MicrobeWorld

German researchers suspect that a recent increase in human Cowpox infections in Germany may be spread through the handling of food rats (rodents used for feeding pets or zoo animals) and a decrease in small pox vaccinations among the general public in a PLoS One paper entitled "Cowpox Virus Outb... Read More

Liesbeth writes:

Tomorrow starts the XVIII International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria Conference here in Rio de Janeiro. I read Peter Hotez will be participating in a round-table session on “What is the future role of academic journals in the research, c... Read More

Ruth writes:

Dear Dick Despommier

My name is Ruth
I am a listener of twip and recently I decided to look into your vertical farming that you mention on the podcast.

While I was watching a video of you explaining vertical farming you mentioned soil-less g... Read More

The Welcome Trust has funded an interactive Flash game that can be played on the web that teaches young people how the flu is spread. You start off as a flu virus and the goal is to infect others. Along the way, you get educational information about viruses. Here are some of the instructions: Y... Read More

Efforts to expunge micro-organisms from spacecraft assembly cleanrooms, and the spacecraft themselves, inadvertently select for the organisms that are often the most fit to survive long journeys in space. This has the risk of thwarting the goal of avoiding contaminating other celestial bodies, a... Read More

This episode: Scientists use a modified rabies virus to map brain connections!

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El podcast del Microbio Nº182 resumes the paper by Chenoll et al. published in Applied and Enviroenmental Microbiology that... Read More

Dr. Tony Fiore discusses who should be vaccinated against 2009 H1N1 flu during the 2009-2010 season. He explains the target groups for vaccination, and how these groups differ from those recommended for seasonal flu vaccination. Read More

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  Bacillus anthracis causes anthrax, a deadly disease in cattle and a potential bioweapon against humans

  
  


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  .Brucella abortus causes breeding losses in livestock.

  
  


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  Cyanobacteria (formerly known as blue-green algae) live in water, where they prod... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, and Mark Challberg

Vincent and Rich meet... Read More

One of the very first things you need to do when getting set up for quantitative PCR (qPCR) is to determine the efficiency of the assay because knowing the assay efficiency is critical to accurate data interpretation. And you have to do this every time you design and purchase a new primer pair.
... Read More

This episode: Bacteria unlike any other known life form!

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Robert A. Weisberg was a Scientist Emeritus at NCI until the time of his death on 1 September 2011. Previously he was Chief of Microbial Genetics at NICHHD, a position he retired from in 2008. He was a pioneer in the study of the bacteriophage lambda. His research lead to seminal contributions a... Read More

June 24, 2009 12:30 – 1:30 PM

The emerging field of synthetic biology will allow researchers to create biological systems that do not occur naturally as well as to re-engineer existing biological systems to perform novel and beneficial tasks. As the science and its applications develop, a com... Read More

A post by Manuel Sánchez, host of the Spanish blog, Curiosidades de al Microbiologia, on an article entitled "Physical Virology " that appeared in Nature Phyisics, discuses the ideas and potential of a new discipline that studies viruses from a physical perspective.

"Viruses are able to spont... Read More

Michael Yarmolinsky, Scientist Emeritus in the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, NIH, explores how the virulent, double-stranded DNA phage called Chi attacks only motile strains of bacteria.

Click source for more. Read More

Here's a nice demonstration video by Dr. Conor O'Bryne from the Dept. of Microbiology at National University of Ireland, Galway, showing how to perform a serial dilution on a liquid food sample (in this case raw unpasteurised milk). The raw milk sample is diluted down to 1/1000 in a sterile dil... Read More

El podcast del Microbio Nº199 conmemorates the 50th aniversary of Yuri Gagarin spaceflight by describing some "microbial si... Read More