As oceans warm due to climate change, water layers will mix less and affect the microbes and plankton that pump carbon out of the atmosphere – but researchers say it's still unclear whether these processes will further increase global warming or decrease it.

A biology lab at Washington University has just cracked the structure and function of a protein that plays a key role in the life of a parasite that killed 655,000 people in 2010.

The knowledge that bacteria possess adaptable immune systems that protect them from individual viruses and other foreign invaders is relatively new to science, and researchers across the globe are working to learn how these systems function and to apply that knowledge in industry and medicine.

Viral diseases are still one of the biggest challenges to medical science. Thanks to thousands of years of co-evolution with humans, their ability to harness the biology of their human hosts to survive and thrive makes them very difficult to target with medical treatment.

An important new study from the Laboratory for Developmental Genetics at USC has confirmed cytomegalovirus (CMV) as a cause of the most common salivary gland cancers. CMV joins a group of fewer than 10 identified oncoviruses — cancer-causing viruses — including HPV.

From the North Pole to the Arctic Ocean, the frozen soils within this region keep an estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon out of the Earth's atmosphere. This sequestered carbon is more than 250 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the United States in the year 2009. As global temperatures slowly rise, however, so too do concerns regarding the potential impacts upon the carbon cycle when the permafrost thaws and releases the carbon that has been trapped for eons. Like so many of the planet's critical environmental processes, the smallest players—microbes—have the most significant influence over the eventual outcome.

A vampire-like bacteria that leeches onto specific other bacteria – including certain human pathogens – has the potential to serve as a living antibiotic for a range of infectious diseases, a new study indicates.

The bacterium that causes tuberculosis has a unique molecule on its outer cell surface that blocks a key part of the body's defense. New research suggests this represents a novel mechanism in the microbe's evolving efforts to remain hidden from the human immune system.

Researchers at Michigan State University have unraveled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals.

Professor Nigel Minton works at the University of Nottingham. A bacterial strain that specifically targets tumours could soon be used as a vehicle to deliver drugs in frontline cancer therapy. The strain is expected to be tested in cancer patients in 2013 says a scientist at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn Conference at the University of York.

Understanding the flow and processing of carbon in the world's oceans, which cover 70 percent of Earth's surface, is central to understanding global climate cycles, with many questions remaining unanswered. Between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface exists a "twilight zone" where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Despite this, it is known that microbes resident at these depths capture carbon dioxide that they then use to form cellular structures and carry out necessary metabolic reactions so that they can survive and reproduce. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria do this in the dark ocean. These research results, which are enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year, were published by a team of researchers, including those from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), in the September 2, 2011 edition of Science.

Scientists were surprised at how fast bacteria developed resistance to the miracle antibiotic drugs when they were developed less than a century ago. Now scientists at McMaster University have found that resistance has been around for at least 30,000 years.

The digestive system is home to a myriad of viruses, but how they are involved in health and disease is poorly understood. In a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers have investigated the dynamics of virus populations in the human gut, shedding new light on the gut "virome" and how it differs between people and responds to changes in diet.

Hepatitis G virus was identified in 1995. Some little research was carried out on the virus and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared it a non-harmful virus in 1997. Researchers in Saudi Arabia, writing in the International Journal of Immunological Studies present evidence to suggest that this may have been the wrong decision. They claim that transmission of the virus through donated blood that was not screened for the virus as well as infection through other routes has led to an increase in cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer.

This image shows marine viruses. The small dots are viruses and the large blobs are bacteria, their hosts. Viruses fill the ocean and have a significant effect on ocean biology, specifically marine microbiology, according to a professor of biology at UC Santa Barbara and his collaborators.

A team led by Professor Malcolm McConville from the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne developed a new analytical method which can be used for many infectious parasites and bacteria. The technique has revealed which metabolic pathways are essential for the parasite's survival, down to the particular atoms it uses as a food source.

They make up less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the microbes that live in the colon, but the bacteria and archaea that sop up hydrogen in the gut are fundamental to colon health. In a new study, researchers take a first look at these "hydrogenotrophic" microbes, mapping where they live and how abundant they are in different parts of the lower intestine.

A novel virus that spread through a California New World titi monkey colony in late 2009 has been shown to have also infected a human researcher and a household family member, in a documented example of an adenovirus "jumping" from one species to another and remaining contagious after the jump. Researchers at the UCSF Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, led by Dr. Charles Chiu, confirmed that the virus was the same in the New World monkeys and humans, and that the virus is highly unusual in both populations. Their findings appear July 14th in the Open Access journal PLoS Pathogens.

Sooty mangabeys, a type of African monkey, have intrigued scientists for years because they can survive infection by SIV, a relative of HIV, and not succumb to AIDS.

Marine shallow water sandy bottoms on the surface appear desert-like and empty, but in the interstitial space between the sand grains a diverse fauna flourishes. In addition to bacteria and protozoa numerous animal phyla have been found here, some only here. One of the strangest members of this interstitial fauna is Paracatenula, a several millimeters long, mouth and gut-less flatworm, which is found from tropical oceans to the Mediterranean. These worms are the focus of a research project led by Jörg Ott at the Department of Marine Biology of the University of Vienna with funding from the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF). The surprising results of this research have now been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

An outbreak of Escherichia coli causing a severe illness called hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) began in Germany on May 2, 2011 and has killed more than 20 people and sickened more than 2,000. The organism causing the outbreak has been identified as a strain of E. coli O104:H4 that produces a Shiga toxin and causes an illness similar to infection with E. coli O157:H7. Two isolates from this outbreak have been sequenced. Both strains, TY-2482 and LB226692, have been annotated and are now available from Virginia Bioinformatics Institute's (VBI's) Pathosystems Resource Integration Center (PATRIC, patricbrc.org), which is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Scientists have identified a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) which occurs both in human and dairy cow populations.

Deadly bacteria may be evolving antibiotic resistance by mimicking human proteins, according to a new study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

This is a nude mouse with a grafted human prostate tumor (indicated by white bump near shoulder blade). XMRV arose from recombination event in this breed of mouse.
Delineation of the origin of the retrovirus known as XMRV from the genomes of laboratory mice indicates that the virus is unlikely to be responsible for either prostate cancer or chronic fatigue syndrome in humans, as has been widely published. The virus arose because of genetic recombination of two mouse viruses. Subsequent infection of lab experiments with XMRV formed the basis of the original association.

An enzyme associated with extensive antibiotic resistance called New Delhi metallo-ß-lactamase-1 (NDM-1), endemic in India and Pakistan and spreading worldwide, has been found in two people in the Toronto area, one of whom acquired it in Canada, states a case report in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj110477.pdf. The report outlines challenges and approaches to managing and identifying this pathogen, which is highly resistant to treatment.

This is a colorized electron micrograph of red blood cell infected with malaria parasites (blue). The small bumps on the infected cell show how the parasite remodels its host... Snug inside a human red blood cell, the malaria parasite hides from the immune system and fuels its growth by digesting hemoglobin, the cell's main protein. The parasite, however, must obtain additional nutrients from the bloodstream via tiny pores in the cell membrane. Now, investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found the genes that malaria parasites use to create these feeding pores.

A new bacterium that uses caffeine for food has been discovered by a doctoral student at the University of Iowa. The bacterium uses newly discovered digestive enzymes to break down the caffeine, which allows it to live and grow.

In a study to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report the discovery of a novel hepatitis C-like virus in dogs. The identification and characterization of this virus gives scientists new insights into how hepatitis C in humans may have evolved and provides scientists renewed hope to develop a model system to study how it causes disease.

Researchers at the University of Alberta have taken an important step in understanding an immune system of bacteria, a finding that could have implications for medical care and both the pharmaceutical and dairy industries.

An international team of researchers led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has deciphered the genome of a tropical marine organism known to produce substances potentially useful against human diseases.