A fluorescent protein derived from a Dead Sea microbe could be a novel way to track electrical signals in the brain, researchers say. It's noninvasive and nontoxic, so it could enable neuron tracking without harming the neurons.
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy is a powerful research tool that is being used to detect and analyze chemicals as well as a non-invasive tool for imaging cells and detecting cancer. It also has been employed for label-free sensing of bacteria, exploiting its tremendous enhancement in the Raman signal.
Antibiotics can help ward off serious bacterial infections in kidney disease patients who use tubes called catheters for their dialysis treatments. But if antibiotics are used too often, "super bugs" may crop up that are resistant to the drugs.
A consortium of researchers, notably from CNRS, CEA, INRA and the Universities of Aix-Marseille, Paris-Sud, Toulouse and Grenoble 1, have analysed the genome of the bacterium Ramlibacter tataouinensis TTB310, also known as the "desert bacterium." Decoding of the genome revealed the presence of kaiC, a gene with a function that had previously been found only in certain photosynthetic bacteria.
Dacheng Ren, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering in Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (LCS) and member of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute, has published a paper based on his research into how antimicrobial peptides may be able to aid in addressing the challenge posed by bacterial persister cells. His work was published in the July issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Afghan patients treated at a U.S. military hospital in Afghanistan often carry multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria, according to a report in the September issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. The findings underscore the need for effective infection control measures at deployed hospitals where both soldiers and local patients are treated, the study's authors say.
The Wall Street Journal examines the use of the African giant pouched rat to detect tuberculosis (TB) in lab samples. A study published online in the Pan African Medical Journal last month found the rats are "better than human lab techs at identifying TB bacteria in a dollop of mucus," a finding that "holds promise for diagnosing tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa," according to the newspaper.
New research raises troubling concerns about the use of aggressive drug therapies to treat a wide range of diseases such as MRSA, C. difficile, malaria, and even cancer.
The Lampasas and Leon Rivers watersheds have been listed as impaired by the state due to high counts of E. coli and other bacteria taken in the late 1990s, but from whom, what and where the contamination originates is unclear, say Texas AgriLife Research experts.
This spring, Nimbic Systems, based near Houston, Texas, received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for the company's Air Barrier System, a unique medical device for reducing surgical-incision site contamination by infection-causing microorganisms.
MGB Biopharma and Almac's Sciences Business Unit have entered into a collaboration where Almac will manufacture the production of their lead gram positive antibacterial compound MGB-BP3.
Antibiotics are among the greatest achievements of medical science. But lately the former multi-purpose weapon fails in the battle against infectious diseases. Bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to antibiotics. Researchers have now found a therapeutic equivalent which could replace penicillin and related phamaceuticals.
After 70 years, antibiotics are still the primary treatment for halting the spread of bacterial infections. But the prevalence of antibiotic resistance is now outpacing the rate of new drug discovery and approval.
Researchers from Canada studying the highly salty coastal lagoons at Los Roques, Venezuela and the microbial mats found at the bottom of the sea there, have discovered that oxygen levels in the mats, at least in the day time, are high enough to support the development of mobile life forms. Led by University of Alberta palaeontologist, Murray Gingras, the team writes in Nature Geoscience, that levels of oxygen on the ocean floor were up to four times as high as that near the surface; high enough to support the development of mobile sea life; which the team believes could explain how early life forms could have evolved in waters with high salt concentrations.
Marine shallow water sandy bottoms on the surface appear desert-like and empty, but in the interstitial space between the sand grains a diverse fauna flourishes. In addition to bacteria and protozoa numerous animal phyla have been found here, some only here. One of the strangest members of this interstitial fauna is Paracatenula, a several millimeters long, mouth and gut-less flatworm, which is found from tropical oceans to the Mediterranean. These worms are the focus of a research project led by Jörg Ott at the Department of Marine Biology of the University of Vienna with funding from the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF).
The polysaccharide (sugar substance) chitosan has a documented antibacterial effect. Hilde Mellegård's doctoral research shows that this antibacterial activity varies according to the chemical composition of the chitosan. Her work demonstrates how chitosan can impede the growth of different kinds of bacteria -- including bacteria that cause food poisoning -- and provides new insight into the way the substance works. However, the study also shows that phenolic compounds from peat moss have little potential as bacteriostatic agents.
Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance, finds a new study led by Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University.
Materials scientists at the University of Birmingham have devised a way of making stainless steel surfaces resistant to bacteria in a project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council which culminated this week.
The part of bacterial DNA that often carries antibiotic resistance is a master at moving between different types of bacteria and adapting to widely differing bacterial species, shows a study made by a research team at the University of Gothenburg in cooperation with Chalmers University of Technology. The results are published in an article in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
For the first time, scientists have been able to paint a detailed chemical picture of how a particular strain of bacteria has evolved to become resistant to antibiotics. The research is a key step toward designing compounds to prevent infections by recently evolved, drug-resistant "superbugs" that often are found in hospitals, as well as in the general population.
Antibiotics may not be the only risk factor associated with community-acquired Clostridium difficile infection, indicating that other undefined causes of the potentially life-threatening infection may exist and could also predict whether or not a patient will require hospitalization, according to the results of the study, "Predictors of Hospitalization in Community-Acquired Clostridium difficile Infection," unveiled today at the American College of Gastroenterology's (ACG) 76th Annual Scientific meeting in Washington, DC.
Encapsulating antibiotics inside nanofibers, like a mummy inside a sarcophagus, gives them the amazing ability to destroy drug-resistant bacteria so completely that scientists described the remains as mere "ghosts," according to a report today at the the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
In the online version of the New England Journal of Medicine, physicians and scientists in Heidelberg, Montreal, and Paris reported on the successful treatment of three young children who were suffering from a severe hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) after an infection with enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC). The infections occurred in 2010. EHEC are the bacteria that cause the current wave of infections that have already claimed ten lives in Germany. The number of suspected and confirmed cases of EHEC has now reached 700.
The dominant theory about antibodies is that they directly target and kill disease-causing organisms. In a surprising twist, researchers have discovered that certain antibodies to Streptococcus pneumoniae actually trick the bacteria into killing each other.
The trip to Mars just got a little more difficult now that French researchers have discovered that antibodies used to fight off disease might become seriously compromised during long-term space flight. In a new report published online in the FASEB Journal, the scientists show that antibodies produced in space are less effective than those produced on terra firma. The reduced effectiveness of antibodies makes astronauts more susceptible to illness, while increasing the danger posed by bacteria and viruses likely to coexist with wayfaring astronauts.
The demand of antimicrobials in the plastic business is growing. SANITIZED AG is following a strategy of direct commercialisation of its products in the Plastic Market. Its clients profit from a short time to market and professional consulting over the whole project process.
The Australian wallaby and platypus could turn out to be key weapons in fighting the growing health threat of multidrug-resistant bacteria, a team involving University of Sydney researchers has discovered.
Scientists have developed bacteria that serve as mobile pharmaceutical factories, both producing disease-fighting substances and delivering the potentially life-saving cargo to diseased areas of the body. They reported on this new candidate for treating diseases ranging from food poisoning to cancer -- termed "bacterial dirigibles" -- at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Bacteria that cause stomach inflammation and ulcers were not detectable in tissue from inflamed and enlarged adenoids in children, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck Surgery.
Remarkable bacteria that resist arsenic could greatly enhance cleanups of toxic environments and potentially boost agricultural production, according to a new University of Florida study.
Bacteria swap genetic information as readily as people can share digital data -- there are no cultural, political or systemic boundaries, according to a new study. Researchers say they have identified a massive gene network that facilitates the transfer of 10,000 unique genes among 2,235 bacterial genomes, across international borders and across species.
While traces of pharmaceutical compounds are commonly present in wastewater, interactions with bacteria during the treatment process could transform them from non-toxic to toxic forms.
Forget silicon; computers of the future could be based partially around bacteria. Scientists at the Imperial College London have engineered bacteria to function as logic gates, basic components used to build electronic circuits. This is an important step towards the creation of biological digital devices--think living computers.
A nanoparticle that can destroy drug-resistant bacteria developed by the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, and the IBM Almaden Research Center, has recently been named one of 10 world changing ideas by Scientific American in its Technology Special Report.
It is a common perception that bigger, stronger, faster organisms have a distinct advantage for long-term survival when competing with other organisms in a given community.
Cells making slippery mucus provide a sticking point for disease-causing bacteria in the gut, according to a study published on October 3 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
The anaerobic oxidation of ammonia (anammox) is an important pathway in the nitrogen cycle that was only discovered in the 1980s. Currently, scientists estimate that about 50 percent of the nitrogen in the atmosphere is forged by this process. A group of specialized bacteria perform the anammox reaction, but so far scientists have been in the dark about how these bacteria could convert ammonia to nitrogen in the complete absence of oxygen. Now, 25 years after its discovery, they finally solved the molecular mechanism of anammox.
Anyone who has ever had a stomach bug knows it can really subdue your spirits as well as your appetite. But other parts of the gut microbiome can have the opposite effect, and make you feel great. Irish researchers have found a type of gut bacteria that seems to have directly interacted with the brains of mice, reducing stress and depression.
Bacteria that grow in the antennae of wasps help ward off fungal threats by secreting a 'cocktail' of antibiotics explains a scientist at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate.
Much as people can exchange information instantaneously in the digital age, bacteria associated with humans and their livestock appear to freely and rapidly exchange genetic material related to human disease and antibiotic resistance through a mechanism called horizontal gene transfer (HGT).
Bacteria responsible for middle ear infections, pink eye and sinusitis protect themselves from further immune attack by transporting molecules meant to destroy them away from their inner membrane target. The study is the first to describe a transporter system that bacteria use to ensure their survival.
Studying how bacteria incorporate foreign DNA from invading viruses into their own regulatory processes, Thomas Wood, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is uncovering the secrets of one of nature's most primitive immune systems.
Researchers at the Institute of Heritage Restoration (IRP) and the Centre for Advanced Food Microbiology (CAMA), both from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain), are beginning to experiment with this new technique on the frescoes of Antonio Palomino from the 17th century in the Church of Santos Juanes in Valencia.
At several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites, uranium mining, milling, and processing have led to groundwater contamination that persists above drinking water standards--in spite of natural flushing and the removal of contaminated sediments. A multi-institutional research team, including researchers at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), is investigating the use of bioremediation to treat the subsurface uranium plumes and remove pollutants. Research conducted by the team at the Integrated Field Research Challenge (IFRC) site in Rifle, Colorado has shown that indigenous bacteria can be stimulated to immobilize the uranium, resulting in groundwater concentrations below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard.
A new bacterium that uses caffeine for food has been discovered by a doctoral student at the University of Iowa. The bacterium uses newly discovered digestive enzymes to break down the caffeine, which allows it to live and grow.
In various ways, bacteria are one step ahead to us humans. For example, they dispose of "intelligent" RNA molecules, so-called riboswitches, which help to regulate many of their essential metabolism pathways. The riboswitches, only discovered a few years ago, are sensors in RNA molecules. A riboswitch acts similarly to a motion sensor that switches on or off the light when people are nearby: the riboswitch switches genes off or on when certain metabolism products are present in a cell. There is no similar mechanism of gene regulation in humans, therefore this represents an ideal target for new antibiotics.
In the human world of manufacturing, many companies are now applying an on-demand, just-in-time strategy to conserve resources, reduce costs and promote production of goods precisely when and where they are most needed. A recent study from Indiana University Bloomington scientists reveals that bacteria have evolved a similar just-in-time strategy to constrain production of an extremely sticky cement to exactly the appropriate time and place, avoiding wasteful and problematic production of the material.
More than 20 cases of the life-threatening bacterial infection leptospirosis have been reported in Detroit-area dogs in the past three weeks, according to Michigan State University's Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health.
Concentrated animal feeding operations on industrial animal factories can stink up an entire county, due to ammonia, and a smorgasbord of volatile organic compounds. Report that biofiltration with microbial filters can remove most of the butyric acid, dimethyl disulfide, and ammonia from the exhaust air, along with other smelly compounds.
A newly sequenced bacterial genome from a team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could contain clues as to how microorganisms produce a highly toxic form of mercury.
The bacterium Escherichia coli can be a scientist's best friend when it's being used as a tool for biological research, but some strains of it are better known for their nasty effects on humans as a causative agent in food poisoning.
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed a new laboratory test that can rapidly identify the bacterium responsible for staph infections. This new test takes advantage of unique isotopic labeling combined with specific bacteriophage amplification to rapidly identify Staphylococcus aureus.
As the world -- and its landfills and water treatment plants -- get more and more crowded, future houses will have to cut down on their waste. Or they could just repurpose it. For instance, they could use household sludge to feed bioluminescent bacteria to light up a room. It's so simple! Really!
Access to clean water is a necessity often taken for granted. However UNICEF estimates that 900 million people across the world do not have access to safe drinking water. New research shows that an enteric virus-binding protein isolated from bacteria found in activated sludge, is able to capture viruses often present in contaminated water.
New atomic-level "snapshots" published in the June 2, 2011, issue of Nature reveal details of how bacteria such as E. coli produce and secrete sticky appendages called pili, which help the microbes attach to and infect human cells. "These crystal structures unravel a complex choreography of protein-protein interactions that will aid in the design of new antibacterial drugs," said Huilin Li, a biophysicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and a professor at Stony Brook University, who participated in the research with a number of collaborators in the U.S. and in Europe.
Almost all bacteria owe their structure to an outer cell wall that interacts closely with the supporting MreB protein inside the cell. As scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry and at the French INRA now show, MreB molecules assemble into larger units, but not - as previously believed — into continuous helical structures.
Researchers from the University of Utah have identified a process by which the most common types of urinary tract infection-causing bacteria are able to trigger bladder cell shedding and disable immune responses. According to this new study, published in the Jan. 19, 2012, issue of Cell Host & Microbe, a-hemolysin, a toxin secreted by many strains of Escherichia coli (E. coli), may play an important, unexpected role during both the establishment and persistence of urinary tract infections.
A research team at the University of Maryland has developed bacteria that produce disease-resistant materials and safeguard the diseased parts of the body.
Salmonella enterica, one of the main causes of gastrointestinal infections, modulates its virulence gene expression, adapting it to each stage of the infection process, depending on the free iron concentration found in the intestinal epithelium of its host. Researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have demonstrated for the first time that the pathogen activates these genes through the Fur protein, which acts as a sensor of iron levels in its surroundings.
Researchers from the Smiley lab at the Trudeau Institute have now identified a single component of the plague causing bacterium that can be used as a vaccine. This single "subunit" could potentially be used to create a safer form of a T cell-stimulating plague vaccine.
Apocalypse by fiery nuclear war, apocalypse by ancient Mayan prophecy, apocalypse by Buffy villain - we expected almost anything. But not apocalypse by bed bug.
According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the top three threats to human health. Patients in hospitals are especially at risk, with almost 100,000 deaths due to infection every year in the U.S. alone.
University of New South Wales researchers have shown that they can safely destroy hazardous industrial toxins in groundwater arising from PVC plastic production by injecting naturally occurring bacteria into a contaminated Sydney aquifer — an Australian first that raises hope of cleaning up this and similarly polluted sites around the country.
The gut may need bacteria to provide a little bit of oxidative stress to stay healthy, new research suggests. Probiotic bacteria promote healing of the intestinal lining in mice by inducing the production of reactive oxygen species, researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have shown.
The recent outbreak of an E. coli infection in Germany has resulted in serious concerns about the potential appearance of a new deadly strain of bacteria. In response to this situation, and immediately after the reports of deaths, the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf and BGI-Shenzhen began working together to sequence the bacterium and assess its human health risk. BGI-Shenzhen has just completed the sequence and carried out a preliminary analysis that shows the current infection is caused by an entirely new super-toxic E. coli strain.
In the heart of London, researchers are splitting apart the building blocks of life and working towards a cure for cancer. The Biomedical Research Centre, run by King's College Hospital and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, has a genomic sequencing unit that genotypes tissue from patients with cancer and other diseases.
Indiana University biologists have uncovered how a control system works in producing the important light-harvesting antennae that power photosynthesis in cyanobacteria, the microorganisms that are progenitors of all land plants and responsible for nearly half of the Earth's current oxygen production.
Purdue University biologists identified a new way in which bacteria hijack healthy cells during infection, which could provide a target for new antibiotics.
In a surprising new study, researchers using image-analysis methods similar to those employed in facial-recognition software have made a startling discovery that rules out the two main theories scientists had created to explain how bacteria self-organize into multicellular aggregate mounds.
In an example of life imitating art, biologists and bioengineers at UC San Diego have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs.
Jake Finkbonner is bouncing about, teasing his sisters and playing basketball again. That is a miracle -- not only to him and his family but also to the Pope Benedict XVI.
Researchers from IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology discovered a nanomedicine breakthrough in which new types of polymers were shown to physically detect and destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria and infectious diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA.
Breastfeeding increased infant survival rates in 19th - Century Montreal in two major ways. Mother's milk protected vulnerable infants from food and water contaminated by fecal bacteria, while breastfeeding postponed the arrival of more siblings and that improved the health of mothers as well as their subsequent children.
In this week's PLoS Medicine, Stephan Harbarth from the University of Geneva, Switzerland and colleagues argue that the International Health Regulations (IHR) should be applied to the global health threat of antimicrobial resistance. They say that certain events marking the emergence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, especially those involving new pan-resistant strains for which there are no suitable treatments, may constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and are notifiable to WHO under the IHR notification requirement.
Exotic bacteria that do not rely on oxygen may have played an important role in determining the composition of Earth's early atmosphere, according to a theory that UChicago researcher Albert Colman is testing in the scalding hot springs of a volcanic crater in Siberia.
Vaccines with broader reach might be made by stimulating specialized immune cells to recognize foreign cell membrane proteins that are shared across bacterial species. The approach could be particularly beneficial in preventing infection by multi-drug resistant organisms.
Scientists have identified a class of naturally occurring bacteria that can strongly inhibit malaria-causing parasites in Anopheles mosquitoes, a finding that could have implications for efforts to control malaria. The study, led by George Dimopoulos, Ph.D., of the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Malaria Research Institute, both of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, appears in the May 13 edition of Science. The research was partly funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health.
Particular types of mouth bacteria, some of which are found in gum disease, are associated with the development of pancreatic cancer, indicates a small study published online in the journal Gut.
The polysaccharide (sugar substance) chitosan has a documented antibacterial effect. Hilde Mellegård's doctoral research shows that this antibacterial activity varies according to the chemical composition of the chitosan. Her work demonstrates how chitosan can impede the growth of different kinds of bacteria - including bacteria that cause food poisoning - and provides new insight into the way the substance works. However, the study also shows that phenolic compounds from peat moss have little potential as bacteriostatic agents.
A team of chemists led by Vincent M. Rotello of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a fast, simple and low-cost field test for detecting bacteria in low concentrations in drinking water using a biosensor made of gold nanoparticles, an enzyme and dye. The biosensor can detect harmful bacteria in concentrations as low as 100 cells per milliliter. Their report appears in the current online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
A University of Houston (UH) chemist who is developing materials for detecting and repelling E. coli has published papers in two high-impact journals this month.
Anthrax, septicemia and meningitis are some of the planet's most deadly infections. In part because doctors lack basic insights to prevent and cure diseases caused by so called Gram-positive bacteria. Now, a chemist from the University of Copenhagen has revealed the mechanism behind these deadly infections.
"E coli bacteria is commonly used to evaluate and regulate the levels of fecal pollution of our water from storm water discharge, but because storm sewers systems collect surface runoff, non-human sources can contribute significantly to the levels that are observed," Sauvé explained.
In the endless search to develop newer and cooler ways to send messages between people without other's intercepting them, chemists from Tufts University working together have figured out a way to use a strain of bacteria to encode a message on a paper-like material that can then later be de-coded by the receiver. Manuel Palacios and David Walta, along with their team describe in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, how they did it.
Research in the laboratory of Shahriar Mobashery in the University of Notre Dame's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has led to further understanding of how a bacterial cell wall cross-links, an event that penicillin and other antibiotics disrupt, a step in the maturation of a cell wall that is critical for the survival of bacteria.
China's state-run media and web users criticised the government Friday after it ruled that small amounts of a potentially lethal bacterium were permissible in frozen food.
A novel mechanism has been identified in which Chlamydia trachomatis tricks host cells into taking up the bacteria. Researchers from University of California San Francisco, led by Joanne Engel, report their findings in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens on October 6th.
"A cholera pandemic that has swept poor countries in three waves over nearly four decades has been traced to a bacterial strain that first emerged in Bangladesh, scientists reported on Wednesday," Agence France-Presse reports. "The new probe, published in the British journal Nature, points to the likely role of modern travel in transmitting the bacteria -- and the importance of the Gulf of Bengal as a 'reservoir,' or source from which the germ can always be transmitted," AFP writes (8/24).
New research suggests that cholesterol boosts resistance in Helicobacter pylori both to many antibiotics and to the endogenous antimicrobial peptide, LL-37. A complete understanding of the pathway of cholesterol uptake might lead to novel strategies thwarting H. pylori by blocking that pathway, says corresponding author David McGee of Louisiana State University. The research is published in the June 2011 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
Just like intelligence agents watching for the real terrorists threatening to attack, monitoring healthcare worker adherence to mandatory hand-washing protocols via hand-washing squads in hospitals can go a long way to stop outbreaks of the opportunistic Clostridium difficile bacteria, says Irena Kenneley, an infection prevention and control expert and assistant professor of nursing from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.
Triclosan, a common antibacterial agent found in many hand soaps and other products, is known to have the added benefit of alleviating allergic skin conditions such as eczema. In a study finds that this anti-inflammatory effect may be caused by triclosan’s inhibitory effect on mast cells, which are implicated in allergies and asthma but which also are key components of a healthy immune system.
A new research study of the effect of a commonly used strategy to reduce the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospital intensive care units (ICU) shows that the strategy had no significant effect. That's the surprising finding of a multisite study led by Mayo Clinic investigators. The bacteria -- methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) -- are resistant to common antibiotics and harder to treat if patients become infected. The findings appear in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Scientists have successfully demonstrated that they can build some of the basic components for digital devices out of bacteria and DNA, which could pave the way for a new generation of biological computing devices, in research published October 18 in the journal Nature Communications.
Coriander oil has been shown to be toxic to a broad range of harmful bacteria. Its use in foods and in clinical agents could prevent food-borne illnesses and even treat antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the authors of a study published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.
Literature tells us that "no man is an island entire unto itself," but science reveals that we are in fact a walking, talking colony of microscopic creatures.
Some new research on a bacterial predator that feeds on other bacteria may lead to new ammunition against biofilms. The research is published in the June 2011 issue of the Journal of Bacteriology.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's DNA Learning Center has been awarded the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) for its creation of a science education portal.
A bacteria which infects people with cystic fibrosis could help combat other antibiotic-resistant microbes, according to a team from Cardiff and Warwick Universities. Continuous use of existing antibiotics means that resistant bacteria are now causing major health problems all over the world. New antibiotics are urgently needed to combat the emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria such as the MRSA superbug.
Durata Therapeutics today announced surveillance data demonstrating potency of the Company's lead antibiotic product, dalbavancin, a long-acting, intravenous (IV) lipoglycopeptide, against a broad spectrum of gram-positive bacteria prevalent in recent years. The surveillance data also confirmed that the susceptibility profile of dalbavancin has not changed since surveillance studies were first initiated over a decade ago.
Most everyone that has been keeping abreast of world events knows that the clock is ticking on antibiotics; bacteria have been slowly developing a resistance and development of new antibiotics has slowed to a crawl, thus the day will soon come that all of the tools were are currently using to fight bacterial infections will be lost, leaving everyone at their mercy.
There are important lessons to be learned in the United States from the recent eruption of foodborne illness in Germany -- which has turned out to be the deadliest E. coli outbreak ever -- according to a food-safety expert in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
Deadly bacteria may be evolving antibiotic resistance by mimicking human proteins, according to a new study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).
Escherichia coli bacteria thrive in the lower intestine of humans and other animals, including birds. Most are vital constituents of the healthy gut flora, but certain forms of E. coli cause a range of diseases in both humans and poultry.
A new breed of biodegradable nanoparticles can glom on to drug-resistant bacteria, breaching their cell walls and leaking out their contents, selectively killing them. The polymer particles could someday be used in anything from injectable treatments for drug-resistant bacteria, to new antibacterial soaps and deodorants, according to inventors at IBM. After their work is done, the particles break apart, flushing away with the invaders they destroyed.
The mammalian gut is home to hundreds of bacterial species that contribute to food digestion and, in some cases, inflammatory gut diseases. Probiotics, beneficial bacterial species, can enhance gut health by keeping the resident bacteria in check.
A dietary yeast extract could be an effective alternative to antibiotics for poultry producers, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study.
If infants encounter a wide range of bacteria they are less at risk of developing allergic disease later in life. This is the conclusion of research from the University of Copenhagen, which suggests completely new factors in many modern lifestyle diseases.
Britain's soil bacteria have been mapped for the first time in the most comprehensive study of a country's soil biodiversity to date. The results are published today (20 April 2011) in the journal Environmental Microbiology.
A strain of E. coli bacteria blamed for killing dozens of people in Germany is a genetic mix whose ability to stick to intestinal walls may have made it so lethal, a study in The Lancet said on Wednesday.
When a bacterial cell divides into two daughter cells and those two cells divide into four more daughters, then 8, then 16 and so on, the result, biologists have long assumed, is an eternally youthful population of bacteria. Bacteria, in other words, don't age -- at least not in the same way all other organisms do.
More than 60 percent of hospital nurses' and doctors' uniforms tested positive for potentially dangerous bacteria, according to a study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC -- the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Top sirloin steaks have been getting a grilling in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food safety studies. USDA microbiologist John B. Luchansky and his colleagues are conducting experiments to help make sure that neither the foodborne pathogen Escherichia coli O157:H7 nor any of its pathogenic relatives will ruin the pleasure of eating this popular entree.
A new technique which targets antibiotic-resistant bacteria and shields patients from the toxic parts of an antibiotic drug has been developed by Cardiff University scientists.
Illicit drug users are at increased risk of being exposed to microbial pathogens and are more susceptible to serious infections say physicians writing in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The review, which aims to improve the microbiological diagnosis of drug use-related infections, assesses the role of drug related practices in the spread of a range of bacterial, viral, fungal and protozoal infections.
Are you aware that colds, flu, most sore throats and bronchitis are caused by viruses? Did you know that antibiotics do not help fight viruses and that using them for viral infections only decreases their effectiveness overall?
Scientists reported Wednesday a super-strain of salmonella resistant to antibiotics, notably ciprofloxacin, which is commonly used to treat infections caused by the bacteria.
Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance, finds a new study led by Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University.
Durata Therapeutics today announced the Company initiated a global, pivotal, Phase 3 study (DISCOVER-1) of its lead product, dalbavancin, a long-acting, intravenous (IV) lipoglycopeptide for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (abSSSI). The pivotal study is being conducted under a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) agreed upon with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Durata Therapeutics today announced the Company has received positive Scientific Advice from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on the pivotal clinical development plan for dalbavancin, Durata's long-acting, intravenous (IV) lipoglycopeptide for the treatment of acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (abSSSI). The EMA's Advice is in concert with the output of a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) agreed upon with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Based on this comprehensive body of regulatory guidance, Durata is conducting a global, pivotal, Phase 3 study (DISCOVER-1) of dalbavancin, initiated in March of this year.
E. coli bacteria exposed to three common antibiotics were more likely to develop antibiotic resistance following low-level antibiotic exposure than after exposure to high concentrations that would kill the bacteria or inhibit their growth, according to a timely article in Microbial Drug Resistance, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
Studies by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have confirmed that the presence of Escherichia coli pathogens in surface waters could result from the pathogen's ability to survive for months in underwater sediments. Most E. coli strains don't cause illness, but they are indicator organisms used by water quality managers to estimate fecal contamination.
The death toll in Europe's E. coli outbreak has risen by three to at least 47, German authorities said Monday, even as new infections continue to tail off.
Recent studies at the ISIS neutron source, the Science and Technology Facilities Council's world leading research centre, have given a new insight into how E. coli bacteria, often associated with food poisoning (and sometimes found in turkey), kill each other in the evolutionary competition for food and space. This breakthrough could be fundamental in developing new ways to treat illnesses such as food poisoning or meningitis.
European food and disease prevention authorities said Wednesday they are investigating whether the E. coli outbreak in Germany and France may be traced back to fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt either in 2009 or last year.
A team of scientists from the University of Oxford, U.K. have taken lessons from Adam Smith and Charles Darwin to devise a new strategy that could one day slow, possibly even prevent, the spread of drug-resistant bacteria. In a new research report published in the March 2011 issue of Genetics, the scientists show that bacterial gene mutations that lead to drug resistance come at a biological cost not borne by nonresistant strains. They speculate that by altering the bacterial environment in such a way to make these costs too great to bear, drug-resistant strains would eventually be unable to compete with their nonresistant neighbors and die off.
The bacteria known as Geobacter sulfurreducens, when exposed to uranium, pretty much just die. But under certain conditions, they can grow appendages that can literally make uranium drop out of water like a stone. Scientists have found a way to get them to grow the right way, and may even be able to recreate them artificially.
Thousands of tonnes of toxic mercury are released into the environment every year. Much of this collects in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, and enters the food chain ending up in the fish we eat. New research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology, showcases genetically engineered bacteria which are not only able to withstand high levels of mercury but are also able to mop up mercury from their surroundings.
U.S. production of ethanol for fuel has been rising quickly, topping 13 billion gallons in 2010. With the usual rail, truck and barge transport methods under potential strain, existing gas pipelines might be an efficient alternative for moving this renewable fuel around the country. But researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) caution that ethanol, and especially the bacteria sometimes found in it, can dramatically degrade pipelines.
The EU is to invest 2.2 million euros in research on the new killer E.coli strain which infected almost 4,000 people and left 51 dead across Europe and caused massive losses to vegetable farmers.
An attenuated, or weakened, strain of Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria can be used as a vaccine to prevent or reduce the severity of trachoma, the world's leading cause of infectious blindness, suggest findings from a National Institutes of Health study in monkeys.
Could some cases of asthma actually be caused by an allergic reaction to a common environmental bacteria? New research findings published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that this idea may not be as far-fetched as it seems. In a research report appearing in the February 2012 print issue, researchers show a link between common environmental bacteria and airway inflammation.
Call it a sugar coating, if you will, for in fact, the capsule is made from sugar molecules, which do not ordinarily elicit immunity. Thus it hides the bacterium's proteins within, preventing immune response.
A common oral bacteria, Fusobacterium nucleatum, acts like a key to open a door in human blood vessels and leads the way for it and other bacteria like Escherichia coli to invade the body through the blood and make people sick.
Nitrofurantoin Oral Suspension is an anti-bacterial medication indicated for the treatment of urinary tract infection (UTI). Amneal will sell its generic in 8 oz/230 ml size bottles. The clear yellow, tutti fruitti-flavored liquid does not require refrigeration. Amneal is now shipping Nitrofurantoin, available through wholesalers-distributors as well as directly to the trade.
The new "super-bug" CRKP, known officially as carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, is just the latest in a series of emerging drug-resistant strains of bacteria that pose a serious threat to human health. CRKP has been reported in nearly 40 states, and there are currently no medicines to treat these infections.
A vampire-like bacteria that leeches onto specific other bacteria -- including certain human pathogens -- has the potential to serve as a living antibiotic for a range of infectious diseases, a new study indicates.
A microscopic chytrid fungus is causing massive declines in frog populations all over the world and even the extinction of certain species. Together with colleagues from Europe and the USA, researchers from the University of Zurich present methods as to how the chytrid fungus can be combated in the journal Frontiers in Zoology: namely with bacteria and fungicides. However, the possibility of vaccinating the frogs is also being considered.
Genetically modified bacteria could be used in air filters to extract pesticide vapors from polluted air thanks to work by researchers in China published this month in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.
Thanks to the work of a Simon Fraser University researcher and two of his students, science is closer to finding a new way of combatting infections caused by Escherichia coli (E. coli) and other related bacteria.
Critical genetic secrets of a bacterium that holds potential for removing toxic and radioactive waste from the environment have been revealed in a study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The researchers have provided the first ever map of the genes that determine how these bacteria interact with their surrounding environment.
In the first report on the uptake and internal processing of triclocarban (TCC) in fish, scientists today reported strong evidence that TCC — an antibacterial ingredient in some soaps and the source of environmental health concerns because of its potential endocrine-disrupting effects — has a "strong" tendency to bioaccumulate in fish. They presented the findings here today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
From the moment that a spore of fungus fell onto Alexander Fleming's culture plate in 1928 and killed the bacteria around it, that fungus was destined to become one of the most studied organisms on the planet.
7,000 Australians die each year from infections picked up in hospitals. This shocking loss of life is four times the annual road toll. Overuse of antibiotics has contributed to the problem, by promoting the development of more powerful bacteria that are resistant to treatment. Now, in a new Friends of the Earth report, leading microbiologists have warned that the rapid rise in household antibacterial products containing nano-silver could put more lives at risk.
Skin secretions found in Australian frogs may hold the key to designing powerful new antibiotics that are not prone to bacterial resistance in humans, say researchers.
Bacteria and fungi are remarkably mobile. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that the two organisms enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship to aid them in that movement -- and their survival.
Enough to fill a big soup can. "That's three to five pounds of bacteria," says Lita Proctor, the program coordinator of the National Institutes of Health's Human Microbiome Project, which studies the communities of bacteria living on and in us. The bacteria cells in our body outnumber human cells 10 to 1, she says, but because they are much smaller than human cells, they account for only about 1 to 2 percent of our body mass—though they do make up about half of our body's waste.
Call them the Jason Bournes of the bacteria world. Going "off the grid," like rogue secret agents, some bacteria avoid antibiotic treatments by essentially shutting down and hiding until it's safe to come out again, says Thomas Wood, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Land and marine iguanas and giant tortoises living close to human settlements or tourist sites in the Gal-pagos islands are more likely to harbor antibiotic-resistant bacteria than those living in more remote or protected sites on the islands, researchers report in a new study.
Sepsis is a major killer in hospital intensive care units. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found that manipulating a genetic factor that can launch or throttle the body's defenses can improve survival rates during bacterial infection.
In the famous song by The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go," the lyrics wrestle with one of the more complicated decisions people make -- whether to end a difficult love affair or try to make it work. We aren't likely to understand exactly how specific genes affect such momentous choices anytime soon. But when a microscopic worm ponders whether to stay on a patch of bacteria it is eating or leave for greener pastures, the biology of primitive decision-making is much more accessible. A recent study by Rockefeller University researchers identified natural variations in several genes that influence this behavior, including one, tyramine receptor 3 (tyra-3), that produces a receptor for an invertebrate's version of adrenaline, a hormone involved in the 'fight or flight' response in mammals.
Yale University researchers have successfully re-engineered the protein-making machinery in bacteria, a technical tour de force that promises to revolutionize the study and treatment of a variety of diseases.
Infectious films of staph bacteria that collect around an implanted cardiac device, such as a pacemaker, often force a second surgery to replace the device at a cost of up to $100,000. But not all implanted cardiac devices become infected.
Proving that there's always a different way to approach a problem, researchers at Los Alamos National Lab have devised a pretty clever method of algae harvesting that could take a major chunk out of the cost of algae-based biofuel production. And all they had to do was create a magnetic organism.
In a cramped London laboratory filled with test tubes, bacteria and mosquitoes, scientists are trying to engineer a new weapon in the battle against malaria: a mutant fungus.
Researchers from the Institute of Food Research and The Genome Analysis Centre have published the genome sequence of a gut bacterium, to help understand how these organisms evolved their symbiotic relationships with their hosts.
New research suggests that some patients develop a potentially deadly blood infection from their implanted cardiac devices because bacterial cells in their bodies have gene mutations that allow them to stick to the devices.
Germany's consumer minister expressed deep concern Wednesday at an outbreak of poisoning by dangerous bacteria believed to have killed three women and left hundreds ill.
There hasn't been another major radioactive leak, but soon we could see flesh wounds glowing in the dark. Researchers at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. have developed a gel that glows under ultraviolet light when it comes in contact with many kinds of bacteria.
Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, have been the subject of decades of debate over exactly how they should be classified. While they reproduce and share DNA with their bacterial cousins, they are the only phylum of bacteria that can photosynthesize like plants.
Bacteria generally have a bad reputation — they're good only for causing disease, and are best avoided. But Spencer Nyholm of the molecular and cell biology department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences sees things differently.
Biologists have long known that organisms from bacteria to humans use the 24 hour cycle of light and darkness to set their biological clocks. But exactly how these clocks are synchronized at the molecular level to perform the interactions within a population of cells that depend on the precise timing of circadian rhythms is less well understood.
Graduations are a celebration of achievement and growth, but could all the pomp and circumstance increase your risk of exposure to harmful bacteria? A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined the risk of acquiring pathogenic bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) through shaking hands at graduation ceremonies across Maryland. A handshake, a short ritual in which two people grasp one of each other's opposite hands, dates back as far as the 5th century BCE. This gesture has become ingrained in modern society as a standard greeting and part of the traditional graduation ceremony. Researchers swabbed participants' hands before and immediately following graduation to identify any pathogenic bacteria and found 93 percent of samples contained nonpathogenic bacteria. Their results are featured in the June 2011 issue of the Journal of School Nursing.
A Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing low-cost, renewable biofuels from bacteria. The team has reprogrammed photosynthetic microbes to secrete high-energy fats, making byproduct recovery and conversion to biofuels easier and potentially more commercially viable.
Drugs fed to animals to promote growth and prevent diseases may play a key role in the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, microbiologists said Sunday.
Hair grooming practices, such as braids and weaves, as well as inflammation in the form of bacterial infection, may be contributing to the development of scarring hair loss in African American women, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the August print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Our hands are one of the chief ways we interact with our environment. Think about what you touch daily -- doors, desks, food, other people, pets. Hundreds or thousands of other people have often touched the things we touch, and most of them have hands that are not sterile.
A study of newly installed, hands-free faucets at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, all equipped with the latest electronic-eye sensors to automatically detect hands and dispense preset amounts of water, shows they were more likely to be contaminated with one of the most common and hazardous bacteria in hospitals compared to old-style fixtures with separate handles for hot and cold water.
I'm working on a story for Forbes Magazine about a company called Xenex that is marketing a device that kills drug-resistant bacteria lurking in hospital rooms by blasting them with powerful ultraviolet radiation from a special xenon-filled lightbulb.
Cancer treatments often have the side effect of impairing the patient's immune system. This can result in life-threatening secondary infections from bacteria and fungi, especially since bacteria, like Staphylococcus aureus, are becoming multi-drug resistant (MRSA). New research published by BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials investigates the potency of Indian wild plants against bacterial and fungal infections in the mouths of oral cancer patients.
Submerge it and they will come. Opportunistic seaweed, barnacles, and bacterial films can quickly befoul almost any underwater surface, but researchers are now using advances in nanotechnology and materials science to design environmentally friendly underwater coatings that repel these biological stowaways.
Cardiff University researchers and the National Botanic Garden of Wales are appealing for help in building up a DNA profile of the nation's honey. They hope to use the information to identify plants which could fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as the 'superbug' MRSA. The honey project could also help fight the diseases currently attacking Britain's bees.
Manuka honey could be an efficient way to clear chronically infected wounds and could even help reverse bacterial resistance to antibiotics, according to research presented at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate.
Infection control researchers investigating a rare bacterial outbreak of Burholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) identified contaminated nasal spray as the root cause of the infections, leading to a national recall of the product. An article in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), describes how researchers were able to trace the outbreak back to the nasal decongestant spray.
Working out the structure of a complex formed when a protein binds to DNA has proved to be key in understanding how an antibiotic-producing organism controls resistance to its own antibiotic, and may be an example of how other antibiotic producers regulate export to prevent self-toxicity.
Yale researchers have uncovered the molecular tricks used by bacteria to fight the effects of fluoride, which is commonly used in toothpaste and mouthwash to combat tooth decay.
Recently scientists staged a demonstration in which flesh-eating bacteria died off in droves when placed on a copper surface. Find out why copper engages in bactericide.
The molecular machinery bacteria use to rid themselves of toxic substances including antimicrobial drugs has been studied in detail by a UA-led team of researchers. A better understanding of these mechanisms could lead to new weapons in the fight against pathogens.
Scientists from the UK and Switzerland have investigated the remarkable distance that microorganisms may be able to blow between continents, raising questions about their potential to colonise new lands and also potentially to spread diseases.
Immunological research at the University of Haifa, Israel, has made a new breakthrough, revealing a critical component in the "decision-making" process of white blood cells that play a role in the healing process from bacterial inflammation. "The process that we have discovered can assist in the development of drugs that are based on the natural processes that take place in the human body, unlike most of the existing drugs that attempt to curb inflammation by artificial means," explains Dr. Amiram Ariel of the Department of Biology at the University of Haifa, who headed the study. The research and its results have been published in the scientific journal European Journal of Immunology.
An unusual regulatory mechanism that controls the swimmer/non-swimmer option in genetically identical Salmonella also impacts the bacteria's ability to cause infection.
Hyperbaric chambers are usually sleek cylinders with long observation windows. Inside there's a place to lie down, and often a mask that goes over the patient's face. Once the patient is inside, the chamber is sealed and filled up with pure oxygen. In fact, so much oxygen is pumped in that the hyperbaric chamber winds up at several times atmospheric pressure.
Researchers at Boston University have made discoveries that provide the foundation towards novel approaches to control insects that transmit deadly diseases such as dengue fever and malaria through their study of the Wolbachia bacteria.
Call it a twist on the study of gut bacteria. Scientists sampling DNA strains from the navels of volunteer donors have found 662 microbes that are apparently new to science, showing that the human navel is apparently a ripe environment for bacteria.
A mysterious disease that ravaged coral populations in the Caribbean and Florida Keys for more than a decade came from microbes living in human feces, a new study finds.
You can't see them, or smell them or taste them. They can be in our water and in our food, multiplying so rapidly that conventional testing methods for detecting pathogens such as E.coli, Salmonella and Listeria come too late for the tens of thousands of Canadians who suffer the ill effects of these deadly bacteria.
IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Shanghai have designed a new type of polymer that can detect and destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA. The polymer nanostructures also prevent bacteria from developing drug resistance. Moreover, because of the mechanism by which the nanostructures work, they don't affect circulating blood cells, and, unlike most traditional antimicrobial agents, the nanostructures are biodegradable, naturally eliminated from the body rather than remaining behind and accumulating in tissues.
IBM's announcement of the first biodegradable nanoparticles that can seek out and destroy drug-resistant bacteria caps off a century of healthcare and life sciences innovation from IBM.
Scientists at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) and IBM Research — Almaden have developed the first biodegradable polymer nanoparticles to combat drug-resistant superbugs, such as Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). These nanoparticles can selectively kill the bacteria without destroying healthy red blood cells, and being biodegradable, have great potential to treat infectious diseases in the body. This was reported today in the leading scientific journal, Nature Chemistry ("Biodegradable nanostructures with selective lysis of microbial membranes").
The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, Texas is getting a new high tech imaging suite designed to eventually handle patients with dangerous highly contagious diseases. The technology, co-developed with Philips, will allow a patient to go through pretty much every modern imaging modality without exposing clinicians, machines and the rest of the suite to the contagion.
One of the main basic bacterial survival strategies is the colonization of a surface and the consequent growth as biofilm community, which is embedded in a gel-like polysaccharide matrix (also known as exopolysaccharides matrix or EPS). In spite of its swimming/planktonic counterpart, such sessile adherent bacterial population represents an excellent life-support system.
Human beings need vitamin A but the human body can’t synthesize it. We have to get it from our food. Vitamin A deficiency is a serious public health problem, especially in the developing world. The World Health Organization estimates that between 250,000 and 500,000 children in the developing world go blind each year as a result of vitamin A deficiency.
Scientists have recognized the immune-boosting capabilities of vitamin A for the better part of a century, even without fully understanding how it helps the body fight off bacteria and viruses. "Soon after its discovery, vitamin A was termed 'the anti-infective vitamin' and was widely used to enhance recovery; but with the introduction of antibiotics, the therapeutic use of vitamin A diminished," says Sidonia Fagarasan of the RIKEN Center for Allergy and Immunology in Yokohama, Japan.
When it comes to survival of the fittest, it's sometimes better to be an adaptable tortoise than a fitness-oriented hare, a Michigan State University evolutionary biologist says.
A group of proteins that act as the body's built-in line of defense against invading bacteria use a molecular trick to induce bacteria to destroy themselves, researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine have determined. The research could point the way toward new anti-bacterial treatments that could take on bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.
Iron plays an important role in almost every life form. Low iron can lead to deficiency symptoms and reduced growth, whereas too much iron may harm biomolecules like DNA. Max Planck researchers from Jena and Tuebingen have now elucidated the spatial structure of a bacterial enzyme in Microbacterium arborescens which is able to accumulate several hundred iron ions in its center -- depending on the iron supply situation in its environment: for example in the larval gut of the beet armyworm Spodoptera exigua.
A better understanding of how bacterial toxins cause common human diseases may lead to their improved treatment and prevention according to a paper just published by Irish and US scientists in Nature Reviews Microbiology.
The results, published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, demonstrate a mechanism by which bacterial cultures in foods such as yogurt and kimchi have beneficial effects on intestinal health. The insights gained could also guide doctors to improved treatments for intestinal diseases, such as necrotizing enterocolitis in premature babies or intestinal injury in critically ill adults.
As with their terrestrial counterparts, marine mammals are colonized by a range of bacteria, some of which are friendly and others which can cause disease.
Salmonella is widely prevalent in the animal kingdom. The reason we do not suffer from severe intestinal infections very often is due to our body's defence system, which manages to digest invading bacteria. This is why, generally speaking, a healthy human being will only fall ill if he consumes more than 100.000 salmonella bacteria via a contaminated food source, such as eggs or meat.
Intralytix, Inc. announced today that it has completed regulatory clearance from both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for its phage-based EcoShield™ food safety product, effective against E. coli O157:H7.
Plasma is hot: a few weeks ago we reported about a new atmospheric plasma technology to create sealed plastic bags which are suitable for cell culture.
Zapping salad fixings with just a bit of radiation can kill dangerous E. coli and other bacteria - and food safety experts say Europe's massive outbreak shows wary consumers should give the long-approved step a chance.
A new study by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) shows that jellyfish are more than a nuisance to bathers and boaters, drastically altering marine food webs by shunting food energy from fish toward bacteria.
A lot of chatter goes on inside each one of us and not all of it happens between our ears. Researchers at McMaster University discovered that the "cross-talk" between bacteria in our gut and our brain plays an important role in the development of psychiatric illness, intestinal diseases and probably other health problems as well including obesity.
AllAfrica.com reports on trachoma -- a chronic bacterial infection spread by direct contact with eye, nose and throat secretions from others who are infected -- in Kenya, profiling Kajiado County where the disease has reached the blinding stage in 3.4 percent of patients, "making it a serious public health problem in that region and many other similarly remote areas with little access to health care and screening."
NanoPhos SA, a nanotechnology company, and the leading ceramic tile manufacturer KERABEN co-developed LIFEKER®, an innovative line of self-cleaning and self-sterilizing ceramic tiles. These properties of LIFEKER® tiles are provided by the use of the SurfaShield® coating technology developed by NanoPhos, which is activated simply by the energy of surrounding light (either sunlight or artificial lighting) without the use of dangerous chemicals. The photocatalytic action of SurfaShield® continuously decomposes organic stains and environmental pollutants without being consumed.
The battle against deadly staph infections is closer to victory as Illinois researchers have uncovered secrets of how the bacterium protects itself from human immune attacks, which could lead to more effective anti-staph therapies.
Liquid smoke flavoring made from hickory and other wood — a mainstay flavoring and anti-bacterial agent for the prepared food industry and home kitchens — may get a competitor that seems to be packed with antioxidant, antiallergenic and anti-inflammatory substances, according to a new study in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. It is the first analysis of liquid smoke produced from rice hulls, the hard, inedible coverings of rice grains.
Researchers at the Bio-SANS instrument at the High Flux Isotope Reactor are getting a leg up in their research from an ingenious "low tech" lighting tool that can be fixed to their samples and then pushed directly into the neutron beam, to illuminate the response of layers of cyanobacteria to changes in light.
Most of the time, the immune system is the body's protector, warding off invading viruses and bacteria before they can lead to infection and disease. But in autoimmune diseases, the immune system does an about face, turning on the body and attacking normal cells.
The human gut is filled with 100 trillion symbiotic bacteria -- ten times more microbial cells than our own cells -- representing close to one thousand different species. "And yet, if you were to eat a piece of chicken with just a few Salmonella, your immune system would mount a potent inflammatory response," says Sarkis K. Mazmanian, assistant professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
James Bond frequently has to undertake spectacular feats to protect Queen and country against utter destruction under insurmountable odds. But what happens when the homeland is a bacterial cell, and the danger comes from the insurmountable odds of making large amounts of a complex molecule? You call in a sleeper agent — a protein called Spy.
In the computer displays of medical equipment in hospitals and clinics, liquid crystal technologies have already found a major role. But a discovery reported from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that micrometer-sized droplets of liquid crystal, which have been found to change their ordering and optical appearance in response to the presence of very low concentrations of a particular bacterial lipid, might find new uses in a range of biological contexts.
Scientists have tested a predatory bacterium — Bdellovibrio — against Salmonella in the guts of live chickens. They found that it significantly reduced the numbers of Salmonella bacteria and, importantly, showed that Bdellovibrio are safe when ingested.
The prolonged use of tetracycline antibiotics commonly used to treat acne was associated with a reduced prevalence of StaphylococcuS. aureus bacteria and was not associated with increased resistance to the tetracycline antibiotics, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the August print issue of Archives of Dermatology.
The bacteria that cause Lyme disease, one of the most important emerging diseases in the United States, appear to hide out in the lymph nodes, triggering a significant immune response, but one that is not strong enough to rout the infection, report researchers at the University of California, Davis.
A new study offers a detailed look at the status of Lyme disease in Central Illinois and suggests that deer ticks and the Lyme disease bacteria they host are more adaptable to new habitats than previously appreciated.
The Norwegian pharmaceutical company Lytix Biopharma today announces the successful completion of two Phase I/IIa studies with the topical antimicrobial drug Lytixar™ (LTX-109) - one for nasal decolonisation of MRSA / MSSA (methicillin-resistant and methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria and one for treatment of Gram+ skin infections.
It's been called "the trots," "Montezuma's Revenge," "the runs" and worse. But no matter the name, when it strikes, victims wish for a medicine that could go straight to the offending bacteria to quickly knock it dead.
Replacing conventional laboratory tests with a new DNA sequence-based technology to identify pathogens causing bloodstream infections dramatically lowered mortality and health-care costs, a clinical study conducted by an interdisciplinary UA research team found.
Interventions targeting malaria, such as insecticide-treated bed nets, antimalarial drugs and mosquito control, could substantially reduce cases of bacteraemia, which kill hundreds of thousands of children each year in Africa and worldwide. This is the conclusion of research published today in the Lancet and funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have discovered that an element commonly found in nature might provide a way to neutralize the potentially lethal effects of a compound known as Shiga toxin. New results published in the Jan. 20 issue of Science by Carnegie Mellon biologists Adam Linstedt and Somshuvra Mukhopadhyay show that manganese completely protects against Shiga toxicosis in animal models.
The bladder is a supple, muscular organ with a well-defined task: Store urine and release it at an appropriate time. Unlike its workhorse neighbor, the intestine, it doesn't need a lot of fussy cell division to get the job done. But when the bladder becomes infected, it launches a massive, scorched-earth attack, sloughing off the innermost layer of cells to keep invading bacteria from latching on to and burrowing into its inner lining.
Ever since the Danish bacteriologist Hans Christian Gram developed his eponymous test in 1882 to differentiate between types of bacteria, diagnostic tests have been integral to both public and individual health. The ability to rapidly and accurately detect microbes is becoming increasingly important given the emergence of diverse drug resistant strains, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, as well as the length of time it currently takes to diagnose and treat certain infections.
Bacteria are common sources of infection, but these microorganisms can themselves be infected by even smaller agents: viruses. A new analysis of the interactions between bacteria and viruses has revealed patterns that could help scientists working to understand which viruses infect which bacteria in the microbial world.
In efforts to reduce contamination at a former uranium mill tailings site, Dr. Krishna Mahadevan is developing genome-scale models to determine why certain bacteria reduce uranium better than others. The University of Toronto professor is part of a scientific team studying the Department of Energy's Integrated Field-Scale Subsurface Research Challenge site in Rifle, Colorado. He collaborates with Dr. Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists Dr. Timothy Scheibe and Dr. Philip Long.
More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, "What happened to the oil?" Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery.
In one of those freak accidents that sometimes occur in science, where someone is looking at something for one purpose and finds another for it, Dan O'Sullivan has found a use for a byproduct of harmless bacteria commonly found in the human gut; called bisin, it appears to work as a sort of super-preservative for meat, dairy and eggs, allowing them to go unspoiled for perhaps years.
Just one drink per day for women -- two for men -- could lead to small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and subsequently cause gastrointestinal symptoms like bloating, gas, abdominal pain, constipation and diarrhea, according to the results of a new study unveiled today at the American College of Gastroenterology's (ACG) 76th Annual Scientific meeting in Washington, DC.
Evolution is based on heredity, changes to the genetic material (mutation), and the natural selection of those organisms that are best suited to the given environmental conditions. An international team led by Rupert Mutzel at the Freie Universität of Berlin has now successfully emulated one particular evolutionary process in the laboratory. As the researchers report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, they were able to generate a bacterial strain whose genetic material contains an artificial building block in place of a natural one. Their success results from a special automated cultivation technique.
Just like intelligence agents watching for the real terrorists threatening to attack, monitoring healthcare worker adherence to mandatory hand-washing protocols via hand-washing squads in hospitals can go a long way to stop outbreaks of the opportunistic C. diff bacteria, says Irena Kenneley, an infection prevention and control expert and assistant professor of nursing from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University.
Laboratory-grown gingival cells treated with vitamin D boosted their production of an endogenous antibiotic, and killed more bacteria than untreated cells, according to a paper in the June 2011 issue of the journal Infection and Immunity. The research suggests that vitamin D can help protect the gums from bacterial infections that lead to gingivitis and periodontitis. Periodontitis affects up to 50 percent of the US population, is a major cause of tooth loss, and can also contribute to heart disease. Most Americans are deficient in vitamin D.
There are two new studies out that confirm, once again, that drug-resistant staph or MRSA - normally thought of as a problem in hospitals and out in everyday life, in schoolkids, sports teams, jails and gyms - is showing up in animals and in the meat those animals become.
A new study from Rhode Island Hospital has found a significant increase in the occurrence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in the summer and autumn months. The increase was more pronounced in the pediatric population than in adults. The study is now published online in advance of print in PloS ONE.
Does the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, cause more deaths in hospitals than the bacteria that are sensitive to common antibiotics? Opinions have been varied, but now a worldwide study at, among others, Linköping University in Sweden, indicates that the mortality rate can be 50 % higher for intensive care patients infected with MRSA.
Google searches are apparently providing much more important information than just a typical search for a local restaurant or research for a term paper. Google trends are also providing much more information than just the 'top celebrity gossip' and news searches. According to a paper published in the June issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, epidemiologist Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago show how Google searches and trends could be used to better track the spread of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
Multi-drug resistant bacteria "are increasing their grip in Europe with rates of drug resistance in one type of bacteria reaching 50 percent in the worst-hit countries.
Inspired by Mother Nature, scientists are reporting development of a protective coating with the potential to enable living cells to survive in a dormant condition for long periods despite intense heat, dryness and other hostile conditions. In a report in Journal of the American Chemical Society, they liken the coating to the armor that encloses the spores that protect anthrax and certain other bacterial cells, making those microbes difficult to kill.
NanoLogix, a biotechnology innovator in the rapid detection and identification of live-cell bacteria and microorganisms, announced today that the American Journal of Perinatology has published a peer-reviewed paper from the University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston confirming NanoLogix BioNanoPore (BNP) and BioNanoFilter (BNF) Quick Test technology detect and identify Group B Strep in four to six hours. The published results are in stark contrast to current Petri culturing or PCR Protocol (DNA sequencing) methods. While those conventional methods require between 48 to 72 hours of incubation to obtain results, the NanoLogix diagnostic technology for Group B Strep has proven to be 12 to 18 times faster.
Nanotechnology is an enabling technology that deals with nanometer-sized objects. A decade ago, nanoparticles were studied because of their size-dependent physical and chemical properties. Now they have entered a commercial exploration period leading to the establishment various novel fields of science — one of them being nanobiotechnology.
In recent years, researchers have worked to develop more flexible, functional prosthetics for soldiers returning home from battlefields in Afghanistan or Iraq with missing arms or legs. But even new prosthetics have trouble keeping bacteria from entering the body through the space where the device has been implanted.
A preliminary study reveals that Nanosphere's Verigene BC-GP test that utilizes the company's patented array-based nanoparticle technology has illustrated 100% specificity and sensitivity for identifying the drug-resistant bacteria VRE and MRSA and 98.4% of overall sensitivity for a wide range of bacterial targets.
Neogen Corporation has announced the development of a breakthrough pathogen detection and identification technology that provides next day, DNA-specific test results for seven pathogenic E. coli strains. The technology could be adapted to target almost any bacterium of concern in almost any food sample type.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have found that commensal gut flora in mice is an essential part of the immune triggering process that leads to multiple sclerosis (MS). In their paper published in Nature, the team led by Gurumoorthy Krishnamoorthy and Hartmut Wekerle write that microbial environmental factors that lead to the disease aren't able to do their work in the absence of common gut bacteria, thus they find that such bacteria are a necessary link in the chain of events that lead to the broad spectrum neurological disease known as MS.
This year's World Health Day focuses on the growing threat of potentially deadly infections developing resistance to antimicrobial drugs -- especially to antibiotics. On this occasion, the European Commission is presenting the promising results of two EU-funded international research projects which provide new hopes to help and treat people. In the European Union alone, it is estimated that drug resistant infections cause more than 25,000 deaths and €1.5 billion in extra healthcare costs every year.
Bacteriologist Marcin Filutowicz specializes in developing antimicrobial technologies that one day may help replace antibiotics--and save lives--as the power of our antibiotics arsenal wanes. But he doesn't stop there. Filutowicz has founded or co-founded three biotech companies to help ensure that his technologies actually make it into the world's hospitals.
When people talk about biofuels they usually end up discussing ethanol, but there is another biofuel that is much more similar to gasoline called butanol. In fact, it's so similar it can be used in place of gasoline in a typical vehicle without having to make any modifications to the engine.
Toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria (Bt toxins) are used in organic and conventional farming to manage pest insects. Sprayed as pesticides or produced in genetically modified plants, Bt toxins, used in pest control since 1938, minimize herbivory in crops, such as vegetables, maize or cotton. Since 1996, Bt producing transgenic crops have been grown, which successfully control pests like the European corn borer, the tobacco budworm, the Western corn rootworm, and the cotton bollworm.
Tossing clothes into the wash when dirty is so last year, thanks to a discovery by chemists out of the University of California at Davis. Near-ordinary cotton may simply need be exposed to light to get busy killing bacteria and breaking down toxic chemicals such as pesticide residues.
Yale scientists using bits of material from the human immune system have developed a compound that can neutralize or kill several varieties of drug-resistant and other dangerous bacteria. Drug-resistant bacteria are an increasing risk to the health of the world's population. The new compound's ability to kill bacteria in the lab also is promising as a new treatment for infectious diseases.
Chemists at Brown University have synthesized a new compound that makes drug-resistant bacteria susceptible again to antibiotics. The compound -- BU-005 -- blocks pumps that a bacterium employs to expel an antibacterial agent called chloramphenicol.
A new family of contrast agents that sneak into bacteria disguised as glucose food can detect bacterial infections in animals with high sensitivity and specificity. These agents -- called maltodextrin-based imaging probes -- can also distinguish a bacterial infection from other inflammatory conditions.
Imagine a battlefield medic or emergency medical technician providing first aid with a special wad of cottony glass fibers that simultaneously slows bleeding, fights bacteria (and other sources of infection), stimulates the body's natural healing mechanisms, resists scarring, and—because it is quickly absorbed by surrounding tissue — may never have to be removed in follow-up care.
Researchers from the Smiley lab at the Trudeau Institute have now identified a single component of the plague causing bacterium that can be used as a vaccine. This single "subunit" could potentially be used to create a safer form of a T cell-stimulating plague vaccine. The new data is featured in the July issue of The Journal of Immunology.
Scientists from the Universities of Birmingham and Bristol have discovered how marine bacteria join together two antibiotics they make independently to produce a potent chemical that can kill drug-resistant strains of the MRSA superbug.
New University of Alberta research shows the first evidence that oxygen-breathing bacteria occupied and thrived on land 100 million years earlier than previously thought.
Bacteria living in people's large intestine may slow down the activity of the "good" kind of fat tissue, a special fat that quickly burns calories and may help prevent obesity, scientists are reporting in a new study. The discovery could shed light on ways to prevent obesity and promote weight loss, including possible microbial and pharmaceutical approaches.
A new imaging technique could help doctors and researchers more accurately assess the extent of nerve damage and healing in a live patient. Researchers at Laval University in Québec and Harvard Medical School in Boston aimed lasers at rats' damaged sciatic nerves to create images of the individual neurons' insulating sheath called myelin. Physical trauma, repetitive stress, bacterial infections, genetic mutations, and neurodegenerative disorders such as multiple sclerosis can all cause neurons to lose myelin. The loss slows or halts the nerve's transmission of electrical impulses and can result in symptoms such as numbness, pain, or poor muscle control.
A breakthrough in the fight against drug-resistant infections is one step closer following the discovery of the structure of NDM-1: a vicious form of bacteria that is currently resistant to the most powerful antibiotics available.
A team headed by scientists from the IRB Barcelona reports how the protein Ler, which is found in pathogenic bacteria, interacts with certain DNA sequences, thereby activating numerous genes responsible for virulence, which bacteria then exploit to infect human cells. Ler is present in pathogenic Escherichia coli strains, such as the one that caused a deadly infectious outbreak.
Romping through summer fields seems like a harmless pleasure for dogs, horses and humans alike. But just one bite from the wrong tick can rob an animal of that pastime. The bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi catch rides with certain species of ticks and can cause Lyme disease in animals the ticks bite. Catching the disease early is paramount because it becomes progressively harder to fight as the bacteria conduct guerilla warfare from hiding places in the joints, nervous tissues and organs of their hosts.
Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have discovered the cellular mechanisms that normally generate chromosomal breaks in bacteria such as E. coli. The study's findings are published in the August 18 issue of the journal Cell.
A team at the Stanford University School of Medicine has cataloged, down to the letter, exactly what parts of the genetic code are essential for survival in one bacterial species, Caulobacter crescentus.
Infectious diseases researchers at Umeå University in Sweden are studying the properties of bacteria with the same methods that materials scientists use to research surfaces. Studies of the outermost parts of the cell walls of bacteria yield new information about the chemical composition of structures that are key to the capacity of bacteria to infect organisms.
A new mouthwash developed by a microbiologist at the UCLA School of Dentistry is highly successful in targeting the harmful Streptococcus mutans bacteria that is the principal cause tooth decay and cavities.
Shahriar Mobashery is one of the coauthors of a new paper by a group of the world's leading scientists in academia and industry that calls for strong steps to be taken to control the global crisis of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
Research by Flinders University's School of the Environment has shown that a shallow, high-rate pond system to treat wastewater will slash the loss to evaporation as well as boosting the rates of removal of bacterial and viral pathogens.
The use of probiotic bacteria, isolated from naturally-occurring bacterial communities, is gaining in popularity in the aquaculture industry as the preferred, environmentally-friendly management alternative to the use of antibiotics and other antimicrobials for disease prevention. Known to the public for their use in yogurt and other foods to improve human digestion and health, probiotic bacteria isolated from other sources can also be used to improve survival, nutrition and disease prevention in larvae grown in shellfish hatcheries.
Earlier this year, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, published a study identifying genetic markers found in people's stomachs that appear related to obesity and other diseases.
Researchers with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have released an upgrade to the institute's ENteric Immunity SImulator (ENISI) software, which models immune responses to beneficial and harmful bacteria that enter the gastrointestinal tract of mice, pigs, and humans. ENISI allows users to create enteric systems such as the gut-associated mucosal immune system in silico, providing a better glimpse of how the immune system responds to pathogens that invade the bacteria-rich environment of the gut.
One in three women will be faced at least once in her life with cystitis, for some the start of a constantly recurring infection. Cystitis is caused by Escherichia coli bacteria which fasten on to the wall of the bladder by means of thread-like structures (pili). Han Remaut of the VIB Department for Structural Biology Brussels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel now reveals the complex interactions which lead to the formation of these pili. This knowledge can be used to develop new antibiotics to treat infections of the urinary tract.
Bacteria infections - most of which are preventable via vaccines readily available in the developed world - and not malaria are the leading cause of death for children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Bacteria from fecal material -- in particular, dog fecal material -- may constitute the dominant source of airborne bacteria in Cleveland's and Detroit's wintertime air, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
A new target for nitric oxide has been revealed in studies of how it inhibits the growth of Salmonella. This bacterium is a common cause of food-poisoning.
Understanding how bacteria infect cells is crucial to preventing countless human diseases. In a recent breakthrough, scientists from the University of Bristol have discovered a new approach for studying molecules within their natural environment, opening the door to understanding the complexity of how bacteria infect people.
With Salmonella-tainted ground turkey sickening more than 100 people and Listeria-contaminated cantaloupes killing 15 this year, the ability to detect outbreaks of food-borne illness and determine their sources has become a top public health priority.
Germs in food, bioterrorism, drug-resistant bacteria and viruses—these are the problems of our time that make early detection of pathogens particularly important. Whereas conventional methods are either slow or require complex instruments, Yingfu Li and a team at McMaster University in Hamilton (Ontario, Canada), additionally supported by the Sentinel Bioactive Paper Network, have now developed an especially simple, universal fluorescence test system that specifically and rapidly detects germs by means of their metabolic products. As the researchers report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, It isn't even necessary to know which substance the test is reacting to.
A distinctly new type of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that is not detected by traditional genetic screening methods has been discovered in patients in Irish hospitals according to research to be published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. These findings provide significant insights into how new MRSA strains emerge and highlight the potential for the transmission of infectious agents from animals to humans.
Scientists have shown that an experimental vaccine against the human norovirus — the bug behind about 90 percent of highly contagious nonbacterial illnesses that cause diarrhea and vomiting — can generate a strong immune response in mice without appearing to cause the animals any harm.
Scientists have discovered that bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella have a sneaky way of making minor alterations to their genes to boost their chances for infection.
Waters polluted by the ordure of pigs, poultry, or cattle represent a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes, both known and potentially novel. These resistance genes can be spread among different bacterial species by bacteriophage, bacteria-infecting viruses, according to a paper in the October Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered a way to block the damaging actions of Chlamydia, the bacteria responsible for the largest number of sexually transmitted infections in the United States.
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered how a novel type of antibody works against pneumococcal bacteria. The findings, which could improve vaccines against pneumonia, appear in the September/October issue of mBio, the online journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
WHAT: In a new study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, scientists describe successfully mutating specific genes of Chlamydia bacteria, which cause the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States as well as a type of blindness common in developing nations. The procedure they used will help advance scientists' understanding of how these bacteria cause human disease and expedite the development of new strategies to prevent and control these infections.
Since the discovery of the microscope, scientists have tried to visualize smaller and smaller structures to provide insights into the inner workings of human cells, bacteria and viruses. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), part of the National Institutes of Health, have developed a new way to see structures within viruses that were not clearly seen before.
Soil-dwelling bacteria of the genus Frankia have the potential to produce a multitude of natural products, including antibiotics, herbicides, pigments, anticancer agents, and other useful products, according to Bradley S. Moore of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, La Jolla, and his collaborators in an article in the June 2011 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Broad-spectrum antibiotics, which are active against a whole range of bacterial pathogens, have been on the market for a long time. Comparably versatile drugs to treat viral diseases, on the other hand, have remained elusive. Using a new approach, research teams led by Dr. Albrecht von Brunn of LMU Munich and Professor Christian Drosten from the University of Bonn have identified a compound that inhibits the replication of several different viruses, including the highly aggressive SARS virus that is responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
A physician and researcher at the Sainte Justine University Hospital Center, a University of Montreal affiliate, saved the life of a child and, by doing so, became the first to find a new use for a drug in the fight against deadly E. coli bacteria.
It took nearly a decade before University of Maryland researchers were allowed to talk about their work identifying the anthrax strain used in the 2001 deadly letter attacks. But now, they and the other key members of the high-powered science team have published the first account of the pioneering work, which launched the new field of "microbial forensics" and gave bioterrorism investigators a way to "fingerprint" bacteria.
An ongoing study led by a University of Pittsburgh researcher has established the first scientifically-based dosing guidelines for a more than 50-year-old drug that has re-emerged as the best, and often only, treatment for some bacterial infections that are resistant to modern therapies. The study appears in the July issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
Archaea are among the oldest known life-forms, but they are not well understood. It was only in the 1970s that these single-celled microorganisms were designated as a domain of life distinct from bacteria and multicellular organisms called eukaryotes.
OmniLytics, Inc., a biotech company focused on developing safe and natural solutions for bacterial control, today announced final EPA registration for its AgriPhage-CMM bacterial control product.
A common oral bacteria, Fusobacterium nucleatum, acts like a key to open a door in human blood vessels and leads the way for it and other bacteria like Escherichia coli to invade the body through the blood and make people sick.
For cooperation to persist in the often violently competitive realm of bacteria, cheaters must be kept in line. Two Indiana University Bloomington biologists have learned that in one bacterium, at least, bacterial cooperators can evolve to "police" the cheaters and arrest their bids for dominance.
Pain researchers from the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National Medical Center have discovered that resiniferatoxin, a drug that has shown early promise as an option for chronic, severe pain sufferers, may decrease the body's ability to fight off bacterial infections, particularly sepsis.
Shahriar Mobashery, is one of the coauthors of a new paper by a group of the world's leading scientists in academia and industry that calls for strong steps to be taken to control the global crisis of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The group issued a priority list of steps that need to be taken on a global scale to resolve the crisis.
Fear and confusion surrounding the diagnosis is often the result of suffering from an infection by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Accurate information is crucial for these patients in order for them to handle their situation, yet that is the area where health care is lacking, new research suggests. This is shown in Infection Control Nurse Susanne Wiklund's master's thesis at NHV on patients with ESBL-producing bacteria.
A hardy type of bacteria recently discovered in the permafrost of Siberia could help slow down the ageing process, Russian scientists claimed on Tuesday.
Modified probiotics, the beneficial bacteria touted for their role in digestive health, could one day decrease the risk of Listeria infection in people with susceptible immune systems, according to Purdue University research.
Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) is a thermoplastic polyester which occurs naturally in bacteria as Ralstonia eutropha and Bacillus megaterium. Even though PHB is biodegradable and is not dependent on fossil resources, this bioplastic has been traditionally too expensive to produce to replace petroleum-based plastics. New research reported in BioMed Central's open access journal Microbial Cell Factories describes an alternative method of producing PHB in microalgae.
A research group led by Freiburg pharmacologist Prof. Dr. Klaus Aktories and their American colleagues have discovered the cell receptor for the toxin CDT of the bacterium Clostridium difficile. These germs often cause an inflammation of the colon in patients who have recently received a treatment with antibiotics.
PolyMedix, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on developing new therapeutic drugs to treat patients with acute infectious diseases and cardiovascular disorders, announced today that several of its defensin-mimetic antibiotic compounds have shown antimicrobial efficacy in an animal model against the bacteria that causes anthrax. Anthrax is an acute infectious disease caused by the spore forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis that is categorized by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as a Class A bioterrorism agent.
Nabriva Therapeutics today announced the successful results of a Phase II clinical trial of BC-3781 in acute bacterial skin and skin structure infections (ABSSSI). Nabriva's lead product BC-3781 is the first of a new class of systemically available pleuromutilin antibiotics for the treatment of serious skin infections and pneumonia. BC-3781 is being developed for both oral and intravenous formulations.
Vaccines with broader reach might be made by stimulating specialized immune cells to recognize foreign cell membrane proteins that are shared across bacterial species, say researchers from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in a report published online today in Immunity. The approach could be particularly beneficial in preventing infection by multi-drug resistant organisms.
Bacterial genes that make urine less acidic could be good targets to prevent catheter blockage, according to research presented at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate. The findings could lead to new strategies to prevent serious infections, particularly in long-term catheterization patients.
One of the most comprehensive studies to date of the microbes that are found in extremely low-birthweight infants found that hard-to-treat Candida fungus is often present, as well as some harmful bacteria and parasites.
The medical benefits of probiotics or 'friendly bacteria' are not new; thousands of years ago people drank sour milk as a cure for stomach complaints. Yet, as more and more probiotic products hit our shelves what is the scientific basis for their health benefit claims?
A probiotic treatment appears to mitigate pancreatitis in an animal model, leading to a new hypothesis of how probiotics may act, according to a paper in the November Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The bacterial species most closely associated with improvement in health was discovered for the first time in the course of this research.
Yale University researchers have successfully re-engineered the protein-making machinery in bacteria, a technical tour de force that promises to revolutionize the study and treatment of a variety of diseases.
Bacteria are single-celled organisms that inhabit almost every environment on the planet, including the bodies of humans and animals. The cell wall maintains the structural integrity of the cell, and enables the bacteria to survive in its chosen environment. In disease-causing bacteria (pathogens) it also plays a role in the progression of the disease. A group of scientists from Newcastle University and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan have used Diamond to identify a group of proteins that enable certain bacteria to build effective cell walls. These proteins may provide a novel antibiotic target for a range of disease-causing bacteria.
If the changing seasons are making it chilly inside your house, you might just turn the heater on. That's a reasonable response to a cold environment: switching to a toastier and more comfortable state until it warms up outside. And so it's no surprise that biologists have long thought cells would respond to their environment in a similar way.
For nearly 60 years, Pyrazinamide (PZA) has been used in conjunction with other medications to treat tuberculosis (TB), but scientists did not fully understand how the drug killed TB bacteria. PZA plays a unique role in shortening the duration of current TB therapy to six months and is used frequently to treat multi-drug resistant TB.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have developed a new test that quickly and accurately distinguishes between bacterial and viral infections in as little as five hours.
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed a new laboratory test that can rapidly identify Staphylococcus aureus in blood cultures. This new test takes advantage of unique isotopic labeling combined with specific bacteriophage amplification.
As the gatekeepers of ion flow through cell membranes, ion channels are of key interest in numerous cellular processes. Now, a new study describes an innovative new computational model that realistically simulates the complex conditions found in biological systems and allows for a more accurate look at ion channel function at the level of individual atoms.
A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have successfully reengineered an important antibiotic to kill the deadliest antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The compound could one day be used clinically to treat patients with life-threatening and highly resistant bacterial infections.
"Reducing the incidence of malaria could also drastically reduce the number of deaths from bacterial infections among children in Africa, a study" published last week in the Lancet found, according to SciDev.Net. "'Children who are protected from malaria are less likely to catch bacterial infections. It therefore means that controlling malaria will give an additional benefit,' Anthony Scott, the lead author and a researcher at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, in Kenya, told SciDev.Net."
New research by UCD researchers led by Conway Fellow, Brendan Loftus gives an insight into the infective cycle of the bacteria responsible for Legionnaires disease and Pontiac fever.
A novel way of increasing the amounts of antibiotics produced by bacteria has been discovered that could markedly improve the yields of these important compounds in commercial production. It could also be valuable in helping to discover new compounds. With the ever-growing threat from antibiotic resistance, these tools will be very useful in ensuring that we have enough of these useful compounds in the future.
Research by University of Tennessee, Knoxville, faculty has discovered that bacteria's move from sea to land may have occurred much later than thought. It also has revealed that the bacteria may be especially useful in bioenergy research.
A pathway whereby bacteria communicate with each other has been discovered by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The discovery has important implications for efforts to cope with the spread of harmful bacteria in the body.
In most situations in the wild, animals develop abilities to help them avoid being eaten. The chameleon, for example, can change its color to avoid being seen by predators. What’s less usual, are animals or organisms that develop abilities that do the opposite, i.e. develop traits that encourage predators to eat them.
During such mass food-poisoning outbreaks as the recent contamination of ground turkey, speedy identification of the bacteria involved can save lives and reduce illness. New research co-authored by a Cornell food scientist will accelerate the process of identifying strains of salmonella bacteria behind food poisonings -- and reduce the time it takes to track the culprit from farm to fork.
Just like plants and animals, bacteria have a range of defence mechanisms against viruses and other threats. Dutch researchers at the Wageningen Laboratory for Microbiology and their American and Russian colleagues have largely clarified the workings of one of these, they reported in the scientific journal PNAS at the beginning of June. This is important not only for fundamental research on bacteria but also for manufacturers working with bacteria, in the dairy industry for example.
"New research may bring scientists one step closer to developing a vaccine that protects against hundreds of strains of meningococcus B, the most common cause of bacterial meningitis," according to research published last week in Science Translational Medicine, HealthDay News reports. Researchers used methods that allowed them to identify the most effective vaccine candidate, technology that could be used to develop vaccines for malaria and AIDS, the news service notes.
A team led by University of Maryland School of Medicine Institute for Genome Sciences researchers has unraveled the genomic code of the E. coli bacterium that caused the ongoing deadly outbreak in Germany that began in May 2011. To date, 53 people have died in the outbreak that has sickened thousand in Germany, Sweden and the U.S. The paper, published July 27 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), describes how researchers around the globe worked together to use cutting edge technology to sequence and analyze the genomics of E. coli samples from the outbreak as well as closely related strains in a matter of days. They combined those findings with their knowledge of the biology and evolution of the bacteria to learn more about the outbreak. The analysis occurred rapidly enough to inform the physicians treating people who were infected, and assisted epidemiologists as they raced to trace the source of the pathogen.
Critical genetic secrets of a bacterium that holds potential for removing toxic and radioactive waste from the environment have been revealed in a study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The researchers have provided the first ever map of the genes that determine how these bacteria interact with their surrounding environment.
Under normal conditions, cyanobacteria, also termed blue-green algae, build up energy reserves that allow them to survive under stress such as long periods of darkness. They do this by means of a molecular switch in an enzyme. By removing this switch, it should be possible to use the excess energy of the bacteria for biotechnological purposes such as hydrogen production, without the bacteria suffering.
A University of Louisville scientist has determined for the first time how the bacterium that causes Legionnaires' disease manipulates our cells to generate the amino acids it needs to grow and cause infection and inflammation in the lungs.
Probiotic bacteria are rapidly gaining ground as healthy food supplements. However, the production of this "functional food" has its pitfalls: only few probiotic bacterial strains are robust enough to survive conventional production processes. Researchers from Technische Universitaet Muenchen have now developed a particularly gentle method that allows the use of thus far unutilized probiotics. The outcome is beneficial for both manufacturers and consumers: it's energy and cost efficient -- and it makes probiotics less perishable.
University of Minnesota researchers have discovered and received a patent for a naturally occurring lantibiotic — a peptide produced by a harmless bacteria — that could be added to food to kill harmful bacteria like salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
Joshua Shaevitz, an assistant professor from the Department of Physics and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, along with Mingzhai Sun, a postdoctoral associate at Princeton, and scientists from the Universite Aix-Marseille in France, have discovered a new type of molecular machine used by bacteria for intracellular protein transport and gliding motility. The research involved the study of prokaryotes, single-celled organisms that lack a membrane-bound nucleus and are the most primitive form of life.
If the changing seasons are making it chilly inside your house, you might just turn the heater on. That's a reasonable response to a cold environment: switching to a toastier and more comfortable state until it warms up outside. And so it's no surprise that biologists have long thought cells would respond to their environment in a similar way.
A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Harvard Medical School, Stanford University and the Prince Felipe Research Centre in Spain have deciphered the complete three-dimensional structure of the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus's chromosome. Analysis of the resulting structure -- published this week in Molecular Cell -- has revealed new insights into the function of genetic sequences responsible for the shape and structure of this genome.
Researchers have discovered how the structure of a protein allows a certain bacteria to interfere with the tomato plant's immune system, causing bacterial speck disease.
Researchers have built a computer model of the crowded interior of a bacterial cell that — in a test of its response to sugar in its environment — accurately simulates the behavior of living cells.
Blue-green algae is causing havoc in Midwestern lakes saturated with agricultural run-off, but researchers in a northwest Ohio lab are using supercomputers to study a closely related strain of the toxic cyanobacteria to harness its beneficial properties.
Standard antibiotics, and even those reserved for the most defiant infections, are fighting an uphill battle against the evolutionary ingenuity of bacterial defenses. Staphylococci, and especially methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is a particular scourge in hospitals, and is increasingly infecting people outside of health care settings. But a promising new MRSA killer — a genetically engineered enzyme first created at Rockefeller — is now being tested in human skin cells and will soon advance to trials in a new animal model, the minipig. The enzyme has been recently been shown to target and kill MRSA in mice with greater efficiency than the only approved topical treatment for such infections, a drug called mupirocin. Researchers say the work is steadily advancing through stages that could lead to the development of a frontline drug to fight MRSA, which costs hospitals billions of dollars a year.
A new study has shown previously unseen details of an anthrax bacteriophage -- a virus that infects anthrax bacteria -- revealing for the first time how it infects its host, and providing an initial blueprint for how the phage might someday be modified into a tool for the detection and destruction of anthrax and other potential bioterror agents.
Oral disease occurs commonly and progresses rapidly among people who have HIV, but the process is poorly understood. Researchers suspect that the culprit is a change in the makeup of bacterial communities that live in the mouth.
Tuberculosis, which kills over 2 million people each year, is caused primarily by infectious bacteria known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis -- or Mtb. Mtb targets human immune cells as part of its strategy to avoid detection, effectively neutralizing the body's immune response.
Researchers now understand how bacteria can break down phosphonic acids, persistent and potentially hazardous environmental pollutants found in many common medicinal products, detergents and herbicides.
Antibiotics are one of the greatest breakthroughs of modern medicine, giving us a crucial weapon in the fight against infectious bacteria, but recently we've seen the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now it seems this is a surprisingly ancient phenomenon.
Half a year ago a first common step was taken toward global concerted action to combat resistance to antibiotics in bacteria. Ahead of World Health Day on April 7, the network ReAct, which is led from Uppsala University, Sweden, is urging the world to redouble its efforts. For the first time in many years, there are initiatives to start developing new drugs that have to be available when the old ones have completely stopped working.
A species of freshwater algae that lives in streams and rivers, called Didymo for Didymosphenia geminata, is able to colonize and dominate the bottoms of some of the world's cleanest waterways--precisely because they are so clear.
Antibiotic resistant E. coli was much more prevalent in villages situated along roads than in rural villages located away from roads, which suggests that roads play a major role in the spread or containment of antibiotic resistant bacteria, commonly called superbugs, a new study finds.
Salmonella enterica, one of the main causes of gastrointestinal infections, modulates its virulence gene expression, adapting it to each stage of the infection process, depending on the free iron concentration found in the intestinal epithelium of its host. Researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have demonstrated for the first time that the pathogen activates these genes through the Fur protein, which acts as a sensor of iron levels in its surroundings.
In recent years, it has become clear that food poisoning due to Salmonella typhimurium can be contracted not only by uncooked eggs and meat but also through eating contaminated raw vegetables and fruit. So far, it was unclear how these bacteria can infect humans and plants alike. A team associating researchers from INRA, CNRS and the Universities of Evry (France), Giessen (Germany) and Vienna (Austria), has shown that Salmonella suppress the defense systems of plants and humans by a similar mechanism. Moreover, the teams showed that plants contaminated with Salmonella are highly infectious to human cells and mice. The results were published in PLoS ONE on September 6, 2011.
Scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany have discovered a new, hitherto unknown mechanism of Salmonella invasion into gut cells: In this entry mode, the bacteria exploit the muscle power of cells to be pulled into the host cell cytoplasm. Thus, the strategies Salmonella use to infect cells are more complex than previously thought.
Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis, said Monday the Food and Drug Administration approved the company's bacterial meningitis vaccine Menactra for children between the ages of 9 months and 23 months.
Yale researchers have uncovered the molecular tricks used by bacteria to fight the effects of fluoride, which is commonly used in toothpaste and mouthwash to combat tooth decay.
New findings are published on 10 November 2011 in the journal Science and show how a toxin produced by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei kills cells by preventing protein synthesis. The study, led by the University of Sheffield, paves the way for the development of novel therapies to combat the bacterium which infects millions of people across South East Asia and Northern Australia.
There is now a promising vaccine candidate for combating the pathogen which causes one of the most common and dangerous hospital infections. An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam has developed a vaccine based on a carbohydrate against the Clostridium difficile bacterium, which is known to cause serious gastrointestinal diseases mainly in hospitals. The sugar-based vaccine elicited a specific and effective immune response in mice. Moreover, the scientists have also discovered strong indications that the substance can stimulate the human immune system to form antibodies against the bacterium.
There are more bacteria living on our skin and in our gut than cells in our body. We need them. But until now no-one knew how the immune system could tell that these bacteria are harmless.
Scientists have discovered a protein secreted by tuberculosis (TB) bacteria that could be a promising new vaccine candidate, they report today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The protein could also be used to improve diagnosis of TB.
Efforts to develop better and stronger treatments against diseases continue in Europe, with particular emphasis being placed on fighting human pathogens and strains resistant to existing treatments. Scientists in the United Kingdom have identified genes in the bacterium Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that could help the superbug survive despite being hit by antibacterial agents. Their discovery, presented in the journal BMC Systems Biology, could lead to new drugs capable of defeating the MRSA's defence systems.
Researchers in South East Asia have identified a novel mechanism whereby the organism Burkholderia pseudomallei -- the cause of melioidosis, a neglected tropical infectious disease -- develops resistance to ceftazidime, the standard antibiotic treatment. The change also makes the drug-resistant bacterium difficult to detect.
In a new study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, scientists describe successfully mutating specific genes of Chlamydia bacteria, which cause the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States as well as a type of blindness common in developing nations. The procedure they used will help advance scientists' understanding of how these bacteria cause human disease and expedite the development of new strategies to prevent and control these infections.
Scientists from Freie Universität Berlin and the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence led by biochemist Volker Haucke in collaboration with colleagues from Australia and the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) in Berlin have developed small molecules that inhibit the internalization of important signaling molecules but also of pathogenic organisms such as the immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and bacteria into cells. These compounds inhibit the function of the cellular scaffold protein clathrin und could thereby serve as a starting point for novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of cancer, viral or bacterial infections, or neurological disorders. These results were published in the latest issue of the prestigious journal Cell.
Why are some people prone to severe infections, while others handle them with less difficulty? A new research report appearing online in the FASEB Journal attempts to answer this question by shedding light on the genetic differences that influence our ability to fight off bacterial infections.
Scientists are quickly combing the DNA of the killer bacteria behind the world's worst E. coli outbreak to find clues about how to treat patients and prevent future epidemics.
A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have successfully reengineered an important antibiotic to kill the deadliest antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The compound could one day be used clinically to treat patients with life-threatening and highly resistant bacterial infections.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed polymers that fluoresce in the presence of bacteria, paving the way for the rapid detection and assessment of wound infection using ultra-violet light.
A Newcastle University research team has made a significant advance in the ongoing fight against bacterial infections - by turning the infectious microbe's own weapon against itself.
Scientists at Glasgow University are on a mission to create a form of life from inorganic molecules. The team, led by Professor Lee Cronin, has demonstrated a way of creating an inorganic cell, in which internal membranes control the movement of energy and materials, just as in a living cell. These cells can also store electricity and could be used in medicine and chemistry as sensors or to contain chemical reactions.
Ready for a piece of technology you can rampantly steal for NaNoWriMo? How about secretly encoded E. coli that glow and can be used to send messages? Researchers have developed a way of getting seven strains of the bacteria to fluoresce in seven different colors. You can use them to create a secret message that starts as an apparently empty petri dish - but grows into an encoded message after delivery. They've dubbed the system SPAM: Steganography by Printed Arrays of Microbes, and it only gets cooler from here.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in the United States alone, food borne pathogens cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths.
Water discharged into lakes and rivers from municipal sewage treatment plants may contain significant concentrations of the genes that make bacteria antibiotic-resistant.
Germs survive for several days in wind instruments including the clarinet, flute, and saxophone, according to a pilot study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research. The researchers, led by Stuart Levy, MD, of Tufts University School of Medicine, urge proper cleaning of these instruments. The data suggest a need for additional research to determine the conditions for survival of germs on shared musical instruments, especially those with wooden reeds.
A short burst of low voltage alternating current can effectively eradicate E. coli bacteria growing on the surface of even heavily contaminated beef, according to a study published in the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition and Public Health. The technique offers an inexpensive and easy to implement approach to reducing the risk of food poisoning, which can occur despite handlers complying with hygiene standards.
New research conducted at Uppsala University shows that extremely low concentrations of antibiotics can enrich for antibiotic resistant bacteria. The research suggests that antibiotic residue introduced to the environment via people and animals contributes to the problem of antibiotic resistance. The findings have just been published in the well-respected journal PLoS Pathogens.
Much to humans' chagrin, bacteria have superior survival skills. Their decision-making processes and collective behaviors allow them to thrive and even spread efficiently in difficult environments.
Sepsis is a major killer in hospital intensive care units. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found that manipulating a genetic factor that can launch or throttle the body's defenses can improve survival rates during bacterial infection.
With up to 33,000 'taxa', plant roots are home to an unprecedentedly large diversity of bacteria. Some of these bacteria can function as a type of bodyguard for plants, protecting them against infection by harmful fungi. This is the result of research carried out by Wageningen UR (University & Research centre), Utrecht University, the IRS in Bergen op Zoom and the American Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, published on 5 May in Science. As these protective bacteria promote plant growth and health, knowledge about the underlying mechanisms is important for the sustainable production of food and green raw materials.
Recent research aboard the Space Shuttle is giving scientists a better understanding of how infectious disease occurs in space and could someday improve astronaut health and provide novel treatments for people on Earth.
New research in the FASEB Journal suggests that combining a specific mixture of lipids with antimicrobial agents synergistically thwarts multidrug-resistant bacteria
Bacteria can generally be divided into two classes: those with just one membrane and those with two. Now researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have used a powerful imaging technique to find what they believe may be the missing link between the two classes, as well as a plausible explanation for how the outer membrane may have arisen.
The potential use of antimicrobial surface coatings ranges from medicine, where medical device infection is associated with significant healthcare costs, to the construction industry and the food packaging industry. Thin films containing silver nanoparticles have been seen as promising candidate coatings. Silver is known as one of the oldest antimicrobial agents. Silver ions are thought to inhibit bacterial enzymes and bind to DNA. Silver nanomaterials have been used effectively against different bacteria, fungi and viruses (see for instance: "Antibacterial nanotechnology multi-action materials that work day and night").
On June 9-10, Stevens Institute of Technology will host the Stevens Conference on Bacteria-Material Interactions, an event that covers the latest multi-disciplinary research in the area of infection-resistant biomaterials. Featuring a dinner keynote from Dr. J. William Costerton, a leading developer of the biofilm paradigm, the conference will confront important issues and questions at the interfaces between biomaterials science, microbiology, cell biology, and biodetection. The event will be held in the Babbio Center on Stevens Hoboken, NJ campus just minutes from midtown Manhattan, with an evening reception at the W Hotel in Hoboken.
Some of the nastiest smelling creatures on Earth have skin that produces the greatest known variety of anti-bacterial substances that hold promise for becoming new weapons in the battle against antibiotic-resistant infections, scientists are reporting.
Toxins produced by plants and bacteria pose a significant threat to humans, as emphasized by the recent effects of cucumber-borne Shiga toxin in Germany. Now, new research published on July 21st by the Cell Press journal Developmental Cell provides a clearer view of the combination of similar and divergent strategies that different toxins use to invade a human host cell.
Stress can change the balance of bacteria that naturally live in the gut, according to research published this month in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
Stress not only sends the human immune system into overdrive — it can also wreak havoc on the trillions of bacteria that work and thrive inside our digestive system.
Newly published research says it reaffirms that the use of antibacterial wash products in the home environment does not contribute to antibiotic or antibacterial resistance, confirming previous research that showcased similar findings.
Urinary tract infections are common in women, costing an estimated $2.5 billion per year to treat in 2000 in the United States alone. These infections frequently recur, affecting 2 to 3 percent of all women. A depletion of vaginal lactobacilli, a type of bacteria, is associated with urinary tract infection risk, which suggests that replenishing these bacteria may be beneficial. Researchers conducted a double-blind placebo-controlled trial to investigate this theory. Their results are published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Will a fresh glass of "raw" milk nourish or poison you? Pasteurization almost always provides protection from contamination. Unpasteurized "raw" milk, on the other hand, provides a potential breeding ground for disease-causing bacteria such as E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter and Salmonella, all of which have caused outbreaks spread by raw milk in the past year, said Ynte Schukken, professor of epidemiology and herd health at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine.
Water discharged into lakes and rivers from municipal sewage treatment plants may contain significant concentrations of the genes that make bacteria antibiotic-resistant.
New research suggests that some patients develop a potentially deadly blood infection from their implanted cardiac devices because bacterial cells in their bodies have gene mutations that allow them to stick to the devices.
Jacinta Conrad, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston, likens her research into how bacteria move to "tracking bright spots on a dark background."
Results from a comprehensive multi-site clinical trial demonstrated that the use of antimicrobial copper surfaces in intensive care unit rooms reduced the amount of bacteria in the rooms by 97 percent and resulted in a 41 percent reduction in the hospital acquired infection rate. According to researchers, this study is one of the first to demonstrate the value of a passive infection control intervention, one that does not rely on staff or patients remembering to take action.
The meaning of the standard fecal coliform test used to monitor water quality has been called into question by a new study that identified sources of Escherichia coli bacteria that might not indicate an environmental hazard.
A 125-year debate on how nitrogen-fixing bacteria are able to breach the cell walls of legumes has been settled. A paper to be published on Monday by John Innes Centre scientists reports that plants themselves allow bacteria in.
With scientific evidence now supporting the age-old wisdom that cranberries, whether in sauce or as juice, prevent urinary tract infections, people have wondered if there was an element of the berry that, if extracted and condensed, perhaps in pill form, would be as effective as drinking the juice or eating cranberry sauce.
It may not seem something to get bent out of shape over, but there's a scientific controversy that's been brewing over whether or not bacteria generate radio waves. Now a team at Northeastern University thinks they've figured out the mechanism that bacteria might use to manufacture radio signals.
Yogurt is popular among consumers, largely because the special live bacteria it contains are thought to benefit digestive health. But how much influence do these bacteria actually have on digestion and, by extension, on overall health?
A new study provides a novel explanation as to why some tuberculosis cells are inherently more difficult to treat with antibiotics. The discovery, which showed that the ways mycobacteria cells divide and grow determine their susceptibility to treatment with drugs, could lead to new avenues of drug development that better target tuberculosis cells.
Among medical mysteries baffling many infectious disease experts is exactly how the deadly pneumonic plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, goes undetected in the first few day of lung infection, often until it's too late for medical treatment.
Residential washing machines may not always use hot enough water to eliminate dangerous bacteria like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Acinetobacter, a Gram-negative bacteria, from hospital uniforms, according to a study published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.
James Collins, a pioneering researcher in the new field of systems biology and a MacArthur Genius, says: "You know the old saying: 'a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down?' This is more like 'a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine work.'
A new strategy for synthesizing the kind of complex molecules that certain bacteria use to build their protective cell walls has been developed by Akihiro Ishiwata and Yukishige Ito from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako, Japan. The strategy applies to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), so it could lead to much-needed new medicines to combat the spread of multi-drug-resistant strains of the pathogen.
Sutor Technology Group Limited, a leading provider of fine finished steel products used by steel fabricators and other applications in a variety of industries, today announced that its in-house developed "Nano-antibacterial PPGI steel plate" was awarded the second prize for "Science and Technology Progress" at the Suzhou Science and Innovation Conference held in Suzhou on March 9, 2011.
There is now a promising vaccine candidate for combating the pathogen which causes one of the most common and dangerous hospital infections. An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam has developed a vaccine based on a carbohydrate against the Clostridium difficile bacterium, which is known to cause serious gastrointestinal diseases mainly in hospitals. The sugar-based vaccine elicited a specific and effective immune response in mice. Moreover, the scientists have also discovered strong indications that the substance can stimulate the human immune system to form antibodies against the bacterium.
Last year saw the stunning announcement of synthetic bacteria. Now the next step has been taken, a move towards a synthetic organism that's markedly more complex — yeast.
Sometimes nature cannot be improved upon. One example is in the synthesis of nanomaterials, which in the laboratory or factory generally requires toxic chemicals and extreme conditions of temperature and pressure. But over millions of years, nature has developed ways of putting together inorganic nanocrystals at mild temperatures and pressures. Usually this process, known as biomineralization, involves calcium carbonate or phosphate for purposes such as building bone or shells, but another interesting variation is seen in the crystallization of gold from solution by certain types of bacteria.
Although scientists have known for centuries that many bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide it was thought to be simply a toxic by-product of cellular activity.
Toxins produced by plants and bacteria pose a significant threat to humans, as emphasized by the recent effects of cucumber-borne Shiga toxin in Germany. Now, new research published on July 21st by the Cell Press journal Developmental Cell provides a clearer view of the combination of similar and divergent strategies that different toxins use to invade a human host cell.
For the first time, researchers at McMaster University have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behaviour.
Even a very good wastewater treatment plant can't clean up fragments of superbugs -- bacteria that have developed a resistance to antibiotics -- and until now, almost no one has noticed.
While previous studies have linked H. pylori to increased risk of ulcers, stomach cancer and low iron levels, its role in other areas has been questioned.
Antibiotics are among the greatest achievements of medical science. But lately the former multi-purpose weapon fails in the battle against infectious diseases. Bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to antibiotics. Researchers have now found a therapeutic equivalent which could replace penicillin and related phamaceuticals.
Magnetotactic bacteria were first discovered back in 1975. They're microbes that orient themselves along magnetic fields, thanks to their compartments of tiny magnetic nanocrystals called magnetesomes (the orange circles in the picture above), which force the bacteria into magnetic alignment.
Doctors have been aware for years that ticks can spread the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease, but scientists in China have discovered a new deadly virus that is also carried by ticks and has been responsible for at least 36 deaths in China. In a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention introduced the virus responsible for these deaths.
In the human world of manufacturing, many companies are now applying an on-demand, just-in-time strategy to conserve resources, reduce costs and promote production of goods precisely when and where they are most needed. A recent study from Indiana University Bloomington scientists reveals that bacteria have evolved a similar just-in-time strategy to constrain production of an extremely sticky cement to exactly the appropriate time and place, avoiding wasteful and problematic production of the material.
Despite how easy they make it look on TV dramas, determining time of death for a body requires a lot of difficult guesswork (unless someone is there when the person passes, of course). A range of environmental factors and other mitigating circumstances make any declaration of time of death an estimation at best. But a team of Italian scientists think they've found a built-in clock in the human nasal cavity that ticks off the minutes after a body expires, and it could make estimating the time of death a more precise exercise.
The world population is estimated to be seven billion and all these mouths need feeding. With fears about overfishing and the sustainability of fish stocks in our seas fish farming is becoming big business. As with all farming there are issues about maintaining the health of stock and how to prevent bacterial infection.
Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more.
A better understanding of how bacterial toxins cause common human diseases may lead to their improved treatment and prevention according to a paper just published by Irish and US scientists in Nature Reviews Microbiology.
Could persistent pollutants like DDT and PCBs or chemicals found in plastics be making you fat or diabetic? The answer may depend on what sort of bacteria you have churning around in your gut, according to Cornell scientists.
Researchers from Australia found something completely new while conducting a genetic study of the pathogenesis of an enteric disease in birds. They report what is believed to be the first bacterial strain to carry three closely related but independently conjugative plasmids.
The enzyme may become a key target for new drugs that could halt the manifestation of tuberculosis and potentially cut the current treatment strategy of multiple antibiotics given daily for at least six months.
Ongoing research at the Institute of Food Research, which is strategically funded by BBSRC, is exploring the use of virus-produced proteins that destroy bacterial cells to combat potentially dangerous microbial infections. Bacteriophages produce endolysin proteins that specifically target certain bacteria, and IFR has been studying one that destroys Clostridium difficile, a common and dangerous source of hospital-acquired infections. New research is showing that it is possible to 'tune' these endolysin properties to increase their effectiveness and aid their development as a new weapon in the battle against superbugs.
Even the tiniest microscopic organisms make waves when they swim. In fact, dealing with these waves is a fact of life for the ulcer-causing bacteria H. pylori.
Researchers at the University of Alberta have taken an important step in understanding an immune system of bacteria, a finding that could have implications for medical care and both the pharmaceutical and dairy industries.
The number of bacterial cells living in and on our bodies outnumbers our own cells ten to one. But the identity of all those bugs and just what exactly our relationship to all of them really is remains rather fuzzy. Now, researchers reporting in the May issue of Cell Metabolism, have new evidence showing the metabolic impact of all those microbes in mice, and on their colons in particular.
Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a "twilight zone" where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year. They appear in the September 2, 2011, edition of Science.
Research has shown that playing a musical instrument can help nourish, cultivate, and increase intelligence in children, but playing a used instrument also can pose a potentially dangerous health risk.
University of California, Berkeley, scientists have shown that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial -- able to kill bacteria -- for as long as a week after treatment.
Molecular Detection Inc. (MDI), a company developing Detect-Ready® assays designed to increase the speed and accuracy of infectious disease diagnosis, today announced that it has received a notice of allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a patent application titled "Methods, Compositions and Kits for Detection and Analysis of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria." The allowed claims cover a key aspect of MDI's PCR-based technology platform, which accurately distinguishes between samples containing MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), MSSA (methicillin sensitive S. aureus) and mixed populations of bacteria by amplifying and evaluating multiple gene targets.
A bacterium found in sewage water could revolutionize modern medicine. It's basically the bacterial equivalent of a vampire, spending its time hunting other bacteria and sucking out all their nutrients. This could revolutionize antibotics and stop the rise of "super bugs."
MIT researchers have discovered that certain photosynthetic ocean bacteria need to beware of viruses bearing gifts: These viruses are really con artists carrying genetic material taken from their previous bacterial hosts that tricks the new host into using its own machinery to activate the genes, a process never before documented in any virus-bacteria relationship.
In an advance in understanding Mother Nature's copy machines, motors, assembly lines and other biological nano-machines, scientists are describing how a multipurpose protein on the tail of a virus bores into bacteria like a drill bit, clears the shavings out of the hole and enlarges the hole.
A barely visible, electric-field-controlled droplet moves on an appropriately prepared surface, harvesting viruses, bacteria and protein molecules deposited thereon. This is how a novel method of collecting bioparticles looks like in real life. The method has been for the first time successfully tested by a team of researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the French Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie and the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire. The results of the tests will have an impact on the development of microsystems for chemical analyses, especially those dedicated to monitor bioparticles present in the air.
People who wash their hands with contaminated soap from bulk-soap-refillable dispensers can increase the number of disease-causing microbes on their hands and may play a role in transmission of bacteria in public settings according to research published in the May issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Deep in the depths of the Dead Sea, new life has been discovered. Thanks to newly found freshwater springs, certain forms of bacteria thrive, bacteria that, unlike other known freshwater and saltwater bacteria, can cope with rapidly changing salinity. It's the intriguing results of the first study of the Dead Sea in years, a rare undertaking partly because "accidentally swallowing Dead Sea salt water would cause the larynx to inflate, resulting in immediate choking and suffocation."
Plants are able to protect themselves from most bacteria, but some bacteria are able to breach their defences. In research to be published in Science on Friday, scientists have identified the genes used by some strains of the bacterium Pseudomonas to overwhelm defensive natural products produced by plants of the mustard family, or crucifers.
Gut bacteria, scientists have recently discovered, occupy humans in three distinct flavors, much like the eight different blood types. Why? Probably some science thing. More importantly, what does your gut bacteria say about you?
In the future, when you walk into a doctor's surgery or hospital, you could be asked not just about your allergies and blood group, but also about your gut type. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and collaborators in the international MetaHIT consortium, have found that humans have three different gut types.
Some solutions are just no-brainers. Take medical backboards, for example, those hard plastic boards used to stabilize patients during emergencies before the patient is lifted onto the gurney and hurried into the ambulance. After each call, technicians scrub down their equipment to avoid exposing the next patient to diseases, microbes or bodily fluids.
Viruses are the most abundant parasites on Earth. Well known viruses, such as the flu virus, attack human hosts, while viruses such as the tobacco mosaic virus infect plant hosts.
The WHO has said it will assist government officials evaluating whether the presence of bacteria containing the NDM-1 gene in the water supply in New Delhi poses health risks, Agence France-Presse reports. The announcement comes after the Lancet last week published a report that bacteria carrying NDM-1, a gene that enables resistance to a variety of antibiotics, "was found in 51 out of 171 New Delhi samples taken from water pools and two out of 50 tap water samples," the news service writes.
A study featured on the cover of the March 15 Journal of Immunology is providing insight into why the elderly are so vulnerable to pneumonia and other bacterial infections.
The clinical outcome is improved if patients with chronic lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis are treated long-term with the antibiotic azithromycin. However, azithromycin treatment in patients with cystic fibrosis as recently associated with increased infection with nontuberculous mycobacteria. Now, researchers have confirmed that long-term use of azithromycin by adults with cystic fibrosis is associated with infection with nontuberculous mycobacteria and identified an underlying mechanism.
A new study of more than three dozen bacteria species -- including the microbes responsible for pneumonia, meningitis, stomach ulcers and plague -- settles a longstanding debate about why bacteria are more likely to steal some genes than others.
The news coverage of the deadly EHEC bacteria outbreak in Europe came as a bombshell. Ghent University (Belgium) examined 6132 reactions of Belgian newspaper readers after reading the first news reports. As expected, people are scared and worried, but governmental trust decreases fear and leads to a higher intention to keep on eating fresh produce. These are a few of the results from a research done by Melanie De Vocht, PhD student in Communications Sciences (UGent).
Humanity's worst scourge, the smallpox virus, may finally wind up on death row in May if health officials decide to destroy the last known samples. The virus was eliminated in human populations more than 30 years ago, but several international groups want to kill any remaining virus samples stored in test tubes on two continents.
Technology developed with ESA funding and drawing on long-running research aboard the International Space Station is opening up a new way to keep hospital patients safe from infections.