Triple threat: One bacterium, three plasmids

Researchers from Australia found something completely new while conducting a genetic study of the pathogenesis of an enteric disease in birds. They report what is believed to be the first bacterial strain to carry three closely ...

Salmonella uses similar mechanism to infect plants and humans

In recent years, it has become clear that food poisoning due to Salmonella typhimurium can be contracted not only by uncooked eggs and meat but also through eating contaminated raw vegetables and fruit. So far, it was unclear ...

Proteins enable essential enzyme to maintain its grip on DNA

Scientists have identified a family of proteins that close a critical gap in an enzyme that is essential to all life, allowing the enzyme to maintain its grip on DNA and start the activation of genes.

Bad Bacteria and Their Harmless Kin Share, Swap Genes

(PhysOrg.com) -- Comparing the genomes of disease-causing and harmless bacteria, University of Arizona microbiologists found no clear genetic demarcation between the two groups. The bacteria have swapped genes in the past, ...

Surprising infection inducing mechanism found in bacteria

A research appearing in Nature, with the participation of doctors Susana Campoy and Jordi Barbé from the Department of Genetics and Microbiology at UAB, Spain, demonstrates that bacteria have a surprising mechanism ...

One Can Act Without Group Support; Even in the Bacterial World

(PhysOrg.com) -- A single bacterium can act alone, performing the same kinds of actions that a group normally does. The behavior of that bacterium can be manipulated at the cellular level. That’s the intriguing finding ...

New study overturns orthodoxy on how macrophages kill bacteria

For decades, microbiologists assumed that macrophages, immune cells that can engulf and poison bacteria and other pathogens, killed microbes by damaging their DNA. A new study from the University of Illinois disproves that.

New protein identified in bacterial arsenal

(PhysOrg.com) -- Nearly a billion years ago, bacteria evolved an insidious means of infecting their hosts — a syringe-like mechanism able to inject cells with stealthy hijacker molecules. These molecules, called virulence ...

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