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When the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it had cracked the long-unsolved anthrax case, the turning point cited by the bureau was its identification of a laboratory flask as the source of the anthrax. The dots, or in this case more than a thousand separate anthrax samples, were connected with the help of a group of scientists working secretly for some seven years. They succeeded by using a combination of new techniques not even invented in late 2001 when the anthrax-laced letters were sent, and that most old-fashioned attribute of expert scientists and detectives: a trained eye. Now, in their...

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have shown how bacteria could be used as a future fuel. The research, published in the journal Bioinformatics, could have significant implications for the environment and the way we produce sustainable fuels in the future. Like all living creatures, bacteria sustain themselves through their metabolism, a huge sequence of chemical reactions that transform nutrients into energy and waste. Using mathematical computer models, the Sheffield team have mapped the metabolism of a type of bacteria called Nostoc. Nostoc fixes nitrogen and, in doing so, releases hydrogen that can then potentially be used as fuel. Fixing...

Scientists have discovered how bird flu adapts in patients, offering a new way to monitor the disease and prevent a pandemic, according to research published in the August issue of the Journal of General Virology. Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus has spread through at least 45 countries in 3 continents. Despite its ability to spread, it cannot be transmitted efficiently from human to human. This indicates it is not fully adapted to its new host species, the human. However, this new research reveals mutations in the virus that may result in a pandemic. "The mutations needed for the emergence...

Alligator blood could provide a powerful new source of antibiotics for fighting deadly "superbugs" and other infections. Courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Despite their reputation for attacks on humans and pets, alligators are wiggling their way toward a new role as potential lifesavers in medicine. Biochemists in Louisiana are studying how proteins in gator blood may provide a source of powerful new antibiotics to help fight infections associated with diabetic ulcers, severe burns, and superbugs that are resistant to conventional medication. In a study presented at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the researchers presented...

Some weeks ago, I wrote about microbes in the air and their possible role in helping clouds form, in causing rain and in altering the chemistry of the high atmosphere. This week, I want to go in the opposite direction and plunge down into the earth. For many bacteria live deep in the oceans and deep in the earth, far from light, far from what we normally think of as good, comfortable places to live. For example: the bottom of the Mariana Trench. This is a seam on the sea floor in the northwestern Pacific, not far from the island...

LONDON (Reuters) - Disinfectant wipes routinely used in hospitals may actually spread drug-resistant bacteria rather than kill the dangerous infections, British researchers said on Tuesday. While the wipes killed some bacteria, a study of two hospitals showed they did not get them all and could transfer the so-called superbugs to other surfaces, Gareth Williams, a microbiologist at Cardiff University, said. The findings presented at the American Society of Microbiology's General Meeting in Boston focused on bacteria that included methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. "What we have found is there is a high risk," Williams, who led the study, said by...

Web address:     http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/     080531090353.htm Invasion Strategy Of World's Largest Virus Revealed enlarge (A) TEM image of cryo-fixed sectioned and stained extracellular Mimivirus particles revealing a star-shaped structure at a unique vertex. (B) Cryo-TEM image of a whole vitrified fiber-less Mimivirus. (C) SEM image of the star-shaped structure in a mature extracellular Mimivirus particle. (D) Cryo-SEM of an immature, fiber-less particle. (E) Tomographic slice of a mature intracellular Mimivirus particle captured at a late (12 h post infection) infection stage. As shown in Video S1, at this late stage the host cell is packed with mature viral particles. (F and G) Volume...

University of Queensland researchers have made a giant leap forward in the race to develop a vaccine for the potentially debilitating West Nile virus. Associate Professor Alex Khromykh, from UQ's School of Molecular & Microbial Sciences, and colleagues have found a way to generate immune response levels comparable to a live virus vaccine, which could also help suffers of other disease such as dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis. “What this means is that our prototype vaccine has the potential to not only be safer but just as effective as live vaccines,” Dr Khromykh said. Dr Khromykh said West Nile virus...

Provided/Esther Angert A close-up of the tip of an Epulopiscium with the tip of a protozoan (Paramecium) and the black spots are E. coli cells. The researcher mixed E. coli and Paramecium cells in with Epulopiscium she had picked out of fish gut contents to show the relative sizes. Provided/Esther Angert Three large Epulopiscium cells, each with several big internal offspring. This image shows total fish gut contents with some small eukaryotic flagellates and partially digested algae around the large Epulopiscium cells. Well, perhaps not quite Shaquille O'Neal. But it is Shaq-teria.The secret to an unusual bacterium's massive size...

Enlarge ImageScience of sleep. The scientists used fluorescent proteins--green and red in these images--to determine whether E. coli bacteria were active.Credit: Gefen et al., PNAS 105 (22 April 2008) Most antibiotics kill only microbes that are growing and multiplying, leaving untouched a select few that are hibernating. A new study suggests that a dose of the right nutrients can awaken these bacteria for just long enough to kill them with antibiotics. If the strategy works in humans, it might provide a more effective way to treat persistent diseases such as tuberculosis and urinary-tract infections. During infections, bacteria may slow...

Talk about a low-down, dirty trick. New research reveals that bacteria deploy duplicates of human proteins to jam our body's early warning system. The results might lead to improved treatments for bacterial infections and for diseases such as arthritis that are caused by an overactive immune system. Any good military defense employs radar, and our immune system is no exception. Immune cells known as macrophages and dendritic cells carry so-called Toll-like receptors, which raise the alarm if they detect bits of bacterial membrane or other telltale signs of microbial invasion. A portion of the Toll-like receptor called the TIR domain...

A Harvard biology professor’s fascination with seafloor microbes has led to the development of a revolutionary, low-cost power system consuming garbage, compost, and other waste that could provide light for the developing world. Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Peter Girguis has developed a fuel cell run by the natural activity of anaerobic microbes. The cells can be manufactured for just a few U.S. dollars, putting them within reach of many of the world’s poor who today do not have access to electricity. Though the power output is relatively low, Girguis said it should be sufficient to run low-energy...

AP Medical Writer HANOI, Vietnam --Limited human-to-human bird flu transmission may have occurred in Pakistan, but no new infections have been reported for two weeks and there appears to be no threat of further spread, a top World Health Organization official said. A WHO team has finished its initial investigation in Pakistan after up to nine patients, including several family members, were suspected of being infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus in areas north of Islamabad. They were the country's first reported human cases. The experts were expected back in Geneva to begin piecing together how the virus may...

Fibres may be more important than viral load in determining transmission rates. A component found in semen can enhance HIV transmission by as much as 100,000-fold, researchers have found. The results, if verified in a clinical setting, could identify a new way to help prevent the spread of the disease. "I think this is tremendous," says Christopher Pilcher, an HIV researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not affiliated with the study. "It raises a lot of really fundamental questions about how HIV is transmitted." Over 80% of HIV infections are acquired through sexual intercourse, primarily via...

The Danish Council of Ethics has proposed a set of rules to deal with the prospective possibility that human and animal genes will be combined The first hybrid sheep-goat was created some 20 years ago, and science has since used cell and gene research to put a baboon heart into an infant and use other animal organs to save human lives. But where this technology will eventually lead to is of great concern to both the Danish Council of Ethics and the Council for Animal Ethics, who Tuesday presented their proposals for dealing with the unnerving prospect of combining human...

FORGET genetic engineering. The new idea is synthetic biology, an effort by engineers to rewire the genetic circuitry of living organisms. The ambitious undertaking includes genetic engineering, the now routine insertion of one or two genes into a bacterium or crop plant. But synthetic biologists aim to rearrange genes on a much wider scale, that of a genome, or an organism’s entire genetic code. Their plans include microbes modified to generate cheap petroleum out of plant waste, and, further down the line, designing whole organisms from scratch. Synthetic biologists can identify a network of useful genes on their computer screens...

A COUPLE of weeks ago I saw a new scientific paper from Clemson University that struck me as both pioneering and hilarious. Accompanied by six graphs, two tables and equations whose terms include “bologna” and “carpet,” it’s a thorough microbiological study of the five-second rule: the idea that if you pick up a dropped piece of food before you can count to five, it’s O.K. to eat it. I first heard about the rule from my then-young children and thought it was just a way of having fun at snack time and lunch. My daughter now tells me that fun...

A human body is not the individual organism its proud owner may suppose but rather a walking zoo of microbes and parasites, each exploiting a special ecological niche in its comfortable, temperature-controlled conveyance. Some of these fellow travelers live so intimately with their hosts, biologists are finding, that they accompany them not just in space but also in time, passing from generation to generation for thousands of years. The latest organism to be identified as a longtime member of the human biota club is Streptococcus mutans, the bacterium that causes tooth decay. From samples collected around the world, Dr. Page...

Source: University of California - Berkeley Date: March 11, 2007 Gene Transfer Between Species Is Surprisingly Common Science Daily — Bacteria are known to share genes, spreading drug resistance, for example. But how common is it in other organisms, including mammals like us? Two new studies show that most bacteria have genes or large groups of genes shared by other bacteria. Even among higher organisms, shared genes are the rule rather than the exception, UC Berkeley and LBNL researchers say. Two new studies by University of California, Berkeley, scientists highlight the amazing promiscuity of genes, which appear to shuttle frequently...

In April 2005, Sara Stephan, a 13-year old in Charleroi, Pa., developed what looked like a pimple on her cheek. A blemish on a teenager is not exactly cause for alarm, but her mother, Carla Stephan, became concerned when it started to spread and swell. “Her whole cheek got big and red,” she said. Next, a similar lesion above Sara’s eye. Then, she got one the size of a softball on her buttock, and several more on her thighs. Tests showed that Sara had a particularly persistent and sometimes deadly bacterial infection known as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, often abbreviated as...

17 March 2006, 14:40 The sign of the cross and Orthodox prayer are capable of killing microbes and change the optical properties of water - a study Moscow, March 17, Interfax - Scientists have proved experimentally the miracle-working properties of the sign of the cross and prayer. ‘We have ascertained that the old custom to make a sign of the cross over food and drink before a meal has a profound mystical meaning. Standing behind it is the practical use: the food is purified literally in an instant. This is a great miracle, which happens literally every day,’ physicist Angelina...

Italy probes possible CIA role in abduction By John Crewdson (Chicago) Tribune senior correspondent An Italian prosecutor investigating the apparent kidnapping of a suspected Islamic militant in the streets of Milan served military authorities this week with a demand for records of flights into and out of a joint U.S.-Italian air base in northern Italy. Italian newspapers have reported that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, is investigating the possible role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the disappearance of Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, better known as Abu Omar, a popular figure in Milan's Islamic community who vanished Feb. 17, 2003....

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

Americans have had no lack of dramatic news this year. The Boston Red Sox finally broke the 86-year-old "curse of the Babe" and won a World Series.... But events that don't make headline news often are more important than those that do. That quiet backdrop is explored by Sir Harold Evans, a British journalist, in "They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine -- Two Centuries of Innovation," (Little Brown & Co.) In an interview in the winter issue of "Invention & Technology" magazine, he is quoted as saying that America became economically strong through the "adaptive...

A University of California, Irvine scientist says viruses are much, much more than nasty little microbes that infect us with the flu. If he is right, they have infected all of life - with evolution. In an astonishing set of papers and a new book, UCI virologist Luis Villarreal contends viruses are largely responsible for shaping how we look, how we speak, even how we think. In fact, he says, they are an overlooked evolutionary force, one that has been powerfully influencing the shape of living things since life began - actually, since a little before life began. "I'm saying...