MicrobeWorld

Barbara Hyde writes:

In the discussion of copper, it should be noted that copper has long been added to marine bottom paints as an anti-fouling agent. Now however there is concern about deleterious environmental effects from its leaching out into the waters.

Barb... Read More

The novel human retrovirus XMRV has been associated with prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome. The nucleotide sequence of XMRV isolated from humans indicates that the virus is nearly identical with XMRV produced from a human prostate tumor cell line called 22Rv1. This cell line was deriv... Read More

This episode: Some ocean bacteria glow to attract those that eat them!

Dow... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Read More

This episode: Sampling storm cloud microbial communities with hailstones!

... Read More

This episode: Bacteria grow on quartz stones in the driest hot place on Earth!

Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Sarah Connolly, Andrew Karaba, Read More

Jeff Fox of Microbe magazine interviews Kim Lewis of Northeastern University--
Missing siderophores may account for why microbiologists can culture only about 1% of the microorganisms that they collect from diverse environments, according to Kim Lewis of Northeastern University and his collabor... Read More

An article by Alan Derman, Project Scientist in Joe Pogliano’s lab at the University of California at San Diego, published on the Small Things Considered blog presents a point-by-point analysis of a paper "Quantitative genome-scale analysis of protein localization in an asymmetric bacterium" pub... Read More

Kristopher writes:

Dear TWIV,

As a developmental biologist and post-doc, I greatly enjoy your show which gives me both information and distraction from pipetting small volumes from one tube to another in the lab. Recently, my lab enjoyment was cut short by a w... Read More

Bryce writes:

I enjoyed your discussion of the Molecular Therapy paper in this week’s TWiV. My lab (and others) have worked on using virus particles as scaffolds to increase the immunogenicity of various targets for quite some time. One thing that wanted to point out ... Read More

A second virophage has been identified. The name does not signify a virus that infects another virus – it means virus eater.
Read More

Hosts: Read More

El podcast del Microbio Nº194 is about the recent observation that the algae Closterium moniliferum could remove strontium... Read More

Science writer Carl Zimmer writes a masterful blog piece tracing the history of the study of ecosystems, from lakes to the human microbiome. Just one interesting fact: In their lifetimes, individual humans will produce about five elephants worth of microbes. Read More

Hosts: Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Read More

Glenn Rall, a virologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center, sent me the following note:

Baruch S. Blumberg, Nobel Laureate in 1976 for discovery of Hepatitis B (and the eventual development of the vaccine, which probably has saved hundreds of thousands of lives since its introduction), died this pas... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

Vincent, Alan, and Rich... Read More

Rich Condit found an article highly critical of the original Wakefield study (claiming a link between MMR vaccine and autism) which was published in the same issue of Lancet. He asked the publisher, Elsevier, to open up the article to non-subscribers so he could recommend it as a pick of the wee... Read More