Bacterial diseases cause millions of deaths every year. Most of these bacteria were benign at some point in their evolutionary past, and we don't always understand what turned them into disease-causing pathogens. In a new ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 14, 2014
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E. coli outbreaks hospitalize people and cause food recalls pretty much annually in the United States. This year is no different.
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 24, 2018
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23
Bacteria are as individual as people, according to new research by Professor Peter Young and his team in the Department of Biology at the University of York. Bacteria are essential to health, agriculture and the environment, ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 13, 2015
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749
Like every industry, modern farming relies heavily on plastics. Think plastic mulch lining vegetable beds, PVC pipes draining water from fields, polyethylene covering high tunnels, and plastic seed, fertilizer, and herbicide ...
Environment
Aug 24, 2023
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96
A team led by Tappei Mishina at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) has discovered that parasites manipulate their hosts using stolen genes that they likely acquired through a phenomenon called horizontal ...
Evolution
Oct 19, 2023
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92
Staph infections that become resistant to multiple antibiotics don't happen because the bacteria themselves adapt to the drugs, but because of a kind of genetic parasite they carry called a plasmid that helps its host survive ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 9, 2014
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Many animals, including humans, acquired essential 'foreign' genes from microorganisms co-habiting their environment in ancient times, according to research published in the open access journal Genome Biology. The study challenges ...
Biotechnology
Mar 12, 2015
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A University of Otago researcher is part of an international team that has discovered that horizontal gene transfer (HGT) played a surprisingly large role in the evolution of primitive microbes known as archaea.
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 16, 2014
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Researchers have been able to identify and track the exchange of genes among bacteria that allow them to become resistant to drugs, according to a new study published today in eLife.
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 14, 2020
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356
Larvae of longhorned beetles develop primarily in woody tissue, which is difficult for most organisms to digest. However, longhorned beetle larvae possess special enzymes to break down the various components of the plant ...
Evolution
Jun 29, 2022
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