Microbe Magazine

The recent letter about “The Growth Curve; Can Microbiology Teach Something to Economy?” (C. Gancedo, Microbe, September 2010, p. 367) contains an interesting point which I believe deserves further discussion. The author pointed out the similarities between the use of growth curves in micr... More...

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Subra Suresh, President Barack Obama's nominee for director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), for a six-year term. Suresh served as dean of the engineering school and as Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.... More...

Although the majority of disease has been mild, the 2009 pandemic influenza virus (H1N1pdm) has caused significant numbers of severe and fatal infections. Variants with glycine instead of aspartic acid in residue 222 in the receptor binding site for virus hemagglutinin were associated with fatal ... More...

Candida albicans's virulence is legendary. Now Richard J. Bennett and colleagues of Brown University, Providence, R.I., show that exposure to high doses of the pathogen's own mating pheromone induced cell death. Indeed, it killed off as much as 70% of the populati... More...

Recent epidemiologic data shows that Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a leading cause of ventilator-associated pneumonia, with prevalence in ICUs ranging from 5 to 67%, and mortality rates ranging from 24 to 76%, according to population studies. Of several resistance mecha... More...

Bacterial plasmids spread antibiotic resistance, virulence, and many other traits. Eva Top and colleagues of the University of Idaho, Moscow, show that the range of bacteria in which plasmids have resided over evolutionary time can be inferred based entirely on information from plasmid DNA. “Usin... More...

At the end of the bacteriophage life cycle, a phage must lyse the host to release its progeny. It does this by releasing a phage-encoded endolysin, which degrades the host's cell wall. Previously, Ry Young's lab at Texas A&M University, College Station, showed that some phages use s... More...

Public Health and Infectious Diseases is about infectious diseases and their link to public health. It is a comprehensive compilation and discussion of clinical and research data that can be used by many public health and biomedical professionals, including clinicians, epid... More...

ASM-UNESCO Visiting Resource Person (VRP) Program. Planning an international trip within the next 6 months? UNESCO and ASM offer you the chance to extend your stay and share your knowledge with scientists around the world! If you will be traveling to a developing nation thi... More...

6–9 February 2011.

The Department of Microbiology at the University of Minnesota Medical School invites applications for a faculty position to be filled at the tenure-track Assistant Professor level. The successful applicant will be expected to establish a competitive research program in bacterial pathogenesis (bro... More...

http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2010/08/when-the-end-is-the-story.html