MicrobeWorld

This episode: Fungi are found living deep under the sea!

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Many protozoan parasites (Trichomonas, Leishmania, Giardia, Plasmodium, Entamoeba, Nagleria, Eimeria, Cryptosporidium) are infected with viruses. These viruses do not infect vertebrates, but their double-stranded RNA genomes are sensed by the innate immune system, leading to inflammatory complic... Read More

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Read More

A slide-cast by Jonathan Eisen, Professor at UC Davis and Academic Editor in Chief of PLoS Biology, about open access publishing given at the Clinical and Translational Science Center at UC Davis (http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ctsc). Read More

On 10 January 2011, the United Kingdom (UK) Chief Medical Officer issued a statement advising primary and secondary care doctors to remain vigilant to the possibility of severe bacterial co-infection in patients with influenza [1], because preliminary data indicated an increase in bacterial dise... Read More

El podcast del Microbio Nº 221 summarize the PLoS ONE paper by Krupovic and Forterre on the presence of microviridae provir... Read More

Moselio Schaechter of the Small Things Considered blog reviews the results of a recent paper "Microbial metalloproteomes are largely uncharacterized" from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia, Athens, and ponders its implications.

Snippet:

"Now... Read More

El Podcast del Microbio" Nº 157 : First part of the story of ex-doctor A. Wakefield, the new "Harry Lime", responsible of t... Read More

Antimicrobial resistance is not a new problem but one that is becoming more dangerous; urgent and consolidated efforts are needed to avoid regressing to the pre-antibiotic era.

For World Health Day 2011, WHO is introducing a six-point policy package to combat the spread of antimicrobial resis... Read More

David Bhella, Ph.D., MRC Centre for Virus Research, accepts the Peter Wildy Prize for Microbiology Education, awarded annually by the Society for General Microbiology for an outstanding contribution to microbiology education. Read More

Dean Dawson, Associate Member of the Cell Cycle and Cancer Biology Research Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, has authored a post on Small Things Considered which explores Candida's chromosomal instability and unorthodox reproduction process.

"Who hasn't heard of Candida? I... Read More

Some archaea look like little rods or tiny balls, and some even get around like bacteria, using long hair- or whip-like appendages called flagella that stick out of their cell walls and act like a microscopic outboard motor to get them where they are going.

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Tracey McDole, a PhD student in the lab of Dr. Forest Rohwer, San Diego State University, has authored a post on Small Things Considered that looks at recent research published in PNAS that questions the physical limits to cell behavior.

"The word marginal means to be at the outer or lower l... Read More

What do microbes have to do with beer? Everything! Because the master ingredient in beer is yeast – a microbe – and every step in the brewing process helps the yeast do its job better. A new freely-available report; "FAQ: If the Yeast Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy: The Microbiology of Beer" ex... Read More

Despite improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, Lyme borreliosis (LB) is still the most common arthropod-borne disease in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, with risk of infection associated with occupation (e.g. forestry work) and certain outdoor recreational activities ... Read More

A one-page primer on the H1N1 flu and what you can do to protect yourself and your family. Read More

Are there environments where there are abundant bacteria and no phages? Sounds like one of our Talmudic Questions, but this one has a specific answer, and that answer is Yes. That environment was found within a cystic fibrosis (CF) lung.

This story comes from a pair of papers recently publish... Read More

The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (S 810), which would prohibit the use of chimpanzees in medical research, may be voted on in the Senate this week (it was approved by a Senate committee in July). The purpose of this act is to phase out invasive research on great apes and the use of ... Read More

Viruses can act as miniature couriers. When they infect, they may inadvertently take up a bit of their host’s DNA and have it copied into their progeny. When the offspring viruses move on to infect new cells, they may insert this bit of accidentally pilfered DNA into the new hosts’ genome. This ... Read More

In resource-limited countries, a lack of training, proper reagents, supplies, and equipment has impacted their laboratories' ability to identify key pathogenic bacteria and detection of antimicrobial resistance. This has led to an environment of syndromic diagnosis by clinicians who have little ... Read More