Eeek! Run For Your Lives! The Asphalt Eating Bacteria are Coming

The bacteria were found in the Rancho La Brea tar pits, according to Science Daily. Several things serve to make this story interesting. First:

Out of Africa With Helicobacter pylori

I don’t know how I missed this, but Science Daily has an interesting story on the Out of Africa theory.

Global Warming: Unintended Consequences

A lot has been written about the impact of global warming, but an article on ABC News discusses an aspect I had never thought about before. The article discusses the public health aspects of global warming. The article mentions a number of cases that can be directly or indirectly linked to global warming. For example, [...]

More on DNA from Ocean Bacteria

A while back I wrote this post on efforts to sequence the DNA of sea going bacteria. Research in that area has continued and new findings have recently been reported. They are quite fascinating – so much so I am putting off several other posts (one of these days I’ll get that post on the [...]

MRSA and Amoebas

By now, most of us are familiar with MRSA or methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The staph bacteria is pretty common on human skin but doesn’t become a problem until it finds an entry through the flesh [afarensis had an old scar from a car accident get infected with staph, fortunately not MRSA, and spent about [...]

MRSA and Amoebas

By now, most of us are familiar with MRSA or methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The staph bacteria is pretty common on human skin but doesn’t become a problem until it finds an entry through the flesh [afarensis had an old scar from a car accident get infected with staph, fortunately not MRSA, and spent about [...]

I Wonder What Tara Would Make of This?

John J. Dennehy (Yale University), Nicholas A. Friedenberg (Dartmouth College), Robert D. Holt (University of Florida), and Paul E. Turner (Yale University), “Viral ecology and the maintenance of novel host use” http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/499381 Infectious diseases often mysteriously appear and disappear in populations. On some occasions small outbreaks rapidly die out; on others, epidemics ensue. Dennehy et [...]

Lateral Transfer of Toxin Gene between Bacteria and Spiders?

This is fascinating: It’s a case of evolutionary detective work. Biology researchers at Lewis & Clark College and the University of Arizona have found evidence for an ancient transfer of a toxin between ancestors of two very dissimilar organisms–spiders and a bacterium. But the mystery remains as how the toxin passed between the two organisms. [...]

More on Magnetic Bacteria

Those of my readers who followed me from my old blog may remember this post on magnetic bacteria. In it I discuss how a new technique called cyroelectron tomography has allowed researchers to gain new insights into how magnetosomes are arranged in some bacteria. Above is a picture of magnetosome chains.

Evolution in Action

Wow, according to the CDC a new mutated virus (actually a bacterium – afarensis) is going around. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10644538/from/RS.5/ The virus, Clostridium difficile, is particularly nasty: “…a growing number of young, otherwise healthy Americans who are being stricken by the bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile – or C. diff — which appears to be spreading [...]

Magnetic Bacteria

The above is a picture of Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense a unique type of bacteriathat is magnetotactic. That is it uses the earth’s magnetic field to find suitable environmental conditions. How does it work? Well, Magnetospirillum absorb large amounts of iron to produce an oxide called magnetite. The magnetite is formed into magnetosomes which are strung out [...]

Bacterial Adaptations to Cold Environments

This article from Science Daily is pretty interesting. A team of researchers from The Institute for Genomic Research have sequenced the genome of Colwellia psychrerythraea – a species of cold adapted bacteria that lives in temperatures below 5 degrees celcius (brrr). “…these analyses offer a picture of evolution in action, as C. psychrerythraea uses subtle [...]

Deep Ocean Photosynthesis in Bacteria

This is cool. Most bacteria use photosynthesis, powered by sunlight to create sugars for fuel. Recently, a species of bactera was discovered that uses light given off by hydrothermic vents to power the photsynthetic reaction. From the article: The bacteria have a sophisticated antenna system that allows them to collect the low light emanating from [...]

Friday Staphylococcus aureus Blogging

I think this is the one that put me in the hospital. Still can’t figure out how I caught it though. Here is an interesting story on the subject though. Staphylococcus aureus, a common germ that infects countless scrapes and scratches a year, is fast becoming an uncommon public health threat. Drug-resistant strains of staph [...]

2.5 Billion Year Old Sulpher Eating Bactera?

Sulpher-eating Bacteria?  According to a story in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch the above picture is of fossils dating to 2.5 billion years ago. It was found in China, by a geologist affiliated with St. Louis University, in what is believed to be the geological remnants of a black smoker chimney.