MicrobeWorld

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Blood agar culture of sputum from patient with pneumonia. Compromised host. Colonies of Candida albicans and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Note hemolysis around colonies of Pseudomas aeruginosa and colony morphology. Read More

L.A. health officials have warned the public about eating Latin American-style cheese from unlicensed makers, whose products could be contaminated.

At issue are cheeses such as queso fresco, panela, queso seco, asadero, queso Oaxaca, queso Cotija, and crema, which may be made with unpasteuriz... 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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Lichens are the classic example of a symbiotic relationship. Both the fungal and photobiont components of the lichen benefit from the relationship and often are unable to survive without each other. Recent research by Dr. Robert Lücking (The Field Museum, Chicago), Dr. James Lawrey (George Mason... Read More

A new study suggests that when compared to conventionally raised beef cattle, organic and natural production systems do not impact antibiotic susceptibility of Escherichia coli O157:H7. This discovery emphasizes that although popular for their suggested health benefit, little is actually known... Read More

The Q Microbe, found in the soil near a Massachusetts reservoir, can produce unprecedented amounts of ethanol in a single step. Supported by a company devoted to its process and improvement, it could lead the way to commercial production of cellulosic ethanol and the achievement of renewable fue... Read More

In a fundamental study of how to control protein shape, a UW-Madison research team has created a set of peptide-like molecules that successfully blocked HIV infection of human cells in laboratory experiments.

"By interacting with a piece of a crucial HIV protein called gp41, the synthetic mol... Read More

A cellular molecule that not only can sense two common respiratory viruses but also can direct cells to mount a defence has been identified by microbiologists at The University of Texas Health Science Centre at San Antonio.

The finding, published online yesterday by the journal Nature Immunol... 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

The body's appendix has long been thought of as nothing more than a worthless evolutionary artifact, good for nothing save a potentially lethal case of inflammation.

Now researchers suggest the appendix is a lot more than a useless remnant. Not only was it recently proposed to actually posses... 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

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

The BBC reports the World Health Organization has said healthy patients who catch swine flu do not need to be treated with Tamiflu.
Antiviral drugs should be used in patients who are severely ill or those in high-risk groups including the under fives and pregnant women, it said.

Click source... Read More

Wash your hands. That’s a common mantra — and a worthy one — as the H1N1 flu continues to spread around the globe.

But all the hand-washing in the world may not be a match for the germs and viruses lurking on household surfaces.

“There is a big appreciation for influenza that you can get ... Read More

James Staley, Ph.D., suggests the phylogenomic species concept, which combines phylogenetic and genomic analyses, can be used to circumscribe species:

"Bacteriologists have not yet adopted a concept for a species. Bacterial and archaeal species are defined on the basis of phenotypic propertie... Read More