteria help us to digest our food, absorb nutrients and strengthen our immune system. This complex bacterial ecosystem, called the gut microbiota, also helps to prevent bad bacteria from ... Read More

Biology and nanotechnology are moving ever closer together. Ars recently wrote about the use of nanoparticles to aid delivery of stem cells in cardiac therapy. Now, Swiss researchers have developed nanoparticles that can detect, and one day could combat, viruses.

When viruses enter the human ... Read More

A mysterious type of protein found in bacteria and other organisms, including humans, appears to act as a delivery system for toxins. While these proteins, called rearrangement hotspots (Rhs), have been recognized for more 30 years, their function has been enigmatic.

A research team at the Un... Read More

As the lakefront officially opens to swimmers Friday, the Lake Michigan shoreline joins the cutting edge in the war on bacteria after decades of using day-old water samples to decide whether to close beaches.

In Chicago, the Park District will use a new high-tech system that uses computer sof... Read More

This episode: Green algae's hydrogen production is analyzed and improved!

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US outbreak foxes a leading web-based method for tracking seasonal flu. When influenza hit early and hard in the United States this year, it quietly claimed an unacknowledged victim: one of the cutting-edge techniques being used to monitor the outbreak. A comparison with traditional surveillance... Read More

In 2011, Lake Erie experienced the largest algae bloom in its recorded history. At its peak in October, the mat of green scum on the lake’s surface was nearly four inches thick and covered an area of almost 2,000 square miles. That’s three times larger than any other bloom in the lake, ever. Plu... Read More

Good microbiologists question assumptions. How about the assumption that semesters are the best calendars for learning? What would happen if rather than taking four courses concurrently during a semester, students instead took those four courses successively, one at a time? This describes the Co... Read More

New scientific research published today in the journal PLoS Biology shows that bacteria can evolve resistance more quickly when stronger antibiotics are used.

Researchers from the University of Exeter and Kiel University in Germany treated E. coli with different combinations of antibiotics in... Read More

Microbes turn nutrient in beef into an artery-clogging menace. Lean steak is low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein — qualities normally considered healthy. But eating a lot of it can still cause heart disease. Researchers have now laid the blame on bacteria in the human gut that convert... Read More

Tumor necrosis factor – normally an infection-fighting substance produced by the body – can actually heighten susceptibility to tuberculosis if its levels are too high. University of Washington TB researchers unravel this conundrum in a report this week in Cell. Their study shows how excess prod... Read More

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute have developed a new method for studying the complex molecular workings of Anopheles albimanus, an important but less studied spreader of human malaria. An. albimanus carries Plasmodium vivax, the primary cause of malaria in humans in S... Read More

Two dangerous things together might make a medicine for one of the hardest cancers to treat. In a mouse model of pancreatic cancer, researchers have shown that bacteria can deliver deadly radiation to tumours — exploiting the immune suppression that normally makes the disease so intractable.

... Read More

The first red alga genome has just been sequenced by an international team coordinated by CNRS and UPMC at the Station Biologique de Roscoff (Brittany), notably involving researchers from CEA-Genoscope[1], the universities of Lille 1 and Rennes 1 and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle[2]. ... Read More