MicroCulture

Microbiology tidbits from an MLT working in clinical microbiology.

[microculture]

[microculture]

Antibiotic Resistance, Soap, and False Advertising

We now know that antibacterial soaps do not protect from preventable illness better than regular soap, but beyond that, some of these products are even shown to have deleterious long-term effects.

[microculture]

People Are Loving The Results Of This Breast Milk Petri Dish Experiment

Vicky Greene decided to study the antimicrobial properties of breast milk.

[microculture]

[microculture]

[mindblowingscience]

The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance

Could this be the end of superbugs?

A 25-year-old student has just come up with a way to fight drug-resistant superbugs without antibiotics.

The new approach has so far only been tested in the lab and on mice, but it could offer a potential solution to antibiotic resistance, which is now getting so bad that the United Nations recently declared it a “fundamental threat” to global health.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria already kill around 700,000 people each year, but a recent study suggests that number could rise to around 10 million by 2050.

In addition to common hospital superbug, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), scientists are now also concerned that gonorrhoea is about tobecome resistant to all remaining drugs.

But Shu Lam, a 25-year-old PhD student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, has developed a star-shaped polymer that can kill six different superbug strains without antibiotics, simply by ripping apart their cell walls.

“We’ve discovered that [the polymers] actually target the bacteria and kill it in multiple ways,” Lam told Nicola Smith from The Telegraph. “One method is by physically disrupting or breaking apart the cell wall of the bacteria. This creates a lot of stress on the bacteria and causes it to start killing itself.”

The research has been published in Nature Microbiology, and according to Smith, it’s already being hailed by scientists in the field as “a breakthrough that could change the face of modern medicine”.

Before we get too carried away, it’s still very early days. So far, Lam has only tested her star-shaped polymers on six strains of drug-resistant bacteria in the lab, and on one superbug in live mice.

But in all experiments, they’ve been able to kill their targeted bacteria - and generation after generation don’t seem to develop resistance to the polymers.

Continue Reading.

[ink-pedia]

Dean Denney

[microculture]

A team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has found a mosquito virus that's broken up into pieces. And the mosquito needs to catch several of the pieces to get an infection.

[microculture]

[microculture]

An international group of microbiologists has honoured the memory of University of Toronto professor Donald Low by using his name for a newly discovered strain of bacteria. The group chose the name Corynbacterium lowii to honour Low, who was a professor and division head of microbiology in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology (LMP) at the university and microbiologist-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital.

[microculture]

Now scientists think they have an understanding about how Zika causes these severe brain malformations. The findings come from a series of mouse experiments, published Wednesday in three leading journals.

[microculture]

Actinobacteria and myxobacteria are two of the most characteristic microbial groups within soil. Dirt doesn’t smell like dirt – dirt smells like the microbes that live in dirt.

[amnhnyc]

Make Your Own Microbial Medley: A Famous Investigation To Do At Home

The poet William Blake prodded us to “see a world in a grain of sand,” and this simple project does just that—only with a cupful of mud! Just add a few other easy-to-find ingredients to create an entire ecosystem for bacteria called a Winogradsky column. Over several weeks, different species will separate into visible layers depending on how they use—or don’t use—oxygen, light, and nutrients such as carbon or sulfur. It’s a living lesson in how microbes play an essential role in the life cycle as they reuse and recycle nutrients, not unlike the way the bacteria that inhabit our bodies break down foods to give us energy. Or as Rob DeSalle, co-curator of the special exhibition The Secret World Inside You, likes to say, “The human digestive tract is one huge Winogradsky column.”

Click the image to see the instructions and visit The Secret World Inside You, now open!

[microculture]

SINCE NOVEMBER, 54 PEOPLE in Wisconsin have one by one fallen ill with an obscure kind of bacteria called Elizabethkingia. Fifteen have died from the infection.

[microculture]

In Da Lab | In Da Club Medical Parody | ZDoggMD.com

[microculture]

Until very recently it was thought that just one bacterium was to blame for causing Lyme disease in humans. But it turns out that a second, related bug can cause it too.

[currentsinbiology]

Slime can see                

After more than 300 years of looking, scientists have figured out how bacteria “see” their world. And they do it in a remarkably similar way to us.

A team of British and German researchers reveal in the journal eLife how bacterial cells act as the equivalent of a microscopic eyeball or the world’s oldest and smallest camera eye.

“The idea that bacteria can see their world in basically the same way that we do is pretty exciting,” says lead researcher Conrad Mullineaux, Professor of Microbiology from QMUL’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

Caption:  Bacteria are optical objects, each cell acting like a microscopic eyeball or the world’s oldest and smallest camera eye. Credit: eLife

[microculture]

I