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People who use bottled water as a fashion or life-style statement, or who think bottled water is better or safer than tap water, should take a look at this.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) — Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels. In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.

Scientists have developed an atlas of the bacteria that live in different regions of the human body. Some of the microbes help keep us healthy by playing a key role in physiological functions. The University of Colorado at Boulder team found unexpectedly wide variations in bacterial communities from person to person. The researchers hope their work, published in Science Express, will eventually aid clinical research. They say that it might one day be possible to identify sites on the human body where transplants of specific microbes could benefit health. The study was based on an intensive analysis of the bacteria...

Bacteria are the oldest living things on earth, and researchers have long felt that they must lead dull, unfussy lives. New discoveries are starting to show just how wrong that notion is. For a simple, single-cell creature, a bacterium is surprisingly social. It can communicate in two languages. It can tell self from nonself, friend from foe. It thrives in the company of others. It spies on neighbors, spreads misinformation and even commits fratricide. "Really, they're just stripped-down versions of us," says Bonnie Bassler, microbial geneticist at Princeton University, who has spent two decades peeking at the inner lives of...

Bacteria can be used to turn dirty salt water into electricity and drinkable water, according to new research from scientists at Penn State University and Tsinghua University. The research presents a new spin on microbial fuel cells, which have been used in the past to produce electricity or store it as hydrogen or methane gas.

SYDNEY: Bacteria can solve complex mathematical problems and may form the building blocks of future supercomputers, according to a new study. Published in the Journal of Biological Engineering, the proof-of-principle study used glowing bacteria to crack the classic 'Hamilton Path Problem', showing that bacteria can be programmed to do maths. “Our work demonstrates the potential for using living cells to solve mathematical problems,” said lead researcher Todd Eckdahl, a synthetic biologist at Missouri Western State University in the USA. Complex mathematical problem “It supports the view that bacteria can be used to perform computations. Someday, living computers could have applications...

Data from an ongoing multi-year study suggest that people who consume deer and elk with chronic wasting disease (CWD) may be protected from infection by an inability of the CWD infectious agent to spread to people. The results to date show that 14 cynomolgus macaques exposed orally or intracerebrally to CWD remain healthy and symptom free after more than six years of observation, though the direct relevance to people is not definitive and remains under study. Cynomolgus macaques often are used as research models of human disease because they are very close genetically to humans and are susceptible to several...

As the space shuttle returned to Earth, bringing him home from the International Space Station, where he has been since March, he revealed that he had been wearing the same pair of prototype pants for a month, all in the name of science.

BOSTON, Mass. (July 26, 2009) — High-throughput sequencing has turned biologists into voracious genome readers, enabling them to scan millions of DNA letters, or bases, per hour. When revising a genome, however, they struggle, suffering from serious writer's block, exacerbated by outdated cell programming technology. Labs get bogged down with particular DNA sentences, tinkering at times with subsections of a single gene ad nauseam before moving along to the next one. A team has finally overcome this obstacle by developing a new cell programming method called Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE). Published online in Nature on July 26, the platform...

Sticky nanotubes that trap bacteria like flypaper can be used to identify bacterial infections in seconds rather than days, report Spanish chemists. Although only tested on the typhus-causing Salmonella typhi bacteria so far, if the process can be applied more widely it could revolutionise bacterial testing in the medical and food industries. Detecting bacteria is currently a laborious process, requiring several stages that can take up to two days. Instead, this new method promises to be as easy as testing for pH, say researchers at the Universityof Rovira i Virgili in Catalonia, Spain. The technique uses carbon nanotubes coated with aptamers -...

After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets. The new bacteria species was found nearly 2 miles (3 km) beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce. "We don't know what state they were in," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "They could've been dormant, or they could've been slowly metabolizing, but we don't know for sure." Dormant would mean...

A total of 17 people have been infected with Clostridium difficile at a hospital in Moray. NHS ...revealed on Wednesday that two elderly people with the C.diff infection had died. Two wards have been closed to new admissions but health officials said the patients were giving no cause for concern. The health board said the deaths happened in April and that both the patients had been frail.

The organisms that inhabit the skin may not be the bad guys. They probably enable the body to function properly, researchers say in the journal Science. Here's a finding that'll make your skin crawl: A healthy human epidermis is colonized by roughly 1,000 species of bacteria. Furthermore, the microorganisms have evolved to exploit the unique attributes of those body parts they call home, according to a study to be published today in the journal Science. Some thrive in the desert of the forearm. Others are happiest in the tropical rain forest of the armpit. The study, conducted by a team...

Viral Batteries: A Case for Evolution? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Researchers at MIT have invented a “greener” battery with the help of viruses. Three years ago, they engineered a virus that coats itself with material that serves as an anode, a structure within a battery that attracts positive ions. They have now engineered a virus (bacteriophage) that serves as a cathode, which indirectly links to the anode to help make the battery functional. The result is a battery with little impact on the environment. National Public Radio (NPR) ran a report on its Morning Edition that compared the development of...

A new weapon that could help wipe out the deadly MRSA virus has been developed by researchers from Northern Ireland. Experts from Queen’s University have discovered new agents that can kill colonies of MRSA and other antiboitic resistant hospital-acquired |infections. The antimicrobial agents also prevent any growth of the potentially lethal bacteria. The breakthrough was made by a team of eight researchers from the Queen's University Ionic Liquid Laboratories (QUILL) Research Centre led by Brendan Gilmore, a lecturer in Pharmaceutics, and assistant director of QUILL Dr Martyn Earle. The discovery has been published in the |scientific journal, Green Chemistry. Dr...

'Live Evolution' Not Witnessed After All by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Some science media outlets are hailing a recent study as “live evolution witnessed,” but what researchers at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique actually saw isn’t evolution at all. They observed, over the course of 300 generations, predator bacteria adapting to overcome certain defenses erected by its prey. The kinds of minor changes that these bacteria experienced, however, do not support the broad Darwinian philosophy that life continually evolves upward...

Shedding Light on the Protein Big Bang Theory March 13, 2009 — The precise three-dimensional structure of a typical protein molecule is so complex, its origin would seem hopeless by chance. What if evolutionary biologists were to discover a whole host of proteins literally exploded into existence at the beginning of complex life? We can find out what they would think by looking at an article on the “protein big bang” found on Astrobiology Magazine...

According to Darwinian theory, in the past we had a common ancestor with baboons, further back with bananas and still further with bacteria. This dogma has spread like a ‘meme’, which is a contagious idea that propagates in a similar way as a virus by infecting brains, according to inventor of the word, Richard Dawkins.1 In 2002, Roy Britten dispelled the first monkey meme that human and chimpanzee DNA sequences are 98.5% identical.2 He showed that when indelmutations were also taken into account, the difference suddenly became about 5%. The fact that chimpanzee genomes are about 10% larger than that...

American energy independence may be closer than anyone realizes, and one of the most promising sources is neither wind nor solar nor oil nor coal nor even nuclear – as useful as all of the above may be in their own right. It is biomass, especially bacteria – genetically manipulated to produce hydrocarbon fuels like gasoline and diesel. I wrote about this in May 2008, and in the eight months since then the people involved have made so much progress that a major announcement is scheduled for next week in Washington D.C. My prior column explained the efforts of Tifton,...

* Bacteria found in Australian milk * Pauls, Ausnutria brands fail quality tests * Companies were never told CHINA says two shipments of Australian milk, including Pauls brand, failed quality tests put in place after a contaminated milk scandal Four children died in China and 53,000 people got sick after drinking milk powder laced with melamine, which is used to cheat nutrition tests and is also used to make plastic furniture. Melamine has since been found in other dairy products, eggs and animal feed, prompting recalls of Chinese-made products around the world. Many worried Chinese parents have switched to foreign-made...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Wash your hands, folks, especially you ladies. A new study found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do. And everybody has more types of bacteria than the researchers expected to find. "One thing that really is astonishing is the variability between individuals, and also between hands on the same individual," said University of Colorado biochemistry assistant professor Rob Knight, a co-author of the paper. "The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria...

A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system. The work will be presented by Jennifer Loveland-Curtze, a senior research associate in the laboratory led by Jean Brenchley, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular...

Bacteria testing not mandated at elder housing When she talks about her father - a World War II veteran known for his charm and humble way - Paula Alston usually starts to cry. Four years ago, Alston's father, then 81, died from pneumonia caused in part by Legionnaires' disease, an infection spread by inhaling contaminated water particles. Richard Guthrie Jr. contracted the disease while living at the Nathan Barnert Homes on Keen Street in Paterson, according to county health officials. The outbreak sickened at least one other resident of the public housing facility. The elderly and those with compromised immune...

The idea that life on Earth might have originated elsewhere, on Mars, for example, has gained currency in recent times as we’ve learned more about the transfer of materials between planets. Mars cooled before the Earth and may well have become habitable at a time when our planet was not. There seems nothing particularly outrageous in the idea that dormant bacteria inside chunks of the Martian surface, blasted into space by comet or asteroid impacts, might have crossed the interplanetary gulf and given rise to life here. But what of an interstellar origin for life on Earth? The odds on...

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have shown how bacteria could be used as a future fuel. The research, published in the journal Bioinformatics, could have significant implications for the environment and the way we produce sustainable fuels in the future. Like all living creatures, bacteria sustain themselves through their metabolism, a huge sequence of chemical reactions that transform nutrients into energy and waste. Using mathematical computer models, the Sheffield team have mapped the metabolism of a type of bacteria called Nostoc. Nostoc fixes nitrogen and, in doing so, releases hydrogen that can then potentially be used as fuel. Fixing...

Imagine a form of life so unusual that we cannot figure out how it dies. That’s exactly what researchers are finding beneath the floor of the sea off Peru. The microbes being studied there — single-celled organisms called Archaea — live in time frames that can perhaps best be described as geological. Consider: A bacteria like Escherichia Coli divides and reproduces every twenty minutes or so. But the microbes in the so-called Peruvian Margin take hundreds or thousands of years to divide. “In essence, these microbes are almost, practically dead by our normal standards,” says Christopher H. House (Penn State)....

Provided/Esther Angert A close-up of the tip of an Epulopiscium with the tip of a protozoan (Paramecium) and the black spots are E. coli cells. The researcher mixed E. coli and Paramecium cells in with Epulopiscium she had picked out of fish gut contents to show the relative sizes. Provided/Esther Angert Three large Epulopiscium cells, each with several big internal offspring. This image shows total fish gut contents with some small eukaryotic flagellates and partially digested algae around the large Epulopiscium cells. Well, perhaps not quite Shaquille O'Neal. But it is Shaq-teria.The secret to an unusual bacterium's massive size...

Bacteria Levels In Aircraft Shows Low Risk To Travelers, Study Shows ScienceDaily (May 2, 2008) — Popular wisdom says that aircraft provide the perfect environment for spreading disease, but few studies exist to confirm or deny this suspicion. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a leading federal agency and Harvard University has measured concentrations of bacteria in the cabin air of 12 commercial passenger aircraft, and found that flying may be safer than we think. “In general, bacterial concentrations and types found during the study should not pose a risk to travelers,” says Christine Rogers,...

Enlarge ImageScience of sleep. The scientists used fluorescent proteins--green and red in these images--to determine whether E. coli bacteria were active.Credit: Gefen et al., PNAS 105 (22 April 2008) Most antibiotics kill only microbes that are growing and multiplying, leaving untouched a select few that are hibernating. A new study suggests that a dose of the right nutrients can awaken these bacteria for just long enough to kill them with antibiotics. If the strategy works in humans, it might provide a more effective way to treat persistent diseases such as tuberculosis and urinary-tract infections. During infections, bacteria may slow...

Dr. Mom Was Right -- And Wrong -- About Washing Fruits And VegetablesA new study shows that irradiation could be key to removing hard-to-reach pathogens inside fruits and vegetables. (Credit: Courtesy of USDA-Agricultural Research Service, photo by Stephen Ausmus) ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2008) — Washing fresh fruits and vegetables before eating may reduce the risk of food poisoning and those awful episodes of vomiting and diarrhea. But according to new research, described recently at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, washing alone -- even with chlorine disinfectants -- may not be enough. Studies show that certain disease-causing...

Lingering Bacteria Don't Indicate Chronic Lyme Disease ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2008) — The bacteria that cause Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne illness in the United States, can linger in mouse tissues long after a full round of antibiotic treatment is completed, report researchers from the University of California, Davis. The scientists caution that the discovery does not suggest the presence of chronic disease, nor does it support extended use of antibiotics to treat Lyme disease in humans. Their findings are reported in the March issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. However, they say, the results of this...

AP Medical Writer Antibiotics for breakfast? The drugs are supposed to kill bacteria, not feed them. Yet Harvard researchers have discovered hundreds of germs in soil that literally gobble up antibiotics, able to thrive with the potent drugs as their sole source of nutrition. These bacteria outwit antibiotics in a disturbingly novel way, and now the race is on to figure out just how they do it - in case more dangerous germs that sicken people could develop the same ability. On the other hand, the work explains why the soil doesn't harbor big antibiotic buildups despite use of the...

The number of suspected salmonella cases linked to contaminated tap water in Alamosa, Colorado exceeded 200 Sunday. Of 216 reported cases, 68 were confirmed by lab results, public information officer Jim Shires said. health officials said may be caused by the municipal water system. Health officials said the Alamosa tap water tested positive for bacteria believed to be salmonella, but are awaiting final confirmation. Authorities said the first victim began showing symptoms around March 8. State emergency management officials activated an emergency operations center in the Denver suburb of Centennial to help coordinate deliveries of bottled water. “The risk that...

Hardy Earth bacteria can grow in lunar soil 00:53 14 March 2008 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga, Houston A hardy life form called cyanobacteria can grow in otherwise inhospitable lunar soil, new experiments suggest. Future colonists on the Moon might be able to use the cyanobacteria to extract resources from the soil that could be used to make rocket fuel and fertiliser for crops. NASA plans to send astronauts back to the Moon starting in 2020, with the ultimate aim of setting up a permanent lunar base. Sustaining such a base will be a major challenge, because it is so...

The same bacteria that cause frost damage on plants can help clouds to produce rain and snow. Studies on freshly fallen snow suggest that ‘bio-precipitation’ might be much more common than was suspected. Before a cloud can produce rain or snow, rain drops or ice particles must form. This requires the presence of aerosols: tiny particles that serve as the nuclei for condensation. Most such particles are of mineral origin, but airborne microbes — bacteria, fungi or tiny algae — can do the job just as well. Unlike mineral aerosols, living organisms can catalyse ice formation even at temperatures close...

Gainesville -- Officials at Mar-Jac Poultry said they were shocked to find out Thursday that federal officials suspect the company might have ties to terrorist funding. Company Vice President Doug Carnes said at least a half-dozen U.S. Customs agents spent all day Wednesday gathering financial records and charitable contribution files. They were "real nice, professional and complimentary," he said, but they didn't disclose the nature of their visit. It was only on Thursday that Carnes was alerted by company officials in Virginia as to what the agents were looking for. "I'm shocked. I'm in disbelief. I've worked for them for...

Natural Gas Formation By Bacteria Linked To Climate Change And Renewable Energy ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2008) — Natural gas reservoirs in Michigan’s Antrim Shale are providing new information about global warming and the Earth’s climate history, according to a recent study by Steven Petsch, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The study is also good news for energy companies hoping to make natural gas a renewable resource. Petsch found that carbon-hungry bacteria trapped deep in the rock beneath ice sheets produced the gas during the ice age, as glaciers advanced and retreated over Michigan. “Bacteria digested the carbon...

More Insights into Using Bacteria to Generate Electricity from Waste Tempe, Arizona [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] Researchers at the Biodesign Institute are using the tiniest organisms on the planet -- bacteria -- as a viable option to make electricity. In a new study featured in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, lead author Andrew Kato Marcus and colleagues Cesar Torres and Bruce Rittmann have gained critical insights that may lead to commercialization of a promising microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology. "We can use any kind of waste, such as sewage or pig manure, and the microbial fuel cell will generate electrical energy," said Marcus,...

Unpicking the route by which microbes produce methane could help to boost the process. Getting usable fuel out of the heavy oil of Canada's tar fields takes a lot of energy.Ian M. Head Researchers have worked out how natural bacteria deep within the Earth break down crude oil and produce methane. This knowledge could help with projects to encourage these bacteria to covert more oil, faster. And it could point towards a way to produce hydrogen - an even cleaner fuel - by using these natural fuel-processing plants.Microbes living on the crude oil in petroleum reservoirs usually start by biodegrading...

It has always been believed, but never proven that French clay can kill several varieties of bacteria that cause diseases. Today, a researcher at Arizona State University at Tempe is leading a study to show why certain minerals kill certain bacteria. French clay has been shown to kill Mycobacterium ulcerans, or M. Ulcerans, which is so epidemical in Africa. It also treats Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is responsible for deadly infections that are difficult to treat. Furthermore, it has been known for thousands of years that people have used clay for healing wounds, helping indigestion, and killing intestinal worms....

Californians’ easy access to raw milk—it’s available in 350 health food stores and 40 Whole Foods grocery stores around the state—has been placed in serious jeopardy by a few words about a bacteria standard included in Assembly Bill 1735, a piece of agriculture legislation signed into law a couple weeks ago by Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneger, and due to take effect January 1. Also in jeopardy is the mini-empire built up by Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures Dairy Co., the dairy that supplies about 95% of the state’s unpasteurized milk, consumed by more than 100,000 Californians each week. Mark has...

Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies. The result burns. And when Henry Ford...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Some of the nastiest bacteria that thrive in the human gut and make us sick may have evolved from hardy ancestors living deep under the sea, a group of Japanese scientists found.

WASHINGTON – In the wake of scandals involving tainted food and toothpaste from China comes word of a new concern from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission as well as the Food and Drug Administration – toys, makeup, glazed pottery and other products that contain significant amounts of lead. While lead poisoning among children was once mainly caused by old paint, U.S. manufacturers long ago banned the ingredient. Today, a new rash of high lead levels in the bloodstreams of American kids is being caused by foreign products – mainly from China. So serious is the resurgence of lead poisoning...

Researchers in Germany reported Thursday that they had altered the DNA of a disease-causing bacterium so that it can infect a species it cannot normally sicken. Experts called the development a double-edged advance. Although the research could deepen scientists' understanding of human diseases, it also could speed development of novel bioterror agents. The change in infectiousness - the first of its kind ever engineered from scratch - poses no direct threat to human health, scientists said, because the microbe already causes a human disease - the food-borne illness called listeriosis. The change allows that microbe to sicken mice, a species...

A man diagnosed with a rare strain of tuberculosis will be flown to Denver for treatment at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center. This morning, officials at Denver’s National Jewish Medical and Research Center weren’t sure when the now world-famous TB patient would arrive for treatment. "I think they’re still figuring out how he’s going to get here," said hospital spokesman William Allstetter. The unidentified patient was transferred from New York to Atlanta on a CDC airplane. Allstetter stressed that National Jewish, which is world renown for treatment of respiratory and immune disorders, is well-prepared to handle the case....

While Americans are recovering from a scandal over poison pet foods imported from China, FDA inspectors report tainted food imports intended for American humans are being rejected with increasing frequency, as they are filthy, are contaminated with pesticides and tainted with carcinogens, bacteria and banned drugs.

BACTERIA cause disease. The idea that they might also prevent disease is counterintuitive. Yet that is the hypothesis Chris Lowry, of Bristol University, and his colleagues are putting forward in Neuroscience. They think a particular sort of bacterium might alleviate clinical depression. The chance observation that Dr Lowry followed up to arrive at this conclusion was made by Mary O'Brien, an oncologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. Dr O'Brien was trying out an experimental treatment for lung cancer that involved inoculating patients with Mycobacterium vaccae. This is a harmless relative of the bugs that cause tuberculosis and leprosy...

A human body is not the individual organism its proud owner may suppose but rather a walking zoo of microbes and parasites, each exploiting a special ecological niche in its comfortable, temperature-controlled conveyance. Some of these fellow travelers live so intimately with their hosts, biologists are finding, that they accompany them not just in space but also in time, passing from generation to generation for thousands of years. The latest organism to be identified as a longtime member of the human biota club is Streptococcus mutans, the bacterium that causes tooth decay. From samples collected around the world, Dr. Page...

Hundreds die from deadly bacteria JERUSALEM, March 7 (UPI) -- Doctors said an antibiotic-resistant bacterium known as Klebsiella pneumoniae has killed as many as 200 patients in hospitals across Israel. Elderly patients and people with weak immune systems are particularly vulnerable to the bacterium, Arutz Sheva reported. Epidemiologist Yehuda Carmeli of the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv said 400 to 500 people have been infected by the bug. "Thirty to forty percent of them have already died," Carmeli told YNetNews. "However, it is important to note that most of them were in a serious condition, and some were suffering...