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Meat contaminated with Listeria will not show signs of spoilage, such as sliminess or odor. You can't smell a food and tell it it is safe Listeria monocytogenes bacteria can cause a potentially fatal disease in people with vulnerable immune systems. Listeria infection is the third leading cause of death from food poisoning in the United States. About 1,600 people get sick from Listeria each year and about 260 die. 1 A number of food borne outbreaks in recent years have been attributed to Listeria. In 2016, a total of 358 frozen food products were recalled amid a Listeria outbreak...

A new prediction says 2017 and 2018 will see major Lyme disease outbreaks in new areas. This could lead to lifelong health consequences, so where's the vaccine? Thanks to a changing climate it could be one of the worst on record: the ticks that carry the disease have been found in places where it has never before been a problem – and where most people don’t know how to respond. The danger zone isn’t confined to the US: similar signs are flagging potential outbreaks in Europe. Polish researchers predict a major outbreak there in 2018. In theory, Ostfeld’s early warning...

What happens when bacteria evolves to the point where antibiotics are no longer effective? One Israeli company is working hard... Embedded video. No You Tube link at present

Scientists have extracted long-dormant microbes from inside the famous giant crystals of the Naica mountain caves in Mexico - and revived them. The organisms were likely to have been encased in the striking shafts of gypsum at least 10,000 years ago, and possibly up to 50,000 years ago. It is another demonstration of the ability of life to adapt and cope in the most hostile of environments. "Other people have made longer-term claims for the antiquity of organisms that were still alive, but in this case these organisms are all very extraordinary - they are not very closely related to...

The food supply has already shown itself to be alarmingly adept at vectoring superbugs into the human body, but a new report suggests maybe China really wants to see if it can push this to the next level. While the rest of the world finally understands antibiotics in meat are causing an epidemic of multidrug-resistant bacteria, China’s aquaculture industry apparently remains a place that, to quote Bloomberg’s story, “exposes the fish to almost the same doses of medicine the livestock get,” plus whatever drug cocktail gets tossed into the water to fight aquatic disease. This industry currently accounts for about...

A whole new way to fight antibiotic resistance.Scientists have discovered that Tasmanian devil milk contains an arsenal of antimicrobial compounds that can kill some of the most deadly bacterial and fungal infections known to science - including golden staph. Tasmanian devils were found to produce six different types of these antimicrobial compounds - humans produce just one - and scientists were able to successfully synthesise them in the lab to test their effectiveness against a number of drug-resistant bacterial and fungal pathogens. When tested against 25 different bacterial and six fungal strains, the six varieties of antimicrobial compounds were found...

Scientists have discovered a new way to attack Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The team, from Imperial College London, have revealed how the bacteria regulates its salt levels. The bacteria are a common source of food poisoning and are resistant to heat and high salt concentrations, which are used for food preparation and storage. The team hope to use this knowledge to develop a treatment that prevents food poisoning by ensuring all bacteria in food are killed. They are also investigating whether these findings could aid the development of a treatment for patients that would work alongside conventional antibiotics. Staphylococcus aureus bacterium...

Antibiotic made by nose microbes kills MRSA, say researchers, amid hopes that more weapons in the fight against drug resistance might be found in the body Nose-dwelling microbes produce an antibiotic which kills the hospital superbug MRSA, scientists have discovered. The finding suggests that the human body might harbour a rich variety of bacteria that could be harnessed in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a growing cause for concern, with experts warning of an impending “apocalyptic” situation in which patients die following routine surgery because of infections that can no longer be treated. Among the superbugs of...

Scientists have found dangerous drug-resistant "super bacteria" off beaches in Rio de Janeiro that will host Olympic swimming events and in a lagoon where rowing and canoe athletes will compete when the Games start on Aug. 5. The findings from two unpublished academic studies seen by Reuters concern Rio's most popular spots for tourists and greatly increase the areas known to be infected by the microbes normally found only in hospitals. ... A study published in late 2014 had shown the presence of the super bacteria - classified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an...

For the first time, researchers have found a person in the United States carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort, an alarming development that the top U.S. public health official says could mean "the end of the road" for antibiotics. The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Defense Department researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin, according to a study published Thursday in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The authors wrote that the discovery "heralds the...

The White House will announce the initiative on May 13 to jumpstart microbe research that would encompass all those that are found in animals, air, plants, soil and water. The government is hoping that gaining more information would give insight on how to fight disease, increase food production, and fight climate change. The National Microbiome Initiative (PDF) will work with other organizations interested in the research, including University of Michigan and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), One Codex, The BioCollective, the University of California, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The program will have a total of $521 million in...

All sophisticated life on the planet Earth may owe its existence to one freakish event. At first glance, a tree could not be more different from the caterpillars that eat its leaves, the mushrooms sprouting from its bark, the grass growing by its trunk, or the humans canoodling under its shade. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Zoom in closely, and you will see that these organisms are all surprisingly similar at a microscopic level. Specifically, they all consist of cells that share the same basic architecture. These cells contain a central nucleus—a command center that is stuffed with DNA and...

The unique mix of bacteria you leave behind wherever you go might be used to identify you. Touching a phone, or just walking through a room, will leave behind hundreds of microbial species, sometimes including Staphylococcus aureus (inset).PHOTOS: (LEFT TO RIGHT) SCIENCE SOURCE; MATTHEW RAKOLA One morning last summer, evolutionary biologist Jose Lopez was having coffee on the back porch of his house in Hollywood, Florida, when two burglars climbed in through a front window and did what home invaders usually do: They rifled through drawers, disconnected the TV to carry it off, and even opened the fridge to...

A team of Japanese scientists has found a species of bacteria that eats the type of plastic found in most disposable water bottles. The discovery, published Thursday in the journal Science, could lead to new methods to manage the more than 50 million tons of this particular type of plastic produced globally each year. The plastic found in water bottles is known as polyethylene terephalate, or PET. It is also found in polyester clothing, frozen-dinner trays and blister packaging. "If you walk down the aisle in Walmart you're seeing a lot of PET," said Tracy Mincer, who studies plastics in...

A deadly bacterial outbreak is being investigated in Wisconsin with at least 44 reported cases, killing 18 people, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The rare infection results from a naturally occurring bacteria called Elizabethkingia anophelis, which are found in soil, fresh water and reservoirs, health officials said. Symptoms include fever, shortness of breath, chills or redness on the skin. The outbreak has primarily affected people over the age of 65 and everyone infected had a history of at least one serious underlying health condition, according to the Department of Health Services. State and federal health officials said...

Bacteria can see, using their entire one-celled selves as a tiny camera lens to focus light, researchers reported Tuesday. The ability goes beyond just a vague sense of where the light is, and allows the one-celled organisms to find just the right spot, the team reported in the journal eLife. "The idea that bacteria can see their world in basically the same way that we do is pretty exciting," said Conrad Mullineaux of the University of Freiburg in Germany and Queen Mary University of London.

The tiny animals - otherwise known as water bears - are famous for surviving in the vacuum of space, among other impossibly hostile environments. But they just got even weirder: According to research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tardigrades get a massive chunk of their DNA from other organisms. "Foreign" DNA is not a foreign concept to scientists. Through a process called horizontal gene transfer, any organism can theoretically swap genes with another. It happens among bacteria all the time, which is how antibiotic resistance spreads so quickly. But it's less common in more...

Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that bacteria--often viewed as lowly, solitary creatures--are actually quite sophisticated in their social interactions and communicate with one another through similar electrical signaling mechanisms as neurons in the human brain. In a study published in this week's advance online publication of Nature, the scientists detail the manner by which bacteria living in communities communicate with one another electrically through proteins called "ion channels."

The Mutant Genes Behind the Black Death Only a few genetic changes were enough to turn an ordinary stomach bug into the bacteria responsible for the plague. Pieter Bruegel the ElderThe Triumph of Death (1562), by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. By: Carrie ArnoldOctober 6, 2015 Comments (1) Download PDF Print Each year, 4 million people visit Yosemite National Park in California. Most bring back photos, postcards and an occasional sunburn. But two unlucky visitors this summer got a very different souvenir. They got the plague.This quintessential medieval disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted most often by fleabites,...

On February 24, 1988, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski began an ingenious ongoing experiment to test and demonstrate evolution. He and his coworkers have nursed thousands of generations of the common gut bacterium Escherichia coli, feeding them broth with limited nutrients. The team watched for decades to see if the germs might evolve a solution to this low-nutrient challenge. After about 31,500 generations, some finally cracked the code and changed. Evolution promoter Richard Dawkins wrote that this was “a beautiful example of evolution in action,” and that “creationists hate it.”1 The Harvard Gazette recently wrote, “Though the bacteria were originally genetically...