Amoeba in Biological News

Stress signals link pre-existing sickness with susceptibility to bacterial infection

... between simple organisms like Dictyostelium and humans allow scientists to use them to understand human disease. Dictyostelium is a free-living amoeba whose rapid movements make it useful to study motility and energy regulation, and in this case, the association between energy regulation and ...

Diuscovery in amber reveals ancient biology of termites

... age-old example of mutualism, the new study revealed 10 new fossil flagellate species of protozoa, a new species of termite, a new genus of fossil amoeba and 14 additional trophic and encysted protist stages. Poinar for many years has studied life forms and other material found trapped in amber. As ...

Texas-sized tract of single-celled clones

... one colony of aspen clones in Utah contains more than 40,000 trees that share a massive root system. In contrast, the short-lived patch of amoeba clones contained millions of genetically identical individuals of the species Dictyostelium discoideum . Though they typically live as loners, ...

Making the ultimate family sacrifice

... close to their kin before altruistically giving their all. The study, which appears this week in PLoS Biology , focuses on the soil-dwelling amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum . These single-celled creatures eat bacteria, and as long as food is plentiful, they're content to live alone. But when ...

Scientists find how amber becomes death trap for watery creatures

... the evolution of microorganisms, he said. We all think of horses, elephants and people as having changed a great deal through time, he said. Have amoeba and other microscopic organisms changed much? Or have they found a niche or what we call a stasis in which their evolutionary lineage persists for ...

Scientists' cell discovery unearths evolutionary clues

... there was almost no molecular data for social amoeba ?Dictyostelia ?which are a hugely diverse and ... first time the family tree of all known social amoeba species and the evolution of their multicellular ... The existing family tree of the social amoeba was based on how the multicellular structures of ...

MRSA use amoeba to spread, new research shows

... objects such as vases, sinks and walls. As amoeba produce cysts to help them spread, this could ... on other pathogens suggests that by infecting amoeba first, MRSA may emerge more virulent and more ... for hospitals should recognise the role played by amoeba in the survival of MRSA, and evaluate control ...

Genome of deadly amoeba shows surprising complexity, evidence of lateral gene transfer

... The genome sequence of the parasitic amoeba Entamoeba histolytica, a leading cause of severe ... the unusual shared biology between the parasitic amoeba and anaerobic gut bacteria. The E. histolytica ... in the sequences of other supposedly 'simple' amoeba genomes." Named for its effectiveness in ...

Single cell amoeba increases MRSA numbers 1000- fold

... Scientists in the UK have found that a type of amoeba acts as an incubator for MRSA bacteria. As amoebae are often found in ... spreading any trapped bacteria. "We need more research into the role of amoeba in the spread of MRSA ?hospitals should aim to eradicate amoebae as well ...

Biologists determine genetic blueprint of social amoeba

... complete genetic blueprint of Dictyostelium discoideum, a simple social amoeba long used by researchers as a model genetic system, much like fruit flies ... evolutionary biologists, the genetic blueprint of Dictyostelium, the first amoeba genome to be sequenced, has clarified the place that Dictyostelium ...

Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST)

... the problem, some of these harmful pathogens are also protected by amoeba that are resistant to chlorination, temperature and osmotic pressure. The amoeba acts as a "Trojan Horse" harboring and transporting the microbes. Amoebas ...

New strategies to reduce hospital-aquired infections

... the problem, some of these harmful pathogens are also protected by amoeba that are resistant to chlorination, temperature and osmotic pressure. The amoeba acts as a "Trojan Horse" harboring and transporting the microbes. Amoebas ...

Caterpillars tell us how bacteria cause disease

... to wreak havoc in humans. Dr Nick Waterfield, who is leading the study, explained: "Bacteria have been interacting with simple animals such as amoeba and insects for a staggering length of evolutionary time. It seems likely that most virulence genes around today probably first evolved to work ...

Einstein researchers take the pulse of a gene in living cells

... on, then disappears (gene "off") and then appears again (gene "on"). The focus of the study was a gene important in the life cycle of the social amoeba Dictyostelium, thousands of which sometimes aggregate into a single slug-like mass. This developmental gene plays a major role in transforming the ...

Silence of the amoebae

... for the toxic protein could be prevented by inserting a plasmid (a small loop of DNA) containing a copy of a specific part of that gene into the amoeba cell nucleus. Introducing the plasmid led to the modification of DNA "packing" proteins, causing the DNA-protein packages to become more tightly ...

NHGRI targets 12 more organisms for genome sequencing

... (Acyrthosiphon pisum); a wasp (Nasonia vitripennis) and two related insect species (Nasonia giraulti and Nasonia longicornis); a free-living soil amoeba (Acanthamoeba castellanii); and three fungi (Schizosaccharomyces octosporus, Schizosaccharomyces japonicus, Batrachochytridium dendrobatidis). It ...

Microarrays as phenotype

... results in a particular phenotype. Shaulsky and his co-authors performed their work in Dictyostelium (Dictyostelium discoideum), a form of soil amoeba used in the laboratory because many of its 10,000 genes are homologues or equivalents of genes found in humans. Using microarray data alone, they ...