New light on bacterial microcompartments

Bacteria contain "microcompartments," which are poorly understood organelles that play critical roles in metabolism. Understanding how they work may ultimately enable engineering them for useful applications. In salmonella, ...

Compound from soil microbe inhibits biofilm formation

Researchers have shown that a known antibiotic and antifungal compound produced by a soil microbe can inhibit another species of microbe from forming biofilms—microbial mats that frequently are medically harmful—without ...

Mutant bacteria that keep on growing

The typical Escherichia coli, the laboratory rat of microbiology, is a tiny 1-2 thousandths of a millimeter long. Now, by blocking cell division, two researchers at Concordia University in Montreal have grown E. coli that ...

Enterotoxigenic E. coli worldwide are closely related

The strains of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) that infect adults and children in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, have notably similar toxins and virulence factors, according to research published ahead of print in ...

Bacterial colonies evolve amazing diversity

Like human societies—think New York City—bacterial colonies have immense diversity among their inhabitants, often generated in the absence of specific selection pressures, according to a paper published ahead of print ...

Sharpening a test for tracing food-borne illness to source

Research from the University of Melbourne, Australia, could make it easier for public health investigators to determine if a case of food poisoning is an isolated incident or part of a larger outbreak. The findings are published ...

Newly discovered mechanism could regulate gene activity

Many bacterial species have genes called mraZ and mraW, which are located in a cluster of genes that regulate cell division and cell wall synthesis. Despite the prevalence of these two genes, very little is known about their ...

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