About the video: watch an animation showing the changes in the structure of a T7 virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium.
AUSTIN, Texas — The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) Medical School this week in Science Express. (more…)
Professor and students study how microbial life changes along the river
The mercury is pushing 100, but professor Michael Sadowsky and two assistants leave the indoor coolness for the bank of the Mississippi River as it flows by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus.
The three men send a bucket splashing into the current and haul back a water sample. That doesn’t affect the river much, but information locked away in bacteria from the sample may tell them a great deal about how the river’s microbial communities change along its course through Minnesota and how human activity affects them. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Water-associated infectious disease outbreaks are more likely to occur in areas where a region’s population density is growing, according to a new global analysis of economic and environmental conditions that influence the risk for these outbreaks.
Ohio State University scientists constructed a massive database containing information about 1,428 water-associated disease outbreaks that were reported between 1991 and 2008 around the world. By combining outbreak records with data on a variety of socio-environmental factors known about the affected regions, the researchers developed a model that can be used to predict risks for water-associated disease outbreaks anywhere in the world. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Antibiotics in pig feed increased the number of antibiotic resistant genes in gastrointestinal microbes in pigs, according to a study conducted by Michigan State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.
Published in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the comprehensive study focused on understanding the effects of conventional, in-feed antibiotics in U.S. farms. (more…)
*Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Develop CAD-Type Tools for Engineering RNA Control Systems*
The computer assisted design (CAD) tools that made it possible to fabricate integrated circuits with millions of transistors may soon be coming to the biological sciences. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have developed CAD-type models and simulations for RNA molecules that make it possible to engineer biological components or “RNA devices” for controlling genetic expression in microbes. This holds enormous potential for microbial-based sustainable production of advanced biofuels, biodegradable plastics, therapeutic drugs and a host of other goods now derived from petrochemicals. (more…)
*Experiments on “slime mold” explain why almost all multicellular organisms begin life as a single cell*
Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special challenge for evolution.
Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing; only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.
How could the extreme degree of cooperation required by multicellular existence actually evolve? Why aren’t all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes? (more…)
*Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Researchers Reach Milestone on the Road to Biofuels*
A milestone has been reached on the road to developing advanced biofuels that can replace gasoline, diesel and jet fuels with a domestically-produced clean, green, renewable alternative.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have engineered the first strains of Escherichia coli bacteria that can digest switchgrass biomass and synthesize its sugars into all three of those transportation fuels. What’s more, the microbes are able to do this without any help from enzyme additives. (more…)
*Researchers coax viruses to assemble into synthetics with microstructures and properties akin to those of corneas, teeth and skin*
Using a simple, single-step process, engineers and scientists at the University of California at Berkeley recently developed a technique to direct benign, filamentous viruses called M13 phages to serve as structural building blocks for materials with a wide range of properties.
By controlling the physical environment alone, the researchers caused the viruses to self-assemble into hierarchically organized thin-film structures, with complexity that ranged from simple ridges, to wavy, chiral strands, to truly sophisticated patterns of overlapping strings of material–results that may also shed light on the self-assembly of biological tissues in nature. (more…)
