MicrobeWorld

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

Stanley Falkow, Professor Microbiology and Immunology, Geographic Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Stanford University School of Medicine, presents the second part of a lecture on host-pathogen interaction. This one focuses on H. pylori (the ulcer bacterium) and the story behind its discovery by A... Read More

Stanley Falkow, Professor Microbiology and Immunology; Geographic Medicine; Infectious Diseases, Stanford University School of Medicine, presents a lecture on host-pathogen interaction.

"Ninety percent of the cells humans carry are microbes. Only a few of the bacteria we encounter are pathoge... Read More

This lecture covers the biochemical basis of actin-based motility (focusing on the pathogen Listeria as a model system for this process), the biophysical mechanism of polymerization-based force generation, and an evolutionary perspective of cell shape in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The first par... Read More

One of the basic requirements of evolution is variation in a population upon which selection can act. One of the sources of variation is mutation in DNA. These changes may or may not be reflected in the ensuing amino acid sequence of a protein. This exercise explores the additive effects of m... Read More

The Hygiene Council, an international initiative based out of the UK, has produced a short CGI/computer animation on how disinfectants kill bacteria and viruses. The animation is superb and in there is no corporate branding in the piece which makes it an excellent resource for young students.

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Google Knol is a website similar in idea to wikipedia in which it encourages experts to "share what they know and a write a knol." What's a knol? Well it's a unit of knowledge, of course! (Disclaimer: I had to look it up myself).

What's interesting is that the Public Library of Science is now... Read More

Most ethnic foods and cooking practices have incorporated the use of spices and other food additives. Many common
spices have crossed cultural boundaries and appear in multiple ethnic cuisines. Recent studies have demonstrated that many of these ingredients possess antimicrobial properties agai... Read More

Bacteria communicate with chemical languages that allow them to synchronize their behavior and thereby act as multi-cellular organisms. This process, called quorum sensing, enables bacteria to do things they can’t do as a single cell, like successfully infect and cause disease in humans.
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Albert Osterhaus, head of virology at the Erasmus Medical Center, designed "The Great Flu" game with colleagues. In the game, as the head of the fictitious "World Pandemic Control," players pick a flu strain, and then monitor that strain's spread around the world.

To fight the eme... Read More

Elio Schaechter from the Small Things Considered blog has brought to our attention a new internet resource called Bionumbers. "It enables you to find in a minute (or less) any common biological... Read More

The Institute of Medicine has been asked to make recommendations about how to protect healthcare workers against swine-origin H1N1 influenza. They have been hearing presentations concerning the effectiveness of facemasks in preventing respiratory infections. Read More

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In this two-part activity, which uses discovery and an inquiry approach, the participants will be given cartoon drawings representing significant events in the history of the Earth and asked to place them on a timeline made of colored ribbon. Then they mathematically relate the geologic time sca... Read More

Oral Microbiology is an important emerging field of study. This article is from the Journal of Oral Microbiology (www.JournalofOralMicrobiology.net). All users are granted free access to the article under a Creative Commons License. In this article Lakio et al. investiate the possibility of usin... Read More

The blog www.ncbirofl.com is a great resource for amusing/interesting research papers that have been published on the National Center for Biotechnology Information's website. This week they highlight a paper on the regional differences in the metagenomic data of eukaryotes found in "bug splat."
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A team of researchers from The Wistar Institute has identified a protein that could serve as a target for reprogramming immune system cells exhausted by exposure to chronic viral infection into more effective "soldiers" against certain viruses like HIV, hepatitis C, and hepatitis B, as well as s... Read More

Scientists in Massachusetts are describing successful use of a test that enlists pinhead-sized worms in efforts to discover badly needed new antibiotics. Thestudy appears in ACS' Chemical Biology.

From the abstract:

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a unique whole animal model system ... Read More

In this activity, each student is provided with a worksheet and three index cards. Each card indicates a different cell part (e.g. LPS, capsule, DNA). Students are placed in small groups and receive a written scenario regarding a bacterium with a certain goal it must carry out. They must work t... Read More