Bacterium in Biological News

Scientists sequence genome of the N2-fixing, soil-living bacterium Azotobacter vinelandii

Blacksburg, Va. A collaboration of researchers, which includes scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) and Virginia Tech, have completed the genome sequence of Azotobacter vinelandii , uncovering important genetic information that will contribute to a more complete understandin...

TB bacterium uses its sugar coat to sweeten its chances of living in lungs

COLUMBUS, Ohio Common strains of tuberculosis-causing bacteria have hijacked the human body's immune response to play tricks on cells in the lungs, scientists say. The results of this takeover are mixed. The cells essentially welcome the bacteria into the lungs and invite them to stay a while,...

UCR graduate student discovers, names bacterium linked to psyllid yellows

RIVERSIDE, Calif. To make a discovery and get to name it is just about every scientist's dream. For one graduate student at UC Riverside that dream already has come true. Allison Hansen , a doctoral student in entomology, has discovered and named a new bacterial pathogen that could be respons...

Single-celled bacterium works 24-7

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have gained the first detailed insight into the way circadian rhythms govern global gene expression in Cyanothece, a type of cyanobacterium (blue-green alga) known to cycle between photosynthesis during the day and nitrogen fixation at night. I...

Researchers decode genetics of rare photosynthetic bacterium

TEMPE, Ariz. A bacterium that harvests far-red light by making a rare form of chlorophyll (chlorophyll d) has revealed its genetic secrets, according to a team of researchers who recently sequenced the bacterias genome. The researchers, from Arizona State University and Washington University,...

New bacterium discovered -- related to cause of trench fever

A close cousin of the bacterium that debilitated thousands of World War I soldiers has been isolated at UCSF from a patient who had been on an international vacation. The woman, who has since recovered, suffered from symptoms similar to malaria or typhoid fever, two infections that can occur in re...

Researchers from the UGR use a bacterium to obtain biopreservatives from food

The research group "Estudio de sustancias antagonistas producidas por microorganismos" (Antagonistic substances produced by microorganisms), part of the Microbiology Department of the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada [ http://www.ugr.es ]), has succeeded in isolating enterocin AS-48, w...

Common ancestry of bacterium and plants could be key to an effective new treatment for chlamydia

Rutgers researchers have discovered that the Chlamydia bacterium, which causes a sexually transmitted disease (STD), shares an evolutionary heritage with plants. That shared evolutionary heritage, which is not found in most other bacteria, points to a prime target for development of an effective cu...

Genes discovered that allow gum disease bacterium to invade arteries

Researchers have identified the genes in gum-disease bacteria that allow them to invade and infect human arterial cells, offering one possible explanation for a perceived connection between gum disease and heart disease. Scientists from the University of Florida, Gainesville, present their finding...

Scientists discover a new disease-causing bacterium in an immune-compromised patient

Researchers discovered a new bacterium in an immune-compromised patient, according to a study recently published in PLoS Pathogens. The bacterium belongs to the family Acetobacteraceae and includes bacteria common in the environment, some of which are used in industry, such as vinegar-making. "Th...

How E. coli bacterium generates simplicity from complexity

The ubiquitous and usually harmless E. coli bacterium, which has one-seventh the number of genes as a human, has more than 1,000 of them involved in metabolism and metabolic regulation. Activation of random combinations of these genes would theoretically be capable of generating a huge variety of i...

Discovery that bacterium is phosphate gourmet key clue to what makes it most social of bacteria

New research into one of the world's most social bacteria - Myxococcus xanthus, has discovered that it has a gourmet style approach to its consumption of phosphates, which provides a key clue to what makes it the most "social" of bacteria. Myxococcus xanthus is amazingly social and co-operative f...

Marine bacterium suspected to play role in global carbon and nitrogen cycles

Scientists successfully grow 'dwarf belonging to the sea' in laboratoryScientists are now revisiting, and perhaps revising, their thinking about how Archaea, an ancient kingdom of single-celled microorganisms, are involved in maintaining the global balance of nitrogen and carbon. Researchers have ...

Scientists reveal how disease bacterium survives inside immune system cell

New research on a bacterium that can survive encounters with specific immune system cells has strengthened scientists' belief that these plentiful white blood cells, known as neutrophils, dictate whether our immune system will permit or prevent bacterial infections. A paper describing the research ...

Sequencing of marine bacterium will help study of cell communication

The opportunity to annotate the genome of the glow-in-the-dark bacterium, Vibrio fischeri, which lives in symbiotic harmony within the light organ of the bobtail squid, has helped a Virginia Tech microbiologist advance her research on quorum sensing, or how cells communicate and function as a commu...

Harmful Bacterium Commonly Found in Poultry May Survive Refrigeration and Frozen Storage Combined

Glia appear essential for 'hair cells' responsible for hearing and balance. Traditionally viewed as supporting actors, cells known as glia may be essential for the normal development of nerve cells responsible for hearing and balance, according to new University of Utah research. The study is repor...

Highly adaptable genome in gut bacterium key to intestinal health

A bacterium that lives in the human gut adaptively shifts more than a quarter of its genes into high gear when its host's diet changes from sugar to complex carbohydrates. This adaptive mechanism not only allows the bacterial species to survive rapidly changing nutrient conditions but also helps...

Antibiotic Resistant Bacterium Uses Sonar-like Strategy to “See?Enemies or Prey

For the first time, scientists have found that bacteria can use a Sonar-like system to spot other cells (either normal body cells or other bacteria) and target them for destruction. Reported in the December 24 issue of Science, this finding explains how some bacteria know when to produce a toxin th...

Pinhead-size worms + robot = new antibiotics

...ed with a robot to test the effects of 37,000 potential drugs on C. elegans (a type of worm) infected with E. faecalis (a type of bacteria). That bacterium causes life-threatening infections in humans. C. elegans are tiny nematode worms that are widely used in scientific research. The tests identified 2...

Reveal the enemy

...oltage noticeable within seconds. Using this biosensor, the researchers were able to detect a bacterial concentration equivalent to one salmonella bacterium in 5 mL of medium. Quantitative measurements were possible down to a concentration of about 1000 salmonella per milliliter. This biosensor is specific...

C. difficile spores spread superbug

...sk factor in the development of C. difficile infection for some time. The bacterium can live inside the gut of healthy human beings, existing as part of a natu...was disrupted. Because C. difficile is resistant to many antibiotics, the bacterium was able to exploit the opportunity and proliferate where other gut bacteri...

The right messenger for a healthy immune response

...mune cells present these antigens on their surface and in this way communicate with one another: antigens are the "wanted posters" of the virus or the bacterium which has to be destroyed. The researchers discovered the important role of Beta-Interferon in mice lacking the gene for Beta-Interferon. These mi...

Scientists track chemical changes in cells as they endure extreme conditions

...cked the chemical changes in Desulfovibrio vulgaris, which is a single-cell bacterium that normally can only exist in an oxygen-free environment. They exposed th...se pathways. Scientists have also teased out the chemical changes in the bacterium by studying different cells at various stages in a population of cells. Thi...

Harvard scientists solve mystery about why HIV patients are more susceptible to TB infection

...IV-positive patients as well as from people who did not have HIV. In people who are HIV-positive, the macrophages have a decreased response to the TB bacterium when compared to people who did not have HIV. To learn why, the scientists examined lung specimens from the HIV-positive patients and found increased ...

Computers aid in cracking deception in plants

...investigator in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center. He will be applying similar computational methods in studies of Shigella flexneri, a bacterium that can cause diarrhea in humans. For this research, he will be working closely with William Picking, professor at the University of Kansas. Addi...

UTSA wins San Antonio Area Foundation grant to further chlamydia research

...e Semp Russ Foundation of the San Antonio Area Foundation to study the role of CD8-positive T-cells in chlamydia infections. Chlamydia, caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, is the nation's most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease. Nearly 2.8 million new chlamydia cases are reported each...

A tiny frozen microbe may hold clues to extraterrestrial life

... A novel bacterium that has been trapped more than three kilometres under glacial ice in Greenland for over 120 000 years, may hold clues as to what life forms might exi...

The evolution of gene regulation

... even in microorganisms. It is known, for example, that the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli in the digestive tract of young mammals can break down lactose, the sugar abundant in mother's milk. To do this, the bacterium produces the enzyme lactase but only if lactose is actually present. Most ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- May 20, 2009

...The study appears in the current edition of ACS' monthly Journal of Proteome Research . In the report, Jagjit S. Yadav and colleagues note that a bacterium called Mycobacterium immunogenum ( M. immunogenum ) was first identified in 2000 as the potential cause of a mysterious disease that had been occurr...

Are you okay to kiss?

... of the new breath test the color difference between the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria is remarkable. In the top layer of the biofilm, the bacterium take the glycoproteins in the saliva and chop off sugar residues to produce volatile proteins. On the lower layer in the biofilm, which could roughly ...

Scientists work to plug microorganisms into the energy grid

...itself, Keller's lab is also looking for microbes or microbial products that can help break it down into simple sugars. They are currently studying a bacterium found in a hot spring in Yellowstone known as Anaerocellum. It grows at approximately 80 degrees Celsius and is what is known as a consolidate biopro...

Cholesterol-busting bug with a taste for waste

...to break down cholesterol means that it could be used to clean up contamination. Dr Drzyzga and co-workers are studying the genetics of this novel bacterium to genetically modify strains that might also be used to synthesise new and industrially useful breakdown products of cholesterol. "New steroid co...

Pliable proteins keep photosynthesis on the light path

...ings of photosynthesis, the team used a hardy, well-studied, photosynthetic bacterium called Rhodobacter sphaeroides . An organism similar to this purple bacterium was likely one of the earliest photosynthetic bacteria to evolve. The purpl...

Mosquito parasite may help fight dengue fever

...ected Ae. aegypti with a strain of the Wolbachia bacterium and shortened the mosquitoes' lifespan. But before insects carrying the bacterium can be released into the environment, the O'Neill ... virus. McGraw and O'Neill had to find out how the bacterium affects the mosquito's physiology and behaviour an...

UTSA, Health Science Center collaborate with Merck & Co. to develop chlamydia vaccine

...clusive license and sponsored research agreement with Merck & Co., Inc., to develop a vaccine for chlamydia, targeting the common sexually transmitted bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis . Under the terms of the agreement with the two University of Texas institutions, Merck will provide funding for research to...

New study overturns orthodoxy on how macrophages kill bacteria

...tent ROS superoxide in its macrophages. These results suggest that the superoxide dismutases in the bacterial cytoplasm are most likely protecting the bacterium from its own, naturally occurring ROS, Slauch said. In contrast, deleting the gene encoding the periplasmic superoxide dismutase, SodC, conferred t...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- April 22, 2009

...onse to stress instead of the antibodies used in other tests. They showed that their new sensor was faster and more sensitive at detecting the deadly bacterium than antibody-based tests. It had a microbe capture rate up to 83 percent higher than antibody-based tests. The new biosensor will reduce the likeliho...

Sugar on bacteria surface serves as base for a web of resistance

...rface sugar, a polysaccharide called Psl, is anchored on the surface of the bacterium as a helix, providing a structure that encourages cell-to-cell interaction....a human immune response, as well as antibiotic drugs. In the case of the bacterium being studied, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the results of biofilm development c...

Mass Biologic Labs/UMass Med School and Medarex license C. difficile monoclonal antibody to Merck

...he effects of toxin A and toxin B, respectively, the toxins produced by the bacterium C. difficile and which are associated with a serious and sometimes deadly...lostridium difficile infection (CDI) C. difficile is a spore-forming bacterium that is common in the environment and can colonize the gastrointestinal (GI...

Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics

...f a preQ1 riboswitch in complex with its precursor metabolite preQ0. They chose to study the riboswitch from Thermoanaerobacter tengcongensis, a tough bacterium that lives at extreme temperatures and was first found in a Chinese hot spring. The team suspected that the hot spring preQ1 riboswitch must be stable...