Microbe Magazine

Changes within microbial communities in arid topsoils in the western region of the United States can be correlated for the first time with global warming trends, according to microbiologist Ferran Garcia-Pichel of Arizona State University in Tempe and his collaborators there and at the Universida... More...

Several new antimicrobial candidate drugs that share enzyme targets with fluoroquinolones but act through distinct binding sites dominated the poster summary session “Early New Antimicrobial Agents” at the 2013 Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in Denver, Co... More...

Plastic, the most common debris contaminating ocean ecosystems, supports and is contaminated by complex microbial communities, called the “plastisphere.” These microbes colonize and may help to degrade plastic polymers, according to Linda Amaral-Zettler at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) a... More...

Bacteriophages adhering to host mucus (BAM) “provide a previously unrecognized, non-host-derived, antibacterial immune defense applicable to all metazoan mucous surfaces,” according to Jeremy J. Barr at San Diego State University (SDSU) and his collaborators there as well as the University of Cal... More...

“Aphid lethal paralysis virus (ALPV) spreads to the insects through the vascular systems of the plants on which they feed—a plant-virus collaboration that serves to both sicken the predator aphids and extend the host range of the virus,” says Leslie L. Domier at the University of Illinois in Urba... More...

Recent technological advances are making single-cell analysis more widely accessible and better suited for analyzing microorganisms, according to several researchers who spoke during the session “Single-Cell Techniques in Microbiology,” part of the Federation of European Microbiological Societies... More...

Koreans with hepatitis B virus (HBV) suffer a high rate of mortality from liver cancer, and men with HBV are roughly five times more likely than women to develop that cancer. Now Bum-Joon Kim of Seoul National University, Korea, et al. have traced this likelihood to a novel mutation in the hepati... More...

Foodborne illness sickens an estimated 9.4 million and kills around 1,300 people annually in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Produce accounts for nearly half the illnesses, and 23% of the deaths. Now, in an effort to help reduce those illnesses and ... More...

More than one-quarter of residents of 26 nursing homes in Orange County, Calif., carry community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which spreads more easily, and may cause more severe infection, than hospital-associated MRSA, according to resea... More...

Many resistance genes now found in pathogens appear to have originated from harmless environmental bacteria, but the location and circumstances of the gene transfers remain unknown. One venue that has come under suspicion is wastewater treatment plants, where environmental bacteria meet human com... More...