Radio waves can tune up bacteria to become life-saving medicines

Scientists from Australia and the United States have found a new way to alter the DNA of bacterial cells—a process used to make many vital medicines including insulin—much more efficiently than standard industry techniques.

How does a bacterium know it's time to split apart?

Bacterial cells do not wake up one morning and decide to become parents. But there is a point in their cell cycle—after growing sufficiently and replicating their genomes—when they split in two, creating new cells that ...

New starting point discovered in the fight against P. aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important opportunistic pathogen responsible for life-threatening infections that are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Researchers from TWINCORE, the Center for Experimental ...

'Dynamic duo' defenses in bacteria ward off viral threats

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that bacteria can pair up their defense systems to create a formidable force, greater than the sum of its parts, to fight off attacks from phage viruses. Understanding ...