EAST LANSING, Mich. — The secret to the deadly 2011 E. coli outbreak in Germany has been decoded, thanks to research conducted at Michigan State University.
The deadliest E. coli outbreak ever, which caused 54 deaths and sickened more than 3,800 people, was traced to a particularly virulent strain that researchers had never seen in an outbreak before. In the current issue of the academic journal PLoS ONE, a team of researchers led by Shannon Manning, MSU molecular biologist and epidemiologist, suggests a way to potentially tame the killer bacteria. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have found why a certain type of bacteria, harmless in healthy people, is so deadly to patients with cystic fibrosis.
The bacterium, Burkholderia cenocepacia, causes a severe and persistent lung infection in patients with CF and is resistant to nearly all known antibiotics. Cystic fibrosis is a chronic disorder characterized by a buildup of mucus in the lungs and other parts of the body, and various types of lung infection are responsible for about 85 percent of deaths in these patients. (more…)
Durland Fish has researched ticks and their associated diseases for decades. A professor in the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, he has, among other things, contributed to the discovery that the bacterium that causes Lyme disease has European ancestry and that the disease, once nearly eradicated in North America, roared back with reforestation. More recently he helped develop a Lyme disease “app” for the iPhone and other Apple devices that provides users with detailed information about tick populations in any given area in the United States and even comes with a video on how to safely remove a tick. He has also worked on mosquito-borne West Nile virus and dengue fever. Students selected Fish as the school’s mentor of the year in 2010. (more…)
Parasitic wasps using tiny insects known as aphids as living nurseries for their brood can sniff out whether the host insect is protected by symbiotic bacteria, researchers have discovered.
A research team including Martha (Molly) Hunter from the department of entomology in the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture of Life Sciences has disentangled relationships in an assembly of players that resemble Russian dolls: a bacterium that lives inside a tiny insect, a virus that infects those bacteria, and a parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in the insect.
In a war between parasite and host, the parasitic wasp, Aphidius ervi, and the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, are locked in a battle for survival. (more…)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Studying the origin of life at its building blocks offers a unique perspective on evolution, says a researcher at Michigan State University.
Robert Root-Bernstein, MSU physiology professor, will answer the question of why a physiologist studies the origin of life at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Feb. 16-20 in Vancouver, British Columbia. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A new University of Michigan computer model of disease transmission in space and time can predict cholera outbreaks in Bangladesh up to 11 months in advance, providing an early warning system that could help public health officials there.
The new forecast model applies specifically to the capital city of Dhaka and incorporates data on both year-to-year climate variability and the spatial location of cholera cases at the district level. This allowed the researchers to study both local variation in disease transmission and response to climate factors within the megacity of 14 million people. (more…)
A key mechanism by which a bacterial pathogen causes the deadly tropical disease melioidosis has been discovered by an international team, including a University of Exeter scientist.
The findings are published in the journal Science and show how a toxin produced by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei kills cells by preventing protein synthesis.
The study, led by the University of Sheffield, paves the way for the development of novel therapies to combat the bacterium which infects millions of people across South East Asia and Northern Australia.
Using intense X-rays at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, and at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, the research team solved the structure of a protein from Burkholderia, the function of which was initially unknown. (more…)
*A slight change in molecular structure introduced by genetic engineering gives crop-protecting proteins called Bt toxins a new edge in overcoming resistance of certain pests, a UA-led team of researchers reports in Nature Biotechnology.*
One of the most successful strategies in pest control is to endow crop plants with genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short, which code for proteins that kill pests attempting to eat them.
But insect pests are evolving resistance to Bt toxins, which threatens the continued success of this approach. In the current issue of Nature Biotechnology, a research team led by UA Professor Bruce Tabashnik reports the discovery that a small modification of the toxins’ structure overcomes the defenses of some major pests that are resistant to the natural, unmodified Bt toxins. (more…)
