Microbe Magazine

“Our magic bullets have far more peaceful uses in the wild,” says Marvin Whiteley at the University of Texas at Austin, referring to natural substances with antimicrobial activities. “Many known antibiotics are gene modulators, not weapons, requiring us to challenge our preconceptions about their... More...

The 2009 H1N1 influenza virus poses a “serious health threat“ not because it is more deadly, but because “it is likely to infect more people than usual, [which] could mean that doctors’ offices and hospitals may get filled to capacity,” notes a report released in August by the U.S. President’s Co... More...

Decades before biofilms were named, microbiologists studying bacteria in the oral cavity realized that complex microbial communities form plaque on tooth surfaces—perhaps the prototype for much of biofilm research today. Some of that oral cavity-focused biofilm research is leading to new products... More...

Traditional microbiological nomenclature sometimes leads to misunderstandings, confusion, and other problems for microbiologists when, for example, they encounter the same gene within the type II secretion system through one or a few of its 20 or more different names—some of them based merely “on... More...

Citing a July report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Representatives Bart Stupak and John Dingell, both Democrats from Michigan, are recommending an independent safety assessment before the Department of Homeland Defense (DHS) builds its National Bio-and Agro-Defense Facility (NB... More...

Public health officials, vaccine producers, and other experts with responsibilities for countering influenza outbreaks are scrambling to develop, evaluate, produce, and deploy vaccines to protect against both seasonal and the new H1N1 pandemic flu viruses. With so much at stake and many uncertain... More...

Here are some recent highlights from research on malaria:

Airborne microbial diversity is much greater than expected, albeit spare compared to that in the ocean and in the soil, according graduate student Robert M. Bowers, his advisor Noah Fierer, and their collaborators at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and elsewhere, who collected their data at ... More...

A global change in the esophageal microbiome might give rise to gastroesophageal reflux diseases (GERD), according to Zhiheng Pei at the New York University Langone Medical Center in New York, N.Y., and his collaborators. They find high concentrations of Streptococcus in the esophagus of h... More...