Microbiology

Nanospiked Bacteria Are The Brightest Hard X-Ray Emitters

In a step that they say overturns traditional assumptions and practice, researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhi Nagar have fashioned bacteria to emit intense, hard x-ray radiation. When o ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 6 2015 - 7:10am

High Fat Diets Linked To Gut Microbe Changes

One Shake Shack French fry may lead you to eat a whole batch, and don't even get started on the power of Doritos. According to a new study using rats, that high-fat indulgence literally changes the populations of bacteria residing inside the gut and ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2015 - 7:30am

Probiotics, Now For Plants

Television commercials assure us that probiotic products are good for our health, with claims ranging from improved digestion to managing allergies and colds, If so, why wouldn't plants also benefit from certain microbes? ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2015 - 10:57am

Diversifying Your Diet May Make Your Gut Healthier

A loss of dietary diversity during the past 50 years could be a contributing factor to the rise in obesity, Type 2 diabetes, gastrointestinal problems and other diseases, according to a lecture by Mark Heiman, vice president and chief scientific officer a ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 22 2015 - 8:30am

Dairy Products Boost Effectiveness Of Probiotics (Whatever That Means)

If probiotics have success for boosting human health (that is in doubt, despite the number of papers capitalizing on the craze) it may depend partly upon the food or other material carrying the probiotics, according to a paper in Applied and Environmental ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 24 2015 - 6:02pm

Health Care Providers A Major Contributor To Antibiotic Overuse

10 percent of health care providers write an antibiotic prescription for nearly all (over 95 percent) of patients who walks in with a cold, bronchitis or other acute respiratory infection (ARI), according to a new study. The figure is at one end of a spec ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 26 2015 - 9:30am

'Selfish' Bacteria Link IBD And Gut Microbiota

The discovery of unusual foraging activity in bacteria species populating our gut may explain how conditions like Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) link to changes in the populations of bacteria in our gut. IBD affects 1 in every 250 people but its causes ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 27 2015 - 12:27pm

Byproduct Of Intestinal Bacteria May Jeopardize Heart Health In Kidney Disease Patients

In patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), atherosclerosis is exceedingly common and contributes to the development of heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in this group. New research suggests that an organic byproduct generated by intes ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 5 2015 - 7:30am

Probiotics For Frogs

A new paper says protective probiotics could fight the "chytrid" fungus that has been decimating amphibian populations worldwide. Jenifer Walke, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, and collaborators have grown ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 4 2015 - 8:00am

How Viruses Fool The Immune System

The immune system protects us from the constant onslaught of viruses, bacteria and other types of pathogens we encounter throughout life. It also remembers past infections so it can fight them off more easily the next time we encounter them. But the immun ...

Article - The Conversation - Aug 1 2015 - 11:00am