Microbiology

Go Native-- It's For The Soil

Prairie gardens offer Midwestern suburban dwellers an alternative option to the traditional grass lawn. Their combination of native grasses, like tall and wispy bluestem and sideoats, and forbs, such as the colorful yellow and purple coneflowers, are a we ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 12 2015 - 7:30am

The Secret Behind The Power Of Bacterial Sex

Migration between different communities of bacteria is the key to the type of gene transfer that can lead to the spread of traits such as antibiotic resistance, according to researchers. While horizontal gene transfer- also known as bacterial sex- has lon ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 23 2015 - 8:40am

Causes Of Aging In Yeast Revealed

An experiment to study aging in yeast cells followed molecular processes inside and discovered that an overproduction of the proteins needed to make new proteins which could be the root cause of the cellular processes that eventually kill the cells.  Bake ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 6 2015 - 8:00am

Why We're Not Constantly Ill Despite Viruses And Bacteria

New research on how our immune system works shows how the body mobilizes a previously unknown defense against viruses and bacteria- and thus why we do not constantly get ill despite the viruses around us.  Fever, sore muscles and other influenza-like symp ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2015 - 8:50am

Bacteria, Archaea- Some Methane In Hydraulic Fracturing Is Even More Natural Than Assumed

When you think of it, all of the natural gas harvested by hydraulic fracturing is natural but groups that once embraced it as clean energy have now turned on it and have sought to use its biological origins against it, with manufactured videos of flaming ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 15 2015 - 11:07am

Fecal Transplantation: Fresh Vs. Frozen

Among adults with Clostridium difficile infection that is recurrent or not responsive to treatment, the use of frozen compared with fresh fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) did not result in a significantly lower rate of resolution of diarrhea, indica ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 12 2016 - 12:10pm

Asexual: Offspring Without Fertilization In Plants

When a sperm and an egg cell merge a new life begins. This is the case in humans and in animals, but in principle also in plants. A team has discovered a gene trigger in the moss Physcomitrella patens which leads to offspring without fertilization and the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 19 2016 - 7:00am

Zika Virus Found In Colombia

In October 2015, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Universidad de Sucre in Colombia ran the first tests confirming the presence of Zika virus transmission in the South American country. In a study published today [Jan 26, 20 ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 26 2016 - 5:25pm

A New Gig For Bees: Delivering Pest Control Agents

A honey bee visits and apple blossom.  It may someday  ...

Article - Steve Savage - Feb 2 2016 - 3:49pm

Why Do Scientists Chase Unicorns? Because Sometimes We Find Them

Scientists chase unicorns because a world with unicorns, metaphorically speaking, is a better place. Michigan State University plant biologist Maren Friesem felt like she was on a unicorn hunt searching for bacteria that could fix their own nitrogen. And ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 1 2016 - 3:10pm