Microbe Magazine

Subject to microgravity on space flights, the fungal opportunistic pathogen Candida albicans differentially regulates 452 genes compared to such cells that are subject instead to full gravity on Earth, according to Cheryl Nickerson from the Biodesign Institute at Ar... More...

Human cases of avian H7N9 influenza infections arose in China near the beginning of 2013, pretty much disappeared by that April, but came roaring back near the first of this year, according to Hualan Chen of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science in Harbin, China. In a related development, t... More...

The endolysin enzyme from a giant but mostly temperate bacteriophage, recovered from a zebra carcass as well as a nearby soil sample in Etosha National Park in Namibia, Africa, is effective in disrupting Bacillus anthracis and other Bacillus<... More...

Genomic sequencing analysis of preserved barley samples containing barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) that were recovered from 750-year-old archaeological materials in Egypt shows this virus to be far older than thought, according to Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick in Warwick, United Kin... More...

Bacteriophages in a 14th-century fossilized fecal sample from Belgium contain various genes for bacterial functions, including for resistance to antibiotics and toxins, virulence, and for lipid and amino acid transport and metabolism, according to Christelle Desnues of INSERM and Aix Marseille Un... More...

The female breast contains a unique microbial population. Proteobacteria, scarce elsewhere in the body, are the dominant phylum, says first author Camilla Urbaniak, of the University of Western Ontario. That may reflect their métier as fatty acid metabolizers, which... More...

Still more evidence links antibiotics and obesity. One-fourth of 48 patients treated for Q fever with long-term doxycycline and hydroxychloroquine gained 5–30 pounds during the treatment, which lasted for up to 18 months, while no control subjects gained weight. Treated patients had significantly... More...

Triclosan has been used in household products for roughly four decades, and the last decade has seen use rise in personal care products, such as soaps, toothpastes, and shampoos. Now Blaise Boles and collaborators of the University of Michigan report that it is promoting colonization of More...

In eukaryotes, the L5 ribosomal protein is essential for protein synthesis. It stabilizes and translocates the 5S rRNA from the nucleoplasm to the nucleolus. Now, Noreen Williams of the State University of new York at Buffalo et al. show that in Trypanosoma brucei, ... More...

The development of optimal prime-boost vaccine regimens is a high priority for the vaccine development field, but little is known about which traits are desirable in vaccine vectors. Now Dan H. Barouch and Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Mass., et al. sho... More...

No genomic standard exists to define the prokaryotic genus. But a team of investigators from China, the United States, and Israel now proposes one that would define genus as a group of species with all pair-wise percentage of conserved proteins (POCP) being greater than 50%. An extensive genomic ... More...