microbes 2 3

Tag: "microbes" at biology news

Extraordinary life found around deep-sea gas seeps

...ue communities of animals living in symbiosis with microbes that can convert these energy-rich chemicals to living matter (a form of 'chemosynthesis') in the absence of sunlight. New Zealand is one of the few places in the world where at least four types of chemosynthetic habitats occur in close proximity,...

Dragonfly's metabolic disease provides clues about human obesity

...f metabolic disease and suggests that the study of microbes found in human intestines may provide a greater un... and Schilder studied is Libellula pulchella. The microbes disrupting the dragonfly metabolism may hold clues for scientists looking for the root causes of met...

New book uses ABCs to teach children microbiology

...of the alphabet to illustrate the significant role microbes play in our daily lives. This intriguing book contains a glossary of important terms, as well as endpapers illustrating the relative size of organisms from viruses to whales. Age-appropriate vocabulary and examples are used to communicate import...

Bacteria that use radiated water as food

...e reaction of hydrogen and sulfate, allowing other microbes in the fracture community to use the chemical waste from the Firmicutes as food. In a way, Firmicutes serve the same function as photosynthetic organisms, such as plankton and trees at Earth's surface, that capture sunlight energy ultimately to the...

Study finds the air rich with bacteria

...ccording to a first-of-its-kind census of airborne microbes recently conducted by scientists from the U.S. Dep.... They also found naturally occurring relatives of microbes that could be used in bioterrorist attacks -- although many of these relatives are harmless. "Bef...

Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection

...other infectious agents such as Salmonella to soil microbes of interest in cleaning up toxic waste. ...

'Killer' B cells demonstrate evolutionary link between fish and mammal immune systems

...ation of antibodies that tag foreign particles and microbes for destruction. Mammals have phagocytic cells, but they are a specialized few cells identified apart from the complex interactions that drive other white blood cells. Sunyer and his colleagues discovered this previously unsuspected B cell activity...

Most widely used organic pesticide requires help to kill

... or Bt for short, requires the assistance of other microbes to perform its insect-slaying work, a new study ha...the gut community." The exact role played by the microbes to promote the Bt toxin's lethal effects remains unknown. The upshot of the new work may have imme...

Fragmentation rapidly erodes Amazonian biodiversity

...n from the dead rainforest trees is broken down by microbes and fungi to become carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas. “Fragmentation is affecting the forest in a lot of ways,?said Laurance. “These changes occur remarkably fast, and when you completely alter something as basic as the trees, ...

Recycled paper and compost could both be key tools to control plant disease

...ases. In contrast compost contains a diversity of microbes that can suppress plant diseases. The ecological benefits of this are obvious: less fungicide has to be applied to plants, less peat is required thus preserving peat bogs, and green waste and paper waste that would otherwise be land-filled is recycl...

Bacterial 'switch gene' regulates how oceans emit sulfur into atmosphere

...as revealed the previously hidden role that marine microbes play in the global sulfur cycle." The researchers discovered that microscopic plankton that fall under the Roseobacter and SAR11 organism groups are the primary plankton involved in directing DMSP away from forming DMS, and thus making sulfur unava...

Gut reaction: Researchers define the colon's genome

...reported for samples of acid mine drainage. These microbes are busy, too. The new study shows that resident microbes in the colon actively synthesize vitamins and break down plant sugars, such as xylan and cellobiose ...

Scientists use an 'ice lolly' to find polar bacteria in their own backyard

... in waste-water purification. "Selecting for rare microbes that seem to stick to ice has been fun, but now the real work begins to find out what genes are responsible for this attraction" Said Professor Walker. These findings will decrease the costs involved in the further study of such bacteria and their p...

Report focuses on the role good microbes play in future medicine

Not all bacteria are bad. In fact, beneficial microbes could represent the future of medicine, with the p...own as "competitive exclusion" in which beneficial microbes directly compete with disease-causing microbes for food and other resources, eventually crowding the...

Methane-belching bugs inspire a new theory of the origin of life on Earth

...sil of the first metabolism on Earth. While other microbes make methane from carbon monoxide, this particular species (one "Methanosarcina acetivorans") also produces acetate--better known as vinegar. Ferry and House, in collaboration with Barry Karger at Northeastern University, showed how carbon monoxide i...

Gut microbes' partnership helps body extract energy from food, store it as fat

...ee mice, colonization with two prominent human gut microbes led to fatter mice. Scientists at Washington Unive...of Sciences. To one day consider manipulating gut microbes for medical benefits, such as weight loss or gain, scientists need to know who's living in our diges...

Microbes transform 'safest' PBDEs into more harmful compounds

... "This study, for the first time, establishes that microbes found in every-day settings can degrade relatively...own deca-BDEs into benign components. Instead, the microbes transformed deca-BDEs into octa-BDEs and the octa-BDEs into the more harmful penta- and tetra-BDEs. ...

EGF receptor activation prevents microbes from going more than skin deep

...lves can mount an immune response to kill invading microbes by producing antimicrobial polypeptides (AMPs). A...in surface, illustrating that exposure to invading microbes is not the sole trigger for the immune response in skin. The authors went on to show that AMP was p...

Wild vs. lab rodent comparison supports hygiene hypothesis

... as challenged during everyday life by the host of microbes commonly found in the environment. The study sug...iving in the wild are exposed to a wide variety of microbes and parasites, much like humans living in societies without modern health care and where hygiene is ...

Ready, set, mutate?and may the best microbe win

...he fermentor ebbed and flowed as the single-celled microbes competed for dominance. Eventually, one strain squeezed out almost all the competition by virtue of its ability to most efficiently metabolize food at high temperature. The metabolic protein required to thrive at high-temperature could only be made ...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8