Microbe Magazine

Some people crave espressos or other caffeine-spiked drinks. Joining them in spirit is Pseudomonas putida CBB5, a soil bacterium that demethylates caffeine to xanthine. When its caffeine-degrading gene cluster is transferred into Escherichia coli, the latter bacteria act like a bios... More...

Although neither the H7N9 nor H5N1 strains of influenza virus is readily transmissible among humans, both strains are more deadly than seasonal flu and would pose huge public health challenges if either were to break through that transmissibility constraint, according to several leading influenza... More...

The journals are awash with evidence of expanding antibiotic resistance. To help deal with that flood, Gerard D. Wright of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and his collaborators assembled what they call the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD). “We now have a one-s... More...

Ground turkey from U.S. supermarkets frequently contains fecal-associated bacteria, including Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp., and occasionally frank pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), according to Urvashi Rangan and her collaborators... More...

Estrogen and other sex hormones put women at greater risk than men in their responses to some viral infections and vaccines, according to several participants who spoke during the symposium “Men, Women, Infection, and Infertility,” convened as part of the 2013 ASM General Meeting last May in Denv... More...

“This is the first time I was invited to ASM,” says Jean-Laurent Casanova of the Rockefeller University in New York, N.Y. Although a pediatrician and geneticist, not a microbiologist, he recently deduced why some children are highly susceptible to invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). That is, the... More...