Microbes
- Life
Antibody that fights MERS found
Scientists have isolated a human immune protein that fights the MERS virus in mice.
- Life
Microbes’ role in truffle scents not trifling
Truffles make their prized aroma with a little help from their microbes, chemists suggest.
- Health & Medicine
Mosquitoes can get a double dose of malaria
Carrying malaria may make mosquitoes more susceptible to infection with a second strain of the parasite that causes the disease.
- 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.
