MicrobeWorld

Our days of crying over spoiled milk could be over, thanks to Cornell food scientists.

Milk undergoes heat treatment -- pasteurization -- to kill off microbes that can cause food spoilage and disease, but certain bacterial strains can survive this heat shock as spores and cause milk to curdle... Read More

Synthetic biology is getting a boost. So far, most researchers have designed their synthetic circuits using transcription factors found in bacteria. However, these don’t always translate well to nonbacterial cells and can be a challenge to scale. Now, researchers have come up with a new method t... Read More

I still wonder why the influenza virus H5N1 ferret transmission studies generated such fear and misunderstanding among the public, the press, and even some scientists. I still cannot fully explain what transpired, but now that the papers have been published some new clues have emerged. Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Read More

At one time or another, every human goes through the rather introverted and personal experience of omphaloskepsis.

The term, better known as navel-gazing, originally described the act of self-reflection through a complete physical and mental focus on the bellybutton. The practice has been rec... Read More

The mayor of Dallas declared a state of emergency in the ninth largest U.S. city on Wednesday to combat the spread of West Nile virus infections, which have been more prevalent than usual in Texas and other states this year.

There have been more cases of West Nile virus reported so far this y... Read More

Americans have been on an antibacterial kick for the past several years. Our hand soap, dish soap, and body wash have morphed into an arsenal of bug-killing napalm, eliminating all but the heartiest of bacteria.

And there are, indeed, some scary microbes crawling around out there—Staph and C.... Read More

Be part of the studio audience for the American Society for Microbiology 2013 General Meeting's live internet talk show, ASM Live. Host Stanley Maloy, Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology and Dean of th... Read More

Like bacteria, cancer cells rely on communication and cooperation, says TAU research

Experts agree that, more than ever before, modern wars will be fought in the cyber zone, targeting an enemy’s communications technology to cause untold damage. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is suggesti... Read More

Did you know that your body is home to 10 times more microbes than human cells? Join us at ASM Headquarters on Thursday, July 19, 2012, from 6-8 PM to learn about the human microbiome and its fascinating practical applications. Come mingle with like-minded enthusiasts and curious citizens ove... Read More

At an ill-fated press conference in 1984, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler boldly predicted an effective AIDS vaccine would be available within just two years.

But a string of failed attempts - punctuated by a 2007 trial in which a Merck vaccine appeared to make peopl... Read More

The popular spice turmeric packs more than just flavor — it shows promise in fighting devastating viruses, Mason researchers recently discovered.

Curcumin, found in turmeric, stopped the potentially deadly Rift Valley Fever virus from multiplying in infected cells, says Aarthi Narayanan, lead... Read More

A 15-year-old Inca girl who lived 500 years ago had a lung infection at the time of her death, according to a new method of analyzing protein samples.

A team of scientists that used the method of analyzing proteins from samples is the first to detect an immune response from a 500-year-old Inc... Read More

One of the world's oldest vaccines now has a new use. Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG, is an 80-year-old vaccine designed to tread tuberculosis. Bit it has now been found effective in treating long-term type 1 diabetes, which is on the rise worldwide.

BCG has long been administered to chi... Read More

After 18 months of controversy, the official verdict is in: an arsenic-tolerant bacterium found in California’s Mono Lake cannot live without phosphorus.

In 2010, a group led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a microbiologist now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, repo... Read More

Certain bacteria in the gut may be associated with various components of the metabolic syndrome, a study in an Old Order Amish community showed.

All of the study participants belonged to one of three groups defined by the presence of separate communities containing six to 12 genera of bacteri... Read More

Scared of bird flu? How about the viral Rift Valley fever? These diseases and many others are animal diseases that have grown the ability to infect humans. They’re known as zoonoses. You heard it, zoonoses. And humanity’s ever-growing taste for livestock products could stoke the growth of these ... Read More

Dog owners and parents, take a deep breath. Get your children to take a deep breath.

And most importantly, shake some carpets, fluff your pillows and get your infants to take a deep breath – or lick the floor.

Because new research from UC San Francisco and the University of Michigan indic... Read More

A Taliban commander in Pakistan’s tribal belt has banned a vaccination campaign against child polio in protest over frequent United States drone attacks there.

Hafiz Gul Bahadur said that the U.S.-funded vaccinations for tens of thousands of children would be outlawed until drone attacks sto... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Read More