Microbe Magazine

Bacterial flagellar motors are impressive devices that rotate at more than 100,000 rpm and have a power-toweight ratio that is about 50 times that of a Porsche Carrera. An updated understanding of the flagellar motor switch—the part that changes the motor's direction of rotation—“allows us t... More...

Officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) along with several other private-sector organizations released a report, “Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap,” last December. It calls for having a “firstgeneration” vaccine licensed by 2015, a product that should provide at least a protective effi... More...

Proton pump-inhibiting drugs that take the bite out of stomach acidity also disarm bacteria associated with causing gingivitis, which can lead to tooth loss, and may provide a novel means for combating this condition, according to researchers at the University Rochester (UR) in Rochester, New Yor... More...

About a generation ago, C. B. van Niel taught a special course in microbiology that reflected his interest in microbial diversity and his quest to identify fundamental biological principles (ASM News, August 2004, p. 258). In emulating van Niel's approach, Alfred Spormann, Christopher... More...

The late Line Brunet de Courssou used clays imported from France to treat her West African patients who had Buruli ulcers, which is now considered “an emerging public health threat” by the World Health Organization. Like leprosy, such ulcers, which are caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, des... More...

Polymers that are highly effective at deactivating bacteria and viruses on surfaces might someday be used to make microbicidal “paints” for curbing transmission of infectious diseases in hospitals and other settings, according to Alexander Klibanov at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in ... More...

Phytoplankton blooms appear to promote cloud formation over the Southern Ocean, according to Nicholas Meskhidze and Athanasios Nenes of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who report their findings in the 1 December 2006 Science. Using remotely sensed data, they determined that... More...

“Microorganisms are a major biological force influencing the biogeochemical state of the oceans,” says Farooq Azam of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. They are also “a major part of the global food web, and their dynamics…with other organisms are... More...

With antibiotic supplements in animal feed under increasing scrutiny, researchers and other officials of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are actively pursuing bacteriocins as alternative means for attaining fast and healthy growth of chickens and other birds for U.S. poultry producers. ... More...