MicrobeWorld

If keeping up to date in microbiology and life science-related news and information is important to you, MicrobeWorld now offers the most convenient way to do so on the go, in your car, at the gym or even in the lab. Purchase the app for $4.99 from the Read More

A team led by Yale University scientists has developed a new approach to studying how immune cells chase down bacteria in our bodies. Their findings are described in the November 15 issue of Nature Methods Advanced Online Publication.

When bacteria enter our bodies they secrete molecules, lea... Read More

Forget cookies and milk. Santa wants the swine flu vaccine.

Many of the nation's Santas want to be given priority for the vaccine and not just because of those runny-nosed kids. There's also the not-so-little matter of that round belly. Research has suggested obesity could be a risk factor.
... Read More

Science cartoonist Jay Hosler drafted this comic for the cover of the program for The Allegheny Branch of The American Society for Microbiology (ABASM) meeting at Juniata College this weekend (November 20th and 21st). Amusing. To see more of Hosler's work visit Read More

Published in 1946 as a motion picture, Walt Disney Productions shows how the fly, the mosquito and the louse are carriers of dysentery, malaria and typhus, and tells how to get rid of these carriers through sanitary measures.

This was found by @TwistedBacteria on Twitter Read More

Vincent, Dick, and Alan are joined by emergency medicine physician Dr. Joshua Stillman to talk about passive antibody therapy for Nipah infection in ferrets, annual influenza immunization of children, ... Read More

An addendum to the earlier article "Scientists Guide Immune Cells with Light and Microparticles," this is a video of an immune cell following the allur... Read More

Alan Cann, senior lecturer at the University of Leicester, and colleagues Jo Badge, Stuart Johnson and Alex Moseley, have just published an article/paper on a small experiment involving student use of the microbloging service Twitter and its role in academia. Specifically, Cann and colleagues lo... Read More

Here's a fine Walt Disney Production from 1943 about the Anopheles genus of mosquitos and how it transmits the Plasmodium parasite from human to human. Our heros in this "motion picture" are the seven dwarfs who use a variety of methods to eliminate the "winged scourge." One not-so-green method ... Read More

Los temas que vamos a tratar esta semana son: plásmidos, estructuras productoras de esporas (“fruiting bodies”), sociomicrobiología, y el acto de lavarse las manos en las diferentes culturas.

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The Small Things Considered blog has just started a three-part series on oomycetes, also known as water molds.

The first piece (published today) describes oomycete biology, the other two will focus on a particular oomycete: the late potato blight pathogen.

Here's a clip:

"As you know, ... Read More

Facing political pressure from the Gulf Coast oyster industry, the FDA has backed off a plan to require raw oysters from the Gulf of Mexico to be treated to rid them of Vibrio vulnificus, a potentially deadly bacteria found in warm-water oysters. Harvesters and politicians had warned that the pl... Read More

Experiments at the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute (PVLSI) at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., reported in a recent British Journal of Cancer, confirm that University of Massachusetts Amherst chemical engineer Neil Forbes' delivery and trigger system has for the first time s... Read More

Here's a great little video put together by an NPR intern, Ilham Hassan about Geobiologist Kenneth Nealson and what he affectionately calls his bugs—bacteria. Nealson discovered the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis strain MR-1. Or just "MR-1" for short.

He found the microbe in Lake Oneida, bac... Read More

A new study suggests that tooth-binding micelles (or particles) may provide long-term cavity protection by adhering to tooth surfaces and gradually releasing encapsulated antimicrobials. Formulation of a mouthwash-based delivery system is anticipated, ultimately simplifying application and incre... Read More

Nitrification floc. Note the unusual crown shaped bacterium (5200X) Read More

Each week, millions of users around the world search for health information online. Google has found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but... Read More

BioTorrents.net is a web service built by Dr. Morgan G.I. Langille, a bioinformatics researcher at UC Davis Genome Center, that allows scientists to rapidly share their results, datasets, and software using BitTorrent P2P file sharing technology.

Some of the service's features include:

Re... Read More

A new study is linking cumulative exposure to five common pathogens with an increased risk for stroke. The infections in order of significance are Chlamydia pneumoniae, Helicobacter pylori, cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. Read More

The rhinovirus that causes most cases of the common cold comes in many strains — at least 99, to be exact. As a result, it has long been theorized that a person could be sickened with more than one cold strain at the same time. But recent studies of the common cold and its behavior in the human ... Read More