MicrobeWorld

Click "source" to view the full "Report to the President on U.S. Preparations for 2009-H1N1 Influenza" from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Here is the Council's "planning scenario":

Indeed, the 2009-H1N1 influenza is already responsible for significant morbi... Read More

Morehouse College Biology students Rob Williams and Tony Gibson present on the process of Taq production and the polymerase chain reaction. Read More

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

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This episode: Helicobacter pylori seems not to be more harmful than helpful!

Download Episode (3.9 MB, 4.25 minutes)

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In the Nº 101 of the "El podcast del microbio" I made a resume of the role of Wolbachiain the Plant green-island phenotype as appeared in th... Read More

PDF of recent "Open Access" PNAS paper on bacterial biogeography. The paper (of which I am an author) made use of rRNA PCR to survey bacteria in salt marshes. The bacteria were surveyed broadly (using broadly targeted PCR primers) and narrowly (using primers that focused on specific taxonomic... Read More

When viruses come into contact with host cells, they trigger the cells to engulf them, or fuse themselves to the cell membrane so they can release their DNA into the cell.

Once inside a host cell, viruses take over its machinery to reproduce. Viruses override the host cell’s normal functioni... Read More

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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

A study to be published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on Tuesday, October 23, examined whether crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the dispersant used on it, or a combination of the two might affect the microbes of the human ... 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

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

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

Scientists estimate that people are not washing their hands often or well enough and may transmit up to 80% of all infections by their hands. From doorknobs to animals to food, harmful germs can live on almost everything. Handwashing may be your single most important act to help stop the spre... 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

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

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

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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When I am asked to name the most lethal human virus, I never hesitate to name rabies virus. Infection with this virus is almost invariably fatal; just three unvaccinated individuals have been known to survive. New evidence from humans in the Peruvian Amazon suggests that the virus might be less ... Read More