Microbes
- Plants
Defense hormones guide plant roots’ mix of microbes
Plants use salicylic acid to attract some bacteria to roots and repel others.
- Microbes
Spore-powered engines zoom ahead
Engines that run on the dehydration of bacterial spores can power a tiny car and an LED.
- Ecosystems
Ocean food source lives by day, dies by night
The most abundant carbon fixer in the oceans lives by day, dies by night, and may be key to the balance of marine ecosystems.
- Animals
Pandas’ gut bacteria resemble carnivores’
Unlike other vegetarians, the bamboo eaters lack plant-digesting microbes.
- Microbes
Pig farm workers at greater risk for drug-resistant staph
Pig farm workers are six times as likely to carry multidrug-resistant staph than workers who have no contact with pigs.
- Chemistry
Bacteria staining method has long been misexplained
New research upends what scientists know about a classic lab technique, called gram staining, used for more than a century to characterized and classify bacteria.
- Microbes
Possible nearest living relatives to complex life found in seafloor mud
New phylum of sea-bottom archaea microbes could be closest living relatives yet found to the eukaryote domain of complex life that includes people.
- Earth
Hidden water found deep beneath Antarctica desert valley
New imaging reveals liquid water network beneath Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys that could support microbial life.
- Microbes
City- and country-dwelling microbes aren’t so different
A new study reveals the microbial communities in our nation’s dust.
- Microbes
Some superbugs lurk in Britain’s surf
In Great Britain’s coastal waters, surfers and swimmers are exposed to low levels of drug-resistant E. coli, a new study finds.
- Science & Society
White House unveils strategy against antibiotic resistance
The Obama Administration has launched a long-term plan to curb antibiotic resistance, unveiling incentives and requirements designed to boost surveillance and diagnosis of resistant microbes.
- Animals
Wasps may turn ladybugs into zombies with viral weapons
Parasitic wasps may use a neurological virus to make ladybugs their minions, a study posits.
