Microbe Magazine

The 2011 Nobel in Medicine or Physiology recognizes three scientists for their research involving the immune system and how it protects against infectious disease agents. Half of the prize is being divided between Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann for their studies of innate immunity. The other ha... More...

“We go through peaks and valleys; this year, we have more optimism,” says Karen Bush of Indiana University in Bloomington, referring to early-stage antimicrobial agents being developed. She spoke during the poster summary session, “Early New Antimicrobial Agents,” which she coconvened, part of th... More...

A nationwide pertussis outbreak, which was centered in California, last year led to 11 deaths in that state and a national surge of infections to more than 27,000, the bulk being among 8- to 12-year-old children, according to David Witt of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, Calif... More...

Artemisinin-resistant malaria, seen along the border between Thailand and Cambodia, is “very worrying” and, if it spreads, could lead to a “disaster,” says Arjen Dondorp of the Mahidol-Oxford Research Unit in Bangkok, Thailand. Similarly, widespread resistance to carbapenems among gram-negative b... More...

Robust genomic sequencing analysis greatly bolsters the case that the cholera epidemic in Haiti that began late in 2010 was caused by a strain of Vibrio cholerae from Nepal, according to a team of Danish, American, and Nepalese investigators. These findings “highlig... More...

A newly recognized ocean-dwelling clade of α-proteobacteria, whose members are related to the Rickettsiales, could be the closest to mitochondria progenitors, according to Siv Andersson and her colleagues at the Evolutionary Biology Center in Uppsala, Sweden. By calling this new group of deeply d... More...