Microbe Magazine

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FEATURES
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Magic Bullets
From “the miracle of penicillin” in the early 1940s, antibiotics have had an amazing impact on public health. Broad-spectrum antibiotics have allowed the rapid treatment of infectious disease even before the causative agent was known, saving many people in the prime of their lives. In addition, p...
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Reexamining Hygiene in Modern Hospitals
“Conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease, especially through cleanliness” is the principal definition for hygiene. The hygiene of modern hospitals owes a lot to germ theory and to understanding the importance of keeping the environment around patients and me...
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Bacterial Endosymbionts and Insect Hosts Practice “Supply-Side” Metabolism
Endosymbiotic bacteria within some insects supply their hosts with essential nutrients that enable those hosts to live in specialized environmental niches. In particular, blood-feeders such as bedbugs and tsetse flies, and plant-sap feeders such as pea aphids, citrus mealybugs, and cicadas rely h...
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Bacterial Bleaching of Corals Leads to Hologenome Concept
Rising temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea each summer lead to bleaching of the stony coral, Oculina patagonica, as it loses its endosymbiotic pigmented algae. In 1996, a former graduate student Ariel Kushmaro here at Tel Aviv University showed that More...