Microbe Magazine

Two amoeba-infecting giant DNA viruses with genomes twice the size of, and unrelated to, any previously described viruses were uncovered from marine sediments in one case and pond mud in the other, according to Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie from Aix-Marseille Université in France and c... More...

Estimates that 40% of human tumors are DNA virus-related “should be lowered,” says Xiaoping Su of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Tex. He and his collaborators used RNA sequencing to analyze 3,775 malignant tumor samples from cancer patients, and then applied a robust bioinformatics alg... More...

The protein MA4561 from the archaeon Methanosarcina acetivorans is not the phytochrome-like photoreceptor that it was first thought to be, but is instead a heme-binding protein that likely acts as a redox sensor, according to Nicole Frankenberg-Dinkel at the Ruhr-Un... More...

The long-enshrined belief that urine is sterile is giving way to the notion that the urinary tract hosts a bona fide microbiome, according to several investigators who spoke during the symposium, “How Knowledge from the Human Microbiome Projects Will Change the Practice of Clinical Microbiology,”... More...

Among their diverse activities, the microorganism of the gut apparently affect the host immune response to orally administered vaccines, say Claire Fraser, director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland (UM) and her collaborators at its Center for Vaccine Development ... More...

Within diverse communities, sets of microbial species show codependence, which enables the collaborators to use resources efficiently while enhancing ecosystem function, according to several researchers who presented findings during the 2013 ASM General Meeting held in Denver last May. Evidence f... More...

Microbial communities of the gut, mouth, and skin may indicate—and, in some cases, play roles in causing—various diseases, according to several researchers who presented their findings during the poster session “Human Microbiome,” at the 2013 ASM General Meeting held in Denver last May. Changes i... More...