|
| BACTERIA POINT THE WAY TO GOLD DEPOSITS |
| Can bacteria help find gold? A pilot survey of 11 soil profiles across gold mining regions in the Peoples Republic of China indicates that elevated spore counts of Bacillus cereus, a common soil bacterium, were detected in areas adjacent to underlying gold deposits. |
|
| INFLUENZA INFECTION ATTRACTS PNEUMONIA BACTERIA |
| Lung cells infected with the influenza A virus are more likely to bind with bacteria that cause pneumonia than uninfected cells, but this phenomenon can be reversed with antiviral treatment. Researchers from the University of Kansas Medical Center present their findings today at the 102nd General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. |
|
| MICROBIOLOGY TEAM PROBES BACTERIUM'S SURPRISING SURVIVAL TACTICS |
| A team of microbiologists affiliated with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass) has uncovered the unusual survival strategies used by a common bacterium. The finding could have implications in cleaning up contaminants ranging from petroleum to uranium. |
|
| COMMON MICROBES SURVIVE PRESSURES EQUAL TO THOSE FOUND AT 50 KILOMETERS INSIDE THE EARTH’S CRUST |
| Until now, scientists thought that only specially adapted organisms they call extremophiles could exist in seemingly intolerable environments such as high-pressure, high-temperature oceanic hydrothermal vents or in the ice sheets of Antarctica. A study published in the February 22, 2002, issue of Science, however, shows that even common bacteria are viable under high-pressure conditions equivalent to about 50 kilometers beneath the Earth’s crust or 160 kilometers in a hypothetical sea. |
|
| ROCK-EATING MICROBES SURVIVE IN DEEP OCEAN OFF PERU |
| Way down deep in the ocean off the coast of Peru, in the rocks that form the sea floor, live bacteria that don't need sunlight, don't need carbon dioxide, don't need oxygen. These microbes subsist by eating the very rocks they call home. |
|
| PRIMITIVE MICROBE OFFERS MODEL FOR EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS |
| A microorganism whose evolutionary roots can be traced to the era of the first multicellular animals may provide a glimpse of how single-celled organisms made a critical evolutionary leap. |
|
| FRESH EVIDENCE POINTS TO MARINE BACTERIA AS SOURCE OF ANTI-CANCER DRUG |
| Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have produced evidence that bacteria living inside a small marine animal may be the source of a new drug compound being developed to fight cancer. |
|
| TYPHOID FEVER BUG SEQUENCE RAISES HOPE OF COMPLETE ERADICATION |
| Scientists from Britain, Denmark and Vietnam have deciphered the genetic code of the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever, Salmonella typhi.
Their achievement, reported in the magazine Nature 23.10.01., raises hope for the prospects of completely eradicating typhoid, which currently claims 600,000 lives a year globally. |
|
| NU PROFESSOR WORKS TOWARD A PERMANENTLY GERM-FREE SURFACE: POLYMER GLASS COATING CAPABLE OF KILLING AIRBORNE BACTERIA ON CONTACT |
| Whose hands were on that doorknob before yours? That handrail, pay phone, or subway pole? Kim Lewis, newly appointed professor of biology at Northeastern University in Boston, has worked with scientists at M.I.T. and Tufts University to ease our germ-fearing minds about this very thing. In their research, they demonstrate that covalent attachment of N-alkylated poly(4-vinylpyridine) (PVP) to glass surfaces can make surfaces permanently lethal to several types of bacteria on contact. |
|
| COMPLEX MOLECULE FOUND IN SPACE |
| The compound vinyl alcohol has been found in space, raising hopes of clues to the origin of complex organic molecules. The molecule was found in an interstellar cloud of dust and gas near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy by radio astronomers using the National Science Foundation's 12 Meter Telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona. |
|
| BACTERIAL COMMUNITIES FOUND TO FOLLOW WATER |
| Miraculous things happen to the desert when it rains - everything changes from brown to green and organisms that have not been seen for months make a brief .emergence from underground lairs. |
|
| ALL RBS ARE NOT ALIKE: INSIGHT INTO RB IN THE PLANT CELL CYCLE |
| By identifying and functionally characterizing an RB homolog in a simple green algae, scientists have shed a surprising new light on the potential role of RB-like proteins in the plant cell cycle. |
|
| LIVING IN CLOUDS |
| Bacteria which are likely to change climate on the planet, have been hound in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The area where they were found is featured with severe ambient conditions: low temperatures (down to -40° C), intensive ultraviolet radiation, insignificant air pressure, a lack of oxygen. Scientists couldn’t even imagine that any life forms existed over there. |
|
