Microbiology

To study small RNA, snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in single-celled creatures, you need lab-cultured microorganisms but a new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has shown the presence of many varieties of small RNAs.   The discovery of its presence in a natural setting may make it possible finally to learn on a broad scale how microbial communities living at different ocean depths and regions respond to environmental stimuli. Microbes are ultra-sensitive environmental sensors that respond in…

MicroRNAs are single-stranded snippets that, not long ago, were given short shrift as genetic junk. Now that studies have shown they regulate genes involved in normal functioning as well as diseases such as cancer, everyone wants to know: What regulates microRNAs? Scientists at Johns Hopkins were surprised to find an elegantly simple answer: touch. In a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers discovered that cell-to-cell contact revs up the manufacture of these small but mighty molecules. “This study documents one of the very few clear…

SARS- severe acute respiratory syndrome Beijing, China, experienced the largest outbreak of SARS in the world with a total of 2,521 reported probable cases. The outbreak began March 5, 2003, with the importation of several cases among travelers from other SARS-affected areas and soon accelerated as multiple SARS cases occurred in health care facilities, peaking in late April when more than 100 new patients with SARS were being hospitalized daily. During the first week of May, the number of new cases dropped steeply and then declined steadily during the next few weeks, with the onset of the…

If you haven't heard of swine flu - Influenza A H1N1 - by now... well, you have unless you can't read, which means you aren't on this website.   Reading too many popular media articles may have led you to believe there's an epidemic on your doorstep.   Fortunately, it's just an epidemic of hysteria.  The number of reported swine flu cases (no deaths edit - okay, one death, still not worth a panic) in the US is 1/1000th of the regular flu deaths that occur each year.  Although a H1N1 vaccine is a few months off and would undoubtedly cure your hysteria, perhaps in the mean…

An international team of researchers has determined key structural features of the largest known virus -the mimivirus, called by some a possible "missing link" between viruses and living cells. It was discovered accidentally by French scientists in 1992 but wasn't confirmed to be a virus until 2003.  The findings may help determine whether the unusual virus causes any human diseases. The virus infects amoebas, but it is thought to possibly be a human pathogen because antibodies to the virus have been discovered in pneumonia patients. However, many details about the virus remain unknown,…

A preliminary study on the use of stem cells obtained from a patient's own adipose tissue in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) has shown promising results. The three case studies, described in BioMed Central's open access Journal of Translational Medicine support further clinical evaluation of stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cells in MS and other autoimmune conditions. Thomas Ichim, from Medistem Inc., and Dr. Boris Minev, from the Division of Neurosurgery, University of California San Diego, worked with a team of researchers to demonstrate the possible effectiveness of SVF cells in MS…

Want to hunt down enemy bacteria?   Look at the sugars on the germs' surface where they start building a 'structure' that helps the microbes resist efforts to kill them. Scientists have determined that the bacterial cell-surface sugar, a polysaccharide called Psl, is anchored on the surface of the bacterium as a helix, providing a structure that encourages cell-to-cell interaction. When multiple bacterial cells join together with the help of such a structure, they form what is called a biofilm, a persistent community of bugs that is able to resist the effects of a human immune response,…

When want to understand something complex, we make something similar but simpler - a model.  Models in engineering re-imagine complex structures as sticks, strings, and hinges.  Biology uses simpler living systems, like yeast and mice.  But plenty of scientific questions defy our tried-and-true modeling strategies.  If a system is too complex or too slow for us to accurately simplify, we must wait for a model to present itself.   America’s next biology top model hails from Antarctica.  Thiomicrospira arctica, the bacteria from an isolated ecosystem in under the…

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An unmapped reservoir of briny liquid chemically similar to sea water, but buried under an inland Antarctic glacier, appears to support unusual microbial life in a place where cold, darkness and lack of oxygen would previously have led scientists to believe nothing could survive, according to newly published research. After sampling and analyzing the outflow from below the Taylor Glacier, an outlet glacier of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the otherwise ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, researchers believe that, lacking enough light to make food through photosynthesis, the microbes…