Microbe Magazine

Questions about the safe handling of infectious agents in research settings are popping up on several fronts in the United States and United Kingdom (U.K), reviving a longstanding and highly fragmented debate over where and how to investigate such agents and what safeguards are adequate. In pract... More...

The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IVAP) is a “marker for” and appears a plausible culprit for helping to cause honeybee colony collapse disorder (CCD), according to entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Pennsylvania State University, W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York, N.Y., and their c... More...

Without a properly functioning RNA polymerase (RNAP), which transcribes genetic information in DNA into messenger RNA molecules, proteins cannot be made properly, and cells die. A refolding loop structure in RNAP is the site responsible for the rate-limiting step in the reactions that this import... More...

Here are some recent noteworthy developments involving viruses:

Congo red dye, which binds prion proteins, is used widely to detect them in mammalian brains. This property led David Brown of the University of Bath, United Kingdom (U.K.), and his collaborators to develop less-toxic dye derivatives that could target and eliminate prions without poisoning the ce... More...

Ice core samples from Antarctica yield DNA as well as some metabolically active bacteria that appear to be 8 million years old, according to microbiologists Paul Falkowski and Kay D. Bidle from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., David Marchant from Boston University in Boston, Mass., and ... More...

Three distinct sets of lethal antibiotics kill bacterial cells through a common “downstream” mechanism involving active oxygen species, namely hydroxyl radicals, according to James Collins of Boston University in Boston, Mass., and his collaborators. Although the three types of cidal antibiotics ... More...

A key, but previously poorly characterized enzyme in the folate biosynthetic pathway of Escherichia coli proves to be rate-limiting and, thus, a target for novel antimicrobials, according to Maurice Bessman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and his collaborators. This enzyme, ... More...

Deaths among children under 5 years of age fell below the 10 million threshold for the first time worldwide, signifying major progress since 1990 when such deaths reached nearly 13 million, according to officials at UNICEF in New York, N.Y. The Latin American and Caribbean region is helping to le... More...