MicrobeWorld

Nels writes:

Dear Vincent,

A note of gratitude to you and your crew for generously “interrogating” my recent paper on the experimental evolution of vaccinia virus.

BTW, it was evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen (not Richard Dawkins) who proposed an... Read More

Nearly one third of forestry workers in parts of eastern France are infected with Hepatitis E virus (HEV), according to a paper in the September Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Wild boars in the same region are also heavily infected. HEV is endemic in developing nations, but heretofore, HEV in... Read More

A novel virus has been identified as the possible cause of a common but mysterious disease that kills a significant number of pet snakes all over the world, thanks to research led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—and three snakes named Juliet, Balthazar and Lar... Read More

Waves at the beach are relaxing. Waves at a baseball game are fun. Waves in the bacterial world are deadly. This is according to a study offered by scientists from Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Medical School.

The study’s findings show one of the... Read More

This episode: Ant-zombie fungal parasite is counter-parasitized by another fungus!

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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has been named a Milestones in Microbiology site by the American Society for Microbiology. This ASM program recognizes institutions and the scientists who worked there that have made significant contributions toward advancing the science of ... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello and Read More

The 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza virus appears to have required certain mutations in order to be transmitted to humans, according to a paper in the September Journal of Virology. The research could prove extremely valuable for efforts to predict human outbreaks.

The 2009 influenza pandemic wa... Read More

This episode: Using a bacterial trick to protect pathogen proteins from radiation could help produce useful vaccines!

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Many people would be surprised to learn that bacterial cells in the digestive tract outnumber their own cells 10 to one.

Most don’t know that each person has a unique mix of gut bacteria, like a fingerprint.

And they certainly don’t know that giving this bacteria the royal treatment by eat... Read More

More than 1.6 billion years ago, one cell engulfed another and put it to work. More specifically, a eukaryotic cell, the sort of cell that contains distinct structures with different functions, took in a blue-green bacterium that could do something it could not: use sunlight to make sugars. The ... Read More

Dentists have long encouraged the use of fluoride to prevent cavities and tooth decay. But several studies have also found that other things, such as lollipops, raisins, licorice root and gum, may also help in the fight against tooth decay. And now, a new study is suggesting that coconut oil cou... Read More

Four months ago, a mucus sample arrived in Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki’s laboratory in Saudi Arabia.

The mucus had been coughed up by a 60-year-old Saudi Arabian man with a strange case of pneumonia. He had been admitted to the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh hospital in Jeddah on June 13; soon after, his kidney... Read More

This episode: Gut bacteria use phages to beat their competition!

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If you are an organic food or paleo diet lover and think it means your gut microbiome resembles your ancestors in any way, you are wrong. We aren't even close to 100 years ago much less ancient times. The microbiome does not lie.

A team analyzed microbiome data from ancient human fecal samp... Read More

A new study by researchers at Imperial College London has identified a way in which Salmonella bacteria, which cause gastroenteritis and typhoid fever, counteract the defence mechanisms of human cells.

One way in which our cells fight off infections is by engulfing the smaller bacterial cell... Read More

t's a battleground down there—in the soil where plants and bacteria dwell.

Even though beneficial root bacteria come to the rescue when a plant is being attacked by pathogens, there's a dark side to the relationship between the plant and its white knight. According to research reported by a U... Read More

Secretion of bacterial proteins is an essential biological process with biotechnological and biomedical impact on human health. European scientists studied a universal and widely conserved bacterial secretory pathway towards its utilisation in biotechnology and medicine.

The coordinated secr... Read More

This episode: Bacterial enzymes are good for making nanomagnets for computers!

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The newly discovered virus that killed a Saudi Arabian man in June and is now causing life-threatening illness in a person from Qatar is similar to strains carried by bats, researchers reported Thursday.

Most of the bat strains do not infect people. Why the new strain does — and how it got in... Read More