Julian’s Bug Blog

Here is the article I presented in class, check the media library for my lecture slides. What Doesn’t Kill Microbes, Makes Them Stronger by Martin Enserink on February 11, 2010 6:02 PM | Permanent Link | 12 Comments  Email  Print |   More Previous Article Next Article If you are taking antibiotics, your doctor will admonish [...]

    Discovery raises possibility of manufacturing painkillers more cheaply using vats of microbes rather than fields of flowers Ian Sample, Science Correspondent  The Guardian, Monday 15 March 2010   Scientists have identified the two genes in opium poppies which are used to make codeine and morphine, two of the most important painkillers in a [...]

Whiter laundry and a surprising new treatment for kids’ eczema Treatment of Staphylococcus aureusColonization in Atopic Dermatitis Decreases Disease Severity Science Centric | 27 April 2009 13:32 GMT It’s best known for whitening a load of laundry. But now simple household bleach has a surprising new role: an effective treatment for kids’ chronic eczema. Chronic, [...]

Scientists in B.C. are looking to tiny creatures to help find a better way to clean up pollution from some of the province’s biggest mining operations. The creatures are heavy-metal-eating microbes, and they’re being used to process the toxic byproducts produced over decades by the Teck Resources Limited zinc and lead mine in the city [...]

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2010) — Fragments of plastic in the ocean are not just unsightly but potentially lethal to marine life. Coastal microbes may offer a smart solution to clean up plastic contamination, according to Jesse Harrison presenting his research at the Society for General Microbiology’s spring meeting in Edinburgh. The researchers from the University [...]

Arturo Casadevall and David A. Relman Abstract | Anxiety about threats from the microbial world and about the deliberate misuse of microorganisms has led to efforts to define and control these dangers using lists and regulations. One list with tremendous legal implications and a potentially huge impact on research is the Select Agents and Toxins [...]

Cows raised at pasture are not immune to deadly E. coli bacteria. By James E. McWilliams Posted Friday, Jan. 22, 2010, at 7:24 AM ET On Monday, Huntington Meat Packing Inc. recalled a whopping 864,000 pounds of beef thought to contain a particularly nasty strain of E. coli bacteria called O157:H7. Coming shortly after the [...]

22.03.2010 Findings could help tame extremely drug-resistant strains Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found two novel ways of killing the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB), a disease responsible for an estimated two million deaths each year. The findings, published in the March 21 online issue of Nature Chemical Biology, [...]

“Caring for ourselves is like caring for the planet” By David Suzuki and Faisal Moola Ecosystems come in all shapes and sizes, often without distinct boundaries. And what happens in one ecosystem affects other ecosystems. We can even consider the human body as an ecosystem, or perhaps more correctly as a number of interrelated ecosystems. According to a [...]

Nestlé USA recalled its Toll House refrigerated cookie dough on Friday after health officials linked the dough to infections from the bacteria E. coli in as many as 66 people in 28 states. The recall, by a company with a reputation for strong quality-control measures, once again demonstrates the difficulty of ensuring the safety of [...]