Researchers at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute have become the first to produce images of the atomic structures of three specific biological nanomachines, each derived from a different potentially deadly bacterium—an ...
Bio & Medicine
Apr 21, 2015
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1793
A portable device can detect the presence of the anthrax bacterium in about one hour from a sample containing as few as 40 microscopic spores, report Cornell and University of Albany researchers who invented it. The device ...
Bio & Medicine
Aug 1, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The brute force of Bacillus anthracis, the ancient scourge that causes anthrax, can sweep through and overpower a two-ton animal in under 72 hours. But when it isn't busy claiming livestock and humans throughout ...
Cell & Microbiology
Aug 12, 2009
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0
(Phys.org)—Anthrax has the unexpected ability to grow and reproduce while lurking in soil – increasing the deadly bacteria's chances to infect cattle and other mammals, researchers at the University of Virginia School ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 18, 2012
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2
More than 100 elephants have died in two months in Botswana's Chobe National Park due to drought, which has also affected wildlife in other countries in the region, the government said Tuesday.
Ecology
Oct 22, 2019
0
1970
A simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria — even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax — in minutes, scientists are reporting ...
Materials Science
Mar 14, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Theoretical biologists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have used a New Mexico supercomputer to aid an international research team in untangling another mystery related to ribosomes -- those enigmatic jumbles ...
Biochemistry
Dec 2, 2010
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0
A scientific review released Tuesday cast doubt on the US government's conclusion that scientist Bruce Ivins, who killed himself in 2008, was to blame in the 2001 case of deadly anthrax mailings.
Other
Feb 15, 2011
3
0
New research from the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine has revealed how humans evolved greater resistance against anthrax multiple times during history: when they developed a diet of more ruminants, and when agricultural ...
Evolution
Dec 7, 2021
0
137
From a zebra carcass on the plains of Namibia in Southern Africa, an international team of researchers has discovered a new, unusually large virus (or bacteriophage) that infects the bacterium that causes anthrax. The novel ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 27, 2014
1
0
Anthrax is an acute disease caused by Bacillus anthracis. It affects both humans and animals and most forms of the disease are highly lethal. There are effective vaccines against anthrax, and some forms of the disease respond well to antibiotic treatment.
Like many other members of the genus Bacillus, Bacillus anthracis can form dormant spores that are able to survive in harsh conditions for extremely long periods of time—even decades or centuries. Such spores can be found on all continents, even Antarctica. When spores are inhaled, ingested, or come into contact with a skin lesion on a host they may reactivate and multiply rapidly.
Anthrax commonly infects wild and domesticated herbivorous mammals which ingest or inhale the spores while browsing—in fact, ingestion is thought to be the most common route by which herbivores contract anthrax. Carnivores living in the same environment may become infected by consuming infected animals. Diseased animals can spread anthrax to humans, either by direct contact (e.g. inoculation of infected blood to broken skin) or consumption of diseased animals' flesh.
Anthrax spores can be produced in vitro and used as a biological weapon. Anthrax does not spread directly from one infected animal or person to another, but spores can be transported by clothing or shoes and the body of an animal that died of anthrax can also be a source of anthrax spores.
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