Julian’s Bug Blog

AOL News BERLIN (March 27) – It was a nightmare scenario: A scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within hours, members of a tightly bound, yet far-flung community of virologists, biologists and others were tensely gathered in a trans-Atlantic telephone conference trying to [...]

the-things-we-carry-2

From Medicinenet.com: Pathogenicity island: The genetic element, the “island of evil”, within the genome of an organism that is responsible for its capacity to cause disease (its pathogenicity). The virulence of the organism is modulated by genes harbored on this island. For example, enterococci are part of the normal bacterial flora of the intestine but [...]

Julian Davies   FACTS: 1.    When antibiotics were first introduced into clinical practice, most pathogens were sensitive and were killed. That is the patients were cured. 2.    As more and more antibiotics have been developed and used, the success rate has decreased; the pathogens are becoming less susceptible (in other words they are becoming resistant [...]

arth’s highest known microbial systems fueled by volcanic gases Enlarge CU-Boulder researchers have discovered that volcanic gases are fueling microbial life near summit of 19,500-foot-tall Socompa volcano in the high Andes. Credit: Steve Schmidt, University of Colorado Gases rising from deep within the Earth are fueling the world’s highest-known microbial ecosystems, which have been detected [...]

Cholera Microbiology Today Feb 2009

What Manner of Man was Alexander Fleming?   microbiology today feb 09    

Hi Bug Blog authors…if you add tags to your Posts, they’ll appear in the tag cloud on the RH menu, and make your Post more easily searchable in future. Good way to help readers navigate content on this blog!

CBC News, Science and Technology: Drug-resistant tuberculosis seems to respond to a combination of two older antibiotics in laboratory tests, new evidence shows. Researchers are looking for ways to treat extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis or XDR-TB, which is virtually untreatable with existing options. In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, researchers said the combination worked against [...]