MicrobeWorld

Group A Streptococcus (GAS) is responsible for infections ranging from “strep throat” to necrotizing fasciitis, aka the “flesh-eating disease”, a severe and invasive condition that has seen a marked increase in incidence in the past 30 years. The increase has been pinned on a single clone of th... Read More

An antibacterial enzyme found in human tears and other body fluids could be applied to certain foods for protection against intentional contamination with anthrax, scientists reported in Boston, Massachusetts on August 26 at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

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Italian researchers offer some hopeful news for parents of colicky babies: a daily dose of "good" bacteria may help their child to cry less.

After three weeks of treatment with probiotic bacteria, babies cried for an average of about a half-hour a day, while infants who received a placebo wer... Read More

A new study confirming the existence of a massive plume of oil trapped deep underwater in the Gulf of Mexico defies notions that bacteria, while they are degrading the oil, will make as quick work of petroleum lingering in the water's cold depths as they have on the surface.

In a widely hail... Read More

William Dieterle's 1935 film about Louis Pasteur who scientifically disproved the spontaneous generation hypothesis and among many other things greatly influenced the introduction and use of antisepsis in medicine.

You can watch the rest of the parts 2-6 on YouTube. Read More

A new study suggests mother nature might be cleaning up the BP spill faster than expected. Researchers found several species of oil-eating bacteria thriving in the submerged plume, but uncertainty remains over the threat to marine life. The guests will include Ron Atlas, past president of the Am... Read More

When the journal Science published an attention-grabbing study last fall linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a recently discovered retrovirus, many experts remained skeptical — especially after four other studies found no such association.

Now a second research team has reported a link betw... Read More

Two New York lawmakers want farmers to vaccinate their chickens against salmonella, The Associated Press reported.

Sen. Daniel Squadron and Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh announced their proposal in response to the nationwide recall of more than half a billion eggs linked to nearly 1,500 cases of... Read More

Those portable electronic gadgets that many of us cant do without are getting more and more high tech. But they still run on old-fashioned batteries. Scientists at the MIT are hoping to change that. Read More

The brain can be a convenient hiding place for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

That's the finding of Swedish researchers who analyzed samples from about 70 HIV-infected patients who'd been taking anti-HIV drugs. The tests showed that about 10 percent of the patients -- a larger proportion th... Read More

HIV-1 in semen is different than HIV-1 in blood, possibly due to changes it undergoes in the genital tract, scientists have found.

In their study, the researchers sought to better understand the process by which HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS -- is transmitted. They compared the gene encod... Read More

Kissing a frog won't turn it into a prince - except in fairy tales - but frog's skin can actually provide a 'kiss of death' for antibiotic-resistant germs.

Scientists have claimed that frog skin contains natural substances that could be the basis for a powerful new genre of antibiotics.

I... Read More

Did you know that ASM full members from anywhere in the world may participate in the ASM Professorship Programs for Africa, Asia and Latin American and the Caribbean?

These programs provide ASM members with funding to teach hands-on, highly interactive short courses on single topics in the m... Read More

Dr. Nina Salama, microbiologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Washington discusses Helicobacter pylori, a bacterira that lives in the human stomach and causes chronic disease (peptic ulcer and gastric cancer).

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Pathogens make themselves feel at home in the human body, invading cells and living off the plentiful amenities on offer. However, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, together with colleagues at Harvard University, reveal an opposite strategy used to ensure inf... Read More

Arizona State University researchers have demonstrated a way to simplify testing patients for infectious diseases and unhealthy protein levels.

New testing instrumentation developed by Antonia Garcia and John Schneider promises to make the procedure less costly and produce results in less tim... Read More

The national's largest egg recall -- 550 million eggs shipped to 22 states -- is underway. But many people may not know how eggs carry salmonella.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, salmonella enteritidis -- the strain involved in the recent outbreak -- can be on the... 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

Engineers believe a new strain of yeast with increased alcohol tolerance is the first step toward more efficient and economical production of biofuels.

Biofuels are produced through microbial fermentation of biomass crops, which yield the alcohol-based fuels ethanol and iso-butanol if yeast i... Read More

Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers have received a $60,000 one-year National Science Foundation grant to study how naturally occurring microbes can best be used to eat away remaining crude oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Their choice of weapon: Geometry.

Fueled by oxygen, nat... Read More