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New optical tool controls bacterial electrical signaling

Bacteria, like neurons in human brains, utilize electricity to interact and react to environmental cues. Scientists have now developed a strategy to regulate this electrical signaling in bacteria to better comprehend antibiotic resistance.

From The University of Warwick 15 Feb 2023

Baby kangaroo feces may offer a solution to reduce methane emissions from cattle

Baby kangaroo feces might help provide an unlikely solution to the environmental problem of cow-produced methane.

15 Feb 2023

Pungent ginger constituent puts white blood cells on heightened alert

Ginger has a reputation for stimulating the immune system. New results from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (Leibniz-LSB@TUM) now support this thesis.

15 Feb 2023

New family of pharmaceutical compounds that target RNA

In Jennifer Hines’ lab, a group of graduate and undergraduate chemistry students recently discovered a new family of compounds that can target RNA and interfere with its function. In the future, RNA-targeted treatments to treat cancer and metabolic diseases, together with bacterial and viral infections, could be developed using the chemical scaffold found in this research.

15 Feb 2023

Versatile molecular toolbox expands the scope of gene regulation

Rice University scientists have enlisted widely used cancer therapy systems to control gene expression in mammalian cells, a feat of synthetic biology that could change how diseases are treated.

15 Feb 2023

Study reveals how two proteins enable drug-resistant MRSA bacterium to secrete toxins

Antimicrobial resistance represents one of the top 10 global public health threats according to the World Health Organization, and scientists have been scrambling to find new tools to cure the most deadly drug-resistant infections.

14 Feb 2023

Blastocystis can promote or disrupt gut health, study finds

The gut microbiota contains trillions of bacteria that can promote health or cause disease under different conditions.

14 Feb 2023

Researchers discover target enzyme for blast disease

A fungus that plagues rice crops worldwide gains entry to plant cells in a way that leaves it vulnerable to simple chemical blockers, a discovery that could lead to new fungicides to reduce the substantial annual losses of rice and other valuable cereals.

14 Feb 2023

Engineering a phage's DNA by introducing modified CRISPR-Cas machinery genes

Bacteriophages (or phages) are viruses that infect bacteria. They are the most abundant biological entity, and they can be found wherever bacteria live. To propagate themselves, phages inject their DNA into their bacterial hosts.

13 Feb 2023

Specific types of gut fungi play a role in infant weight gain and growth

Researchers in the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) at the University of Calgary in collaboration with the Canadian CHILD Study have found a link between the diversity, or number, of fungal species in the infant gut and the body-mass index (BMI) of infants.

10 Feb 2023

Novel compound curtails influenza virus replication

Viruses use the molecular repertoire of the host cell to replicate. Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn, together with Japanese researchers, want to exploit this for the treatment of influenza.

10 Feb 2023

Elaborating three-dimensional coordination of cell-division site positioning in a cyanobacterium

Cyanobacteria are considered to be the earliest oxygenic photosynthetic organisms present on Earth, and they have played crucial roles in the progress of the environment and life on the planet. Today, cyanobacteria are still found extravagantly in several ecological niches.

9 Feb 2023