Microbes

  1. Health & Medicine

    Bacteria linked to stress-induced heart attacks

    Bacteria may play an underlying role in heart attacks brought on by stress.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Early malnutrition may impair infants’ mix of gut microbes

    Babies’ gut microbiomes fail to fully recover even after fending off bouts with malnutrition.

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  3. Chemistry

    Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step

    Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.

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  4. Microbes

    Irish potato famine microbe traced to Mexico

    The pathogen that triggered the Irish potato famine in the 1840s originated in central Mexico, not the Andes, as some studies had suggested.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Urine is not sterile, and neither is the rest of you

    Despite what the Internet says, urine does contain bacteria, a new study finds. And so does your brain, the womb, and pretty much everywhere else.

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  6. Life

    ‘The Amoeba in the Room’ uncloaks a hidden realm of tiny life

    Mycologist Nicholas Money reveals the secret (and dramatic) lives of amoebas, bacteria, fungi and other often-overlooked microbes in The Amoeba in the Room: Lives of the Microbes.

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  7. Oceans

    Deepwater Horizon methane lingered longer than thought

    Microbes may not have consumed methane from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill as fast as previously thought.

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  8. Microbes

    Viruses buoy life at hydrothermal vents

    Using hijacked genes, deep-sea viruses help sulfur-eating bacteria generate power in the plumes of hydrothermal vents.

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  9. Genetics

    E. coli’s mutation rate linked to cells’ crosstalk

    When E. coli cells are in smaller crowds, their genes mutate at an increased rate.

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  10. Climate

    Glacial microbes gobble methane

    While some bacteria produce methane in Greenland’s melting ice sheet, others may consume the greenhouse gas as it escapes.

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  11. Animals

    Scent of a fruit fly larva comes from its gut microbes

    Microbes in the guts of fly larvae produce smells that attract fruit flies.

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  12. Microbes

    One giant leap for zit-causing microbes

    A bacterium that lives on humans and causes acne also hopped to domesticated grapevines and relies on the plant for crucial DNA repairs.

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