Geographic isolation drives the evolution of a hot springs microbe

Sulfolobus islandicus, a microbe that can live in boiling acid, is offering up its secrets to researchers hardy enough to capture it from the volcanic hot springs where it thrives. In a new study, researchers report that ...

MIT reels in RNA surprise with microbial ocean catch

An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs — snippets of RNA that act ...

Why do some microbes live in your gut while others don't?

Trillions of tiny microbes and bacteria live in your gut, each with their own set of genes. These gut microbes can have both beneficial and harmful effects on your health, from protecting you against inflammation to causing ...

Computational 'match game' identifies potential antibiotics

Computational biologists at Carnegie Mellon University have devised a software tool that can play a high-speed "Match Game" to identify bioactive molecules and the microbial genes that produce them so they can be evaluated ...

Stick insects produce bacterial enzymes themselves

Many animals depend on their microbiome to digest their food. Symbiotic microorganisms produce enzymes their hosts cannot, and these work alone or together with the animals' own enzymes to break down their food. Many plant-feeding ...

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