Microbe Magazine

Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Andrew C. von Eschenbach in May appointed David Acheson to be Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection, creating a new FDA post to focus on food safety and defense. This move is one in a series of recent events disclosing— along with effort... More...

Recent findings about Deinococcus radiodurans, which is particularly resilient when subject to the ravages of ionizing radiation, is upsetting notions about how cells withstand radiation. A multicenter team of scientists proposes that a powerful manganese-based mechanism protects proteins—... More...

Genomic analysis of two closely related species of ocean-dwelling phytoplankton from the genus Ostreococcus, among the smallest eukaryotes ever characterized, reveals “several striking features,” says Igor Grigoriev of the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Hills, Calif.... More...

Recent analysis of benthic, or bottom-dwelling, and planktonic, or surface-dwelling single-celled marine organisms, called foraminifera, suggest that during the transition between the Paleocene and Eocene eras 55 million years ago, earth was engulfed in an extraordinarily severe global warming pe... More...

Finding microRNA molecules (miRNAs) in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii “changes the dogma that miRNAs only exist in multicellular organisms,” says Yijun Qi of the National Institute of Biological Sciences in China, who led an international group of researchers, whose f... More...

Officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in April approved a vaccine to protect humans against H5N1 influenza. This vaccine, which is being produced by sanofi pasteur of Swiftwater, Pa., will be stockpiled by the U.S. government for use in case the H5N1 influenza virus emerges as readi... More...

Bacteria that are called persisters, meaning they are viable but quiescent and nongrowing, enter this state by means of a specific genetic switch, according to Ying Zhang and Yongfang Li of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., who report their findings in the June issue of Antimicro... More...

In the search for renewable fuels, microorganisms have a role to play. The same sometimes can be said about the search for explosives. Here are some recent examples:

Already well known for their wound-healing powers, maggots and their by-products also can disrupt biofilms formed by pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, according to Mariena van der Plas of Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, ... More...

Even before officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the antibiotic Ketek (telithromycin) in 2004, problems over the safety of this drug and how it was being evaluated clinically were beginning to pile up, according to David Ross, a clinical assistant professor at George Washi... More...