News by Subject Biology

A new approach could illuminate a critical stage in the life cycle of one of the most common malaria parasites. The approach was developed by scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan and published in the Malaria Journal.

Some people are better protected than others against urinary tract infections. This may be because their bodies produce more of a protein called uromodulin. An interdisciplinary research team has now found out exactly how this helper protein brings relief when nature calls and how this knowledge might benefit the treatment and prevention of these painful inflammations.

Researchers have solved the mystery of why a species of bacteria that causes food poisoning can swim faster in stickier liquids, such as within guts.

For the first time, scientists have shown that the bacterium that causes the tick-borne disease anaplasmosis interferes with tick gene expression for its survival inside cells and to spread to a new vertebrate host. Girish Neelakanta of Old Dominion University and colleagues report these findings in a study published July 2nd in PLOS Genetics.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have found that flame-sterilizing shake-flasks, to avoid introducing microbial contaminants, considerably increases the carbon dioxide concentration in the flasks. This enhanced carbon dioxide concentration affects the growth of some microbial species, which may affect the quantity of vaccines or other valuable substances produced by the microbes.

Berkeley Lab science snapshots July 2020

In a pair of new studies, Rolf Halden, director of the ASU Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering and author for the 2020 Book Environment, describes the process and highlights important new findings extracted from the municipal wastewater most of us contribute to on a daily basis. Halden is also a professor at ASU's School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.