Antibiotic resistance is a huge problem. More and more resistant strains of microbes are appearing. Needless to state that this has a huge human and economic cost. Combining this with the increasing globalization, the threat of a global outbreak of an infection caused by a multidrug-resistant bacterium looms over our heads as Damocles’ sword. This perhaps sounds too ominous, but it speaks for itself that research into the development of antibiotic resistance could prove very useful.

To explore this problem, a group of scientists gathered in Cold Spring Harbor, NY at the Banbury Conference Centre to address the issues involved and identify key steps in dealing with this threat. Seven actions that urgently need to be undertaken were identified:

   

Using a single-step process, researchers recently developed a technique to cause M13 phages to become building blocks for materials with a wide range of properties.

These benign viruses self-assembled into hierarchically organized thin-film structures, with complexity that ranged from simple ridges, to wavy, chiral strands, to truly sophisticated patterns of overlapping strings of material. Each film presented specific properties for bending light, and several films were capable of guiding the growth of cells into structures with precise physical orientations.

As human population numbers worldwide continue to increase, we are having to be increasingly clever about finding ways to produce enough food for all consumers. One potential technique is converting deserts into agricultural landscapes. Anyone who knows their history will be aware that this practice is by no means new, but modern technology allows desert farming on much larger scales--not only creating larger agricultural areas, but also producing greater quantities of food.

The fossils of 3.4-billion-year-old microbes that used sulfur compounds for energy have been found in rocks from Western Australia, reports a paper published in Nature Geoscience. 

David Wacey, Martin Brasier and colleagues analyzed microstructures present in rocks from the Strelley Pool Formation in Western Australia, and determined that they were the fossils of ancient microbes. The fossils were associated with tiny crystals of pyrite, a mineral composed of iron and sulfur. The isotopic composition of the sulfur suggests that the pyrite was formed as a by-product of cellular metabolism based on sulphate and sulfur.

Thousands of tons of toxic mercury are released into the environment each year and much of it ends up in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, - and then enters the food chain, including in the fish we eat.

 New research in BMC Biotechnology details genetically engineered bacteria which can withstand high levels of mercury and go one step beyond - they can mop up mercury from their surroundings.

Researchers searching for new ways to make hydrogen a viable part of our energy future have a new place to look; a natural example of a living hydrogen-powered 'fuel cell'.

During a recent expedition to hydrothermal vents in the deep sea, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology and the Cluster of Excellence MARUM discovered mussels that have their own on-board fuel cells in the form of symbiotic bacteria that use hydrogen as an energy source. Their results suggest that the ability to use hydrogen as a source of energy is widespread in hydrothermal vent symbioses.

Creating sperm or egg cells in the laboratory has been tried several times in the past few years. The reasons for this range from a better understanding of the fundamentals of the reproductive process, to helping infertile couples with their child-wish. The attempts, using embryonic stem cells, however, did not yield viable germ cells.

Until now.

A research team at Kyoto University has succeeded in turning mouse embryonic stem cells into viable sperm precursor cells. The resulting sperm cells was subsequently used to give birth to healthy, normal cute little mice (see figure 1).

   

Our own body is covered with entire (albeit tiny) ecosystems. Incredible numbers of bacterial strains live in and on the human body. And the belly button seems to be a place extraordinarily rich in bacterial passengers. The Belly Button Biodiversity Project took samples from the navels of volunteers and went to work, performing DNA analysis on the bacteria that were found there.

(Source: Belly Button Biodiversity Project)

Lasers (acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) were invented roughly half a century ago, and in that time, they have found their way to industry, medicine, all kinds of research, consumer electronics, and much more. Pervading modern day western society, several media can be used to generate lasers. But up until now, all these media were inanimate. Not any longer. Research published online on June 12th, 2011 in Nature Photonics (Gather and Yun, 2011) used a living cell to generate a laser (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Illustration of a single-celled laser. (Source: Gather and Yun, 2011)