Microbe Magazine

Amiodarone, a drug long used for treating irregular heart rhythms, can also be effective against Chagas disease and leishmaniasis skin lesions, according to Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi at Columbia University in New York, N.Y., and his collaborators in Venezuela. Both these parasitic diseases are endem... More...

The H1N1 influenza pandemic began to rebuild momentum throughout the Northern Hemisphere in September, and it was being met by a series of developments, including:

Phosphate shortages could explain how Pseudomonas aeruginosa shifts from being a mere colonizer of the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract into a lethal agent, says John Alverdy, a surgeon at the University of Chicago School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill. Although P. aeruginosa sometime... More...

Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee introduced legislation on 8 September aimed at strengthening security at high-containment biology laboratories. Provisions in the bill, the “Weapons of Mass Destruction Prevention a... More...

“The earth is responding to escalating carbon dioxide levels with rising seas, flooding, droughts, forest fires, and a corresponding surge in infectious dis-ease—some all too familiar; others new,” says Timothy Ford from the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. “If properly done, predic... More...

If the Viking labeled-release experiment on Mars in 1976 had tested glucose optical isomers separately, it might have avoided lingering doubts about its apparently positive results suggesting biological activity, say microbiologist Henry J. Sun of the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas, Nev.,... More...

A virus that causes leukemia and sarcomas in mice is also present in malignant human prostate cancer cells, according to Ila Singha of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Robert Schlaberga of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, N.Y., and their collaborators. Specifically, the xe... More...

With concerns about global warming and rising oil prices, there is renewed impetus behind efforts to harness microorganisms as a way of reducing worldwide reliance on fossil fuels. Some companies are keen on exploiting photosynthetic microbes, whereas others are counting on other ways to marshal ... More...

Long underappreciated as a microbial habitat, the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is basking in the scientific limelight these days. Here are some recent examples:

Very different kinds of pathogen—in this case, one a virus, the other a mycoplasma—can act as if cooperating when infecting cultured cells, with one augmenting the potency of the other, according to Peter Lidsky and Vadim I. Agol of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia, and the... More...