Microbes
- Environment
Triclosan may spoil wastewater treatment
Common antimicrobial could make microbes more drug resistant and less efficient at breaking down sewage sludge in municipal treatment plants.
- Health & Medicine
Ulcer microbe changes quickly to avoid immune attack
During the initial weeks of infection, Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, mutates at a high rate, apparently to evade the body’s defenses.
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria linked to stress-induced heart attacks
Bacteria may play an underlying role in heart attacks brought on by stress.
- 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.
- Chemistry
Bacteria take plants to biofuel in one step
Engineered bacterium singlehandedly dismantles tough switchgrass molecules, making sugars that it ferments to make ethanol.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
