Arctic sea ice at record low
Open waters in northern ocean highlight massive melting.
Even for a society jaded by the continual breaking of climate records, the retreat of Arctic ice this year is stunning.
read the story here
Nature Newsblog
Nature Newsblog
September 18, 2007
May 26, 2006
Stomach bug makes food yield more calories
Mice with a hefty dose of a certain gut bacteria are fatter.
Scientists have identified a key microbe in our guts that helps us glean more calories from food. The discovery backs the idea that the type of microbes in our gut help to determine how much weight we gain, and that seeding the intestine with particular bugs could help fight obesity.
Read the story here.
May 25, 2006
ASM: Cold, high, ultrasmall and infinite.
I think we humans should surrender: we are clearly surpassed by microbes.
Continue reading "ASM: Cold, high, ultrasmall and infinite." »
May 24, 2006
ASM: Fungi mushroom
Bacteria are so yesterday. Today I’m all over fungi. I just spent two hours taking a crash course in a room full of fungus-lovers.
May 23, 2006
ASM: Bacterial empires
The last weird bacterial factoids for today. David Relman of Stanford University has examined the bacteria lurking in twelve different spots of the same person’s mouth and used genetics to identify the types of bacteria living there.
Relman found that each spot in the mouth – and even four spots on the same tooth – host hundreds of bacterial species and a completely different collection of them. Our mouths, it seems, are not just one sea of saliva washing a few bacteria back and forth. It is more of a collection of rock-pools, each holding a different collection of bugs.
ASM: Off the menu
Walk around for too long at this meeting and suddenly everything seems to be swarming with potentially evil bacteria. But orange juice? Could they deprive me of that?
Oh yes. Once, food poisoning was the realm of chicken and eggs and greasy joints with roach-ridden kitchens. Not any more.
ASM: Superbugging
MRSA (Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, to use its full name) is rife in hospitals, prisons and pretty much everywhere else.
But after a crash course in Staphylococcus aureus, it seems that the picture is far more complicated (when is it not?). Not all S. aureus are created equal, as Vance Fowler, of Duke University, told me.
Predatory bacteria could make antibiotics
Bug-eating bugs destroy life-threatening biofilms.
Little-known predatory bacteria can suck out the innards of bugs that cause lethal lung infections, microbiologists have shown, raising the hope that they might one day provide an alternative to conventional antibiotics.
Read the story here.
ASM: Mould ate my house
Amidst all this dispassionate science, there’s nothing like a personal story to raise a round of applause.
Microbiologist Joan Bennett worked in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the city last summer -- so she had a particular interest in the mould that invaded her home after the floodwaters subsided.
May 22, 2006
ASM: Moving target
Here’s a cautionary tale for microbiologists everywhere. The bacteria you put to bed at night may not be the same as the ones that you awake in the morning.
This is news to me. I thought an E. coli was an E. coli, whichever way you cut it. Beloved, trusty, experimental ally of molecular biologists. Only get really interesting when they acquire the suffix 0157 and swarm over contaminated meat.
May 19, 2006
American Society for Microbiology
Everyone who’s anyone in the study of bacteria, fungi and viruses will be at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Orlando, 21 -25 May. Helen Pearson will be learning what's new in germs, and recording her thoughts here.
(To add a comment to any of these posts, simply click on the headline)