Microbiology

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Plectasin's Velcro-Like Binding Holds Promise for Fighting Antimicrobial Resistance

A small antibiotic called plectasin uses an innovative mechanism to kill bacteria. By assembling into large structures, plectasin latches onto its target on the bacterial cell surface comparable to how both sides of Velcro form a bond.

24 May 2024

Mitochondrial Phosphate Carrier MIR1: A Key Player in Candida albicans Virulence

This study is led by Professor Yan Wang (School of Pharmacy, Second Military Medical University (Naval Medical University), Shanghai, China). Her team found that the lack of MIR1 gene, which encodes mitochondrial phosphate carrier, can lead to severe virulence defects in Candida albicans.

23 May 2024

Insights Into Adaptation of Aspergillus flavus in Honey Bee Colonies

The past attempts of honey bee researchers to inventory the fungal diversity in honey bee colonies revealed that Aspergillus flavus is frequently found in hives.

22 May 2024

Air-Dried Soil Archives Proven Viable for Long-Term Microbial Community Analysis

Post-doctoral researcher Joe Edwards and graduate student Sarah Love, both in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, published findings this spring that can save fellow researchers a lot of time and energy when storing soil samples for later study of their microbial content.

21 May 2024

Unraveling Gardnerella Diversity in the Vaginal Microbiome

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that multiple species of Gardnerella, bacteria sometimes associated with bacterial vaginosis (BV) and pre-term birth, can coexist in the same vaginal microbiome.

21 May 2024

Study Identifies Ruminococcus gnavus as Key Microbial Partner in Cancer Immunotherapy

Roughly one in five cancer patients benefits from immunotherapy – a treatment that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer.

20 May 2024

Viruses Offer Efficient Delivery for Precise Plant Breeding

The application of genome editing in plant molecular breeding is hampered by the lack of straightforward and efficient methods for introducing genome editing reagents into plants, despite the technology's great potential.

20 May 2024

Phages and Zombie Cells Regulate Abundant Marine Bacteria

The movement of matter and energy required for ocean life is regulated by marine microbes, of these, approximately one-third are members of the bacterial group SAR11.

20 May 2024

Study Reveals How tRNA Modification Influences Malaria Drug Resistance

Researchers from the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), have discovered a link between malaria parasites’ ability to develop resistance to antimalarial drugs – specifically artemisinin (ART) – through a cellular process called transfer Ribonucleic acid (tRNA) modification.

20 May 2024

Breakthrough in Natural Vanillin Production Using Engineered Enzyme

Vanilla extract is one of the most widely used flavoring compounds in food products and cosmetics.

17 May 2024

H5N1 Strain Shows Limited Airborne Transmission in Ferrets

The highly virulent H5N1 avian influenza was initially found in dairy cattle in the United States in March, and by May, outbreaks had been reported from nine states. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

16 May 2024

How Gut Microbiome Modulation Affects Social Decision-Making

Taking pro- and prebiotics could make people more sensitive to fairness, even at the cost of earning less money, according to a study.

15 May 2024

Unraveling the IS Transposition-Mediated Anti-Phage Mechanism in Mycobacteria

This study is led by Prof. Zheng-Guo He (Guangxi Research Center for Microbial and Enzyme Engineering Technology, College of Life Science and Technology, Guangxi University,China).

14 May 2024

Harnessing High-Performance Computing to Unravel the Emergence of Novel Viruses

Suddenly they appear and - like the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus - can trigger major epidemics: Viruses that nobody had on their radar.

14 May 2024

Unraveling the Rhizobia-Diatom Relationship in the Ocean

Nitrogen is an essential component of all living organisms. It is also the key element controlling the growth of crops on land, as well as the microscopic oceanic plants that produce half the oxygen on our planet.

10 May 2024

Cooperative Synthesis of Vitamin B12 by Marine Bacterial Partners

A German-American research team led by microbiologist Dr Gerrit Wienhausen from the University of Oldenburg (Germany) has come an important step closer to a better understanding of highly complex interactions between marine microorganisms.

9 May 2024

Rice University Develops AI-Powered Tools for Unraveling Microbial Genomes

Since the first microbial genome was sequenced in 1995, scientists have reconstructed the genomic makeup of hundreds of thousands of microorganisms and have even devised methods to take a census of bacterial communities on the skin, in the gut, or in soil, water and elsewhere based on bulk samples, leading to the emergence of a relatively new field of study known as metagenomics.

8 May 2024

New Insights into E. coli's UTI Survival Strategy

Due to anatomical peculiarities, women are particularly vulnerable to UTIs; nearly 50% of them will experience one at some point in their lives.

6 May 2024

Novel Lantibiotic Unveiled Against Skin Microbiome Rivals

Many bacteria produce substances to gain an advantage over competitors in their highly competitive natural environment.

30 Apr 2024

A New Pathway to Universal Donor Blood

The effort to generate universal donor blood has made a significant step ahead. Researchers at DTU and Lund University identified enzymes that, when combined with red blood cells, could eliminate particular sugars found in the A and B antigens of the human ABO blood types. The findings are reported in the scientific journal Nature Microbiology.

30 Apr 2024