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This one is pretty neat: biologists at UC San Diego created a living "neon signs" made from glowing bacteria that fluoresce in unison:
In order to create the light they needed to attach a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of bacteria and then synchronise the body clocks of the bacteria within the colony so that they glowed on and off in unison. The team created signs that spelled out "UC SD".
Using the same technique they used to create these flashing signs, the team also created a simple bacterial sensor capable of detecting arsenic. This sensor would make the cells blink on and off more slowly, indicating the presence of the poison.
Link - via Laughing Squid
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Words: Marc Abrahams
Music: Jacques Offenbach, Giuseppe Verdi, and Arthur Sullivan
(And thanks to Mary Ellen Davey, Harriet Provine, Dany Adams, and Carl Zimmer for bacteriological insights, and Robert Csillag, DDS, and his staff for inspiration on microbial matters.)
The Bacterial Opera premiered as part of the 20th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Sanders Theater, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 30, 2010.
Video of the performance can be seen at www.improbable.com.
Original Cast
Stage manager and conductor: David Stockton
Kirkospocokococcus: Maria Ferrante
Gallileococcus: Ben Sears
Sidekickococcus: Roberta Gilbert
Accordionococcus: Thomas Michel
Bacillusnameless: Marc Andelman
The woman: Jenny Gutbezahl
Supporting bacilli: Sheldon Glashow, Roy Glauber, William Lipscomb, James Muller, Frank Wilczek, Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Jason Webley, Mary Ellen Davey, Rich Losick, and a multitude of bacteria.
Pianist: Branden Grimmett
Costume designer: Jenn Martinez.
The characters are a WOMAN, who spends the entire time—except at the very end—sitting on a chair napping with her mouth open so we can see her teeth, and the BACTERIA who live on one of her front teeth. Those bacteria, KIRKOSPOCKOCOCCUS, SIDEKICKOCOCCUS, and GALLILEOCOCCUS, do all the singing. Most of the characters on stage are non-singing bacteria. In the premiere one bacterium played the accordion.
ACT 1—Stuck on This Tooth
NARRATOR: Tonight’s opera stars several trillion bacteria—would you all please take a bow?—several
trillion bacteria… and one human being—a woman, who as you can see, is asleep on a chair, with her mouth hanging open. The action takes place on one tooth inside that woman’s mouth. The main characters are called KIRKOSPOCKOCOCCUS, SIDEKICKOCOCCUS and GALLILEOCOCCUS. We have arranged a sort of microscope so you can see them. Let’s take a look. Will one of the technicians please turn on the microscope?
[KIRKOSPOCKOCOCCUS AND SIDEKICK-OCOCCUS AND GALLILEOCOCCUS COME ON STAGE AND TAKE A BOW.]
Ah. Here they are, magnified so very much that—believe it or not—these teeny-tiny, liddle-widdle bacteria appear to be the SAME SIZE AS THE HUMAN BEING. Isn’t that a hoot? Here in Act 1, KIRKOSPOCKOCOCCUS and SIDEKICKOCOCCUS will explain why they hate being stuck, their whole lives, on this tooth. But you know, and I know, that what they REALLY hate are all the many, many other bacteria species in their crowded neighborhood. Let’s listen to them gripe…
[TUNE: “Barcarolle” by Offenbach, from “Tales of Hoffman”]
KIRKOSPOCKOCOCCUS and SIDEKICKOCOCCUS:
Nasty neighbors! Nasty neighbors!
Nasty neighbors! Nasty neighbors!
Nasty neighbors! Nasty neighbors!
[HERE IS WHERE WORDS BEGIN IN ORIGINAL OFFENBACH VERSION]
Streptococcus! Stuck on this tooth,
With neighbors who hurt and mock us.
Let’s name names. Let’s tell the whole truth.
Let’s name the scum on this tooth!
TrepoNEEma dentiCOla! What a loathsome neighbor!
Squirts and leaks and drips and drools
Such stinky molecules.
Such stinky molecules! Prob’ly some kind of peptide…
Those stinky molecules—They eat holes in my hide.
Stinky molecules. Stinky molecules.
Pee yooo!
Porph’ro-MO-nas gingi-VA-lis! What a loathsome neighbor!
Night and day, they spew and they spray / Bacteriocin spray.
Bacteriocin spray / Makes our guts leak away.
Our guts leak away. They leak away.
Oooh! Oooh!
ACT 2—A Vision of Distant, Bigger Things
more …
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Each of us have more microbes on and in our bodies than we have cells of our own. Some are beneficial; others we’d like to do without. Then there are millions that are neither, but may be profitable someday. Sound ridiculous? Consider this scenario:
IMAGINE a scientist gently swabs your left nostril with a Q-tip and finds that your nose contains hundreds of species of bacteria. That in itself is no surprise; each of us is home to some 100 trillion microbes. But then she makes an interesting discovery: in your nose is a previously unknown species that produces a powerful new antibiotic. Her university licenses it to a pharmaceutical company; it hits the market and earns hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you deserve a cut of the profits?
It is a tricky question, because it defies our traditional notions of property and justice. You were not born with the germ in your nose; at some point in your life, it infected you. On the other hand, that microbe may be able to grow and reproduce only in a human nose. You provided it with an essential shelter. And its antibiotics may help keep you healthy, by killing disease-causing germs that attempt to invade your nose.
Bioethicists are wrangling with the notion of microbe ownership. Carl Zimmer, whose navel microbes have already been posted at Neatorama, writes about the issues involved at the New York Times. Link -via The Loom
This
crab has got a green thumb ... er, make that white , hairy claw.
Marine ecologist Andrew Thurber, who was studying a new species of yeti crab (named after the hair-like brisles on its claws) called Kiwa hirsuta discovered that the crustacean is also an avid gardener:
The bristles that cover the crab’s claws and body are coated in gardens of symbiotic bacteria, which derive energy from the inorganic gases of the seeps. The crab eats the bacteria, using comb-like mouthparts to harvest them from its bristles.
The bacteria in K. puravida gardens are closely related to species that live in other cold seeps and hot hydrothermal vents all over the world. “It looks like the bacteria may use the seeps as stepping stones, to create this global connected population that consumes the energy coming out of seeps and vents,” says Thurber.
Thurber thinks that K. puravida waves its claws to actively farm its bacterial gardens: movements stir up the water around the bacteria, ensuring that fresh supplies of oxygen and sulphide wash over them and helping them to grow. “This 'dance' is extraordinary and comical,” says Van Dover. “We've never seen this strategy before.”
Nature News has the story and the video clip: Link
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The Philips company introduces lights that run without electricity or solar power. Instead, they harness the bioluminescence of bacteria. You have to feed them fuel, namely methane and compost. The lights developed so far aren’t bright enough to read by, but they may have other uses, like illuminating dark roads and exit signs. Link -via Buzzfeed
Are you a messy eater? Is ketchup for whatever reason incredibly attracted to the front of your t-shirts? University of California, Davis is working on a solution that could be designed just for you; a fabric that kills bacteria and breaks down compounds for all your fashion needs.
“The new fabric has potential applications in biological and chemical protective clothing for health care, food processing and farmworkers, as well as military personnel,” said Ning Liu, who conducted the work as a doctoral student in Professor Gang Sun’s group in the UC Davis Division of Textiles and Clothing.
Liu developed a method to incorporate a compound known as 2-anthraquinone carboxylic acid, or 2-AQC, into cotton fabrics. This chemical bonds strongly to the cellulose in cotton, making it difficult to wash off, unlike current self-cleaning agents. Unlike some other experimental agents that have been applied to cotton, it does not affect the properties of the fabric.
When exposed to light, 2-AQC produces so-called reactive oxygen species, such as hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide, which kill bacteria and break down organic compounds such as pesticides and other toxins.
Over at Neatorama, we have a lot of scientific-minded readers, many of whom aren’t particularly impressed with some of the art projects we post here. Hopefully this microbial art will be an exception though as it takes some scientific materials, bacteria and Petri dishes, to make some really cool designs. Check out works from a variety of bacteria artists over at Flavorwire.
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Before
you reach for that hand sanitizer, consider this: rather than killing
germs, that action is actually more likely to make you - and society -
sicker.
What is worse, perhaps the most comprehensive study of the effectiveness of antibiotic and non-antibiotic soaps in the U.S., led by Elaine Larson at Columbia University (with Aiello as a coauthor), found that while for healthy hand washers there was no difference between the effects of the two, for chronically sick patients (those with asthma and diabetes, for example) antibiotic soaps were actually associated with increases in the frequencies of fevers, runny noses and coughs [4]. In other words, antibiotic soaps appeared to have made those patients sicker. Let me say that again: Most people who use antibiotic soap are no healthier than those who use normal soap. AND those individuals who are chronically sick and use antibiotic soap appear to get SICKER.
Rob Dunn wrote a guest blog over at Scientific America that every germophobe should read: Link (Illustration: Don Smith) - via We, Beasties
Economists do it with spreadsheets and charts. Architects favor balsa wood. But when a biologist needs a model, it’s gotta be alive. Here’s to the tiny critters that have inched our world forward, one microscopic step at a time.
1. Big Name: Shewanella oneidensis
(Image credit: Flicker user Justin Burns)
Why It Deserves a TV Special: Shewanella can go without air longer than David Blaine. If there’s no oxygen available, this crafty bacterium can switch gears and consume metal instead. Thanks to this remarkable skill, shewanella can live almost anywhere—from the surface of the Earth to the bottom of the ocean. Not surprisingly, scientists see the bacterium as the perfect model for studying how life evolved during the early days of the Earth, when oxygen was scarce.
How It’s Saving the Planet: No one knows exactly how shewanella’s alternative breathing method works. What scientists do know is that the process transfers extra electrons to metals. When shewanella breathe in uranium and chromium (metals that can be toxic to humans), the extra electrons change the metals so that they can’t move through ground water. In other words, shewanella can actually stop toxins in their tracks. And that’s good news, because dangerous metals sometimes leak from factories and dumps, poisoning our water supplies. Because shewanella can stop these pollutants, scientists are working on ways to protect lakes and streams by surrounding toxic waste sites with the bacteria.
2. Big Name: Escherichia coli
You Know It As: E. coli
(Image credit: Flickr user Carlos Rosas)
Don’t Believe What You Read: E. coli has a reputation as the scourge of the salad bar, but the vast majority of E. coli strains won’t make people sick. In fact, E. coli is one of the most important bacteria inside your intestinal tract. Scientists love working with it, because it’s a simple organism that reproduces quickly and because it contains the component parts of more complicated life forms, such as RNA and DNA.
How It Backs Up Darwin: Believe it or not, this infamous bacterium has done a lot to further our understanding of evolution. Because of its stunning ability to reproduce quickly, E. coli is an excellent model for tracing genetic mutations. In June 2008, New Scientist reported on a research project at the University of Michigan that investigated 44,000 generations of E. coli. Twenty years ago, the researchers started with a single bacterium; then they separated its descendants into isolated populations and watched them grow. Around generation No. 31,500, one population developed the ability to metabolize citrate, a nutrient in the culture of the petri dishes. It was the equivalent of one group of people—say, Europeans—suddenly being able to digest dirt. The researchers figured this ability was based on several mutations that just happened to eventually combine into a useful trait. Try as they might, the other populations never hit on this exact combination. According to New Scientist, the experiment suggests there’s a lot of chance involved in evolution. One group can randomly develop a useful ability that the other groups never acquire, even given enough time and resources.
3. Big Name: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Adorable Nickname: Chlamy
(Image credit: Flickr user Orange Coast College Biology Department)
Its Place on the Family Tree: Prominent. One of the oldest forms of life, these single-cell algae live at the evolutionary branch that separates animals and plants, meaning they share characteristics with both. For instance, chlamy can transform light into energy like a plant, but it can also swim like an animal by propelling itself through water with flagella (the same wiggly tails that are attached to sperm cells). While chlamy can offer us insight into various aspects of evolution, it’s also helping us tackle human disaease. Because the algae’s flagella resemble cilia, the tiny hair-like structures that line your organs, scientists also use chlamy to model and understand the cilia’s role in illnesses such as kidney and heart disease.
How It Will Solve the Energy Crisis: One of the byproducts of chlamy’s photosynthetic process is hydrogen, an element people will need en masse to drive hydrogen-powered cars. Right now, hydrogen fuel is derived from natural gas, a non-renewable resource. Scientists are hoping that in time, however, chlamy will provide a cheaper, safer, and greener way to produce large amounts of fuel.
4. Big Name: Caenorhabditis elegans
(Image credit: Flickr user moneydick)
Why Scientists Love It: This microscopic roundworm is see-through. No, really. Thanks to its transparent flesh, biologists can easily watch what’s going on inside. And there’s a lot to see. Despite being less than 1 millimeter long, this multi-cell worm has all the physiological systems of much larger animals. Better still, 35 percent of its genes are related to ours. Another Big Advantage: C. elegans are easy to care for, needing only a petri dish for a home and E. coli to eat.
How It Will Help Us Live Forever: Scientists have used C. elegans to study what happens to individual cells and entire organisms as they age. There are two dominant theories of aging: One theory posits that aging is a cumulative process of wear and tear on cells, while the other maintains that genes control aging. A recent study of C. elegans at Stanford University provided evidence for the latter. The study found that as the worms aged, levels of three transcription factors (molecular switches that turn genes on and off) become unbalanced. These changes triggered the genetic pathways that turn spry young worms into decrepit old ones. And because it’s a lot easier to control transcription factors than it is to prevent all the things that can damage cells (injury, disease, radiation), scientists are optimistic about finding a way to keep us young forever. As Rutgers researcher Monica Driscoll told Scientific American, “Once you’ve figured out what a key molecule is doing in the worm, you can look for it in humans and expect the same things to happen.”
________________________________________
The article above, written by Maggie Koerth-Baker, is reprinted with permission from the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!
If you can’t live without a cup of coffee, you have something in common with the bacterium Pseudomonas putida CBB5. The bug was discovered to live on caffeine – literally!
The caffeine-munching bacterium was found in a flower bed on the University of Iowa campus.
Ryan Summers, a doctoral student there, identified four digestive proteins that it uses to break down caffeine, which allows it to live and grow, he explains in a summary of his research presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans.
"This work, for the first time, demonstrates the enzymes and genes utilized by bacteria to live on caffeine," he writes.
There are many ethnicities of man, but according to microbes, there are only three kinds of people:
Our gut contains trillions of bacteria, known collectively as the microbiome. Their cells outnumber our own by ten to one. We are, to the closest approximation, thriving communities of bacteria encased in a human shell. No two people have quite the same collection – we differ slightly in the species we contain, and there can be hundreds jostling for space.
But this variation isn’t infinite. Previous studies have shown that once people reach adulthood, their microbiomes become remarkably stable. Even after the communities are rocked by antibiotic assaults, they rebound to their old selves, recruiting members in the same proportions as before. Now, Manimozhiyan Arumugam and Jeroen Raes from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have found that these constraints go even further. There seem to be just three preferred ways of building a community of gut bacteria.
Why is this useful? Because it can help doctors:
Enterotypes aren’t quite as well-defined as, say, blood groups, but they could have similar uses as medical markers. The microbiome helps us to digest our food and it affects our susceptibility to diseases; the enterotypes could reflect these roles. Each enterotype was dominated by a specific genus of bacteria, and varied in the proportions of the other members. They produce energy in subtly different ways, they’re particularly efficient at breaking down different nutrients, and they specialise at creating different vitamins.
Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science blog has the details: Link
The Gippsland Lakes are a chain of lakes in eastern Victoria, Australia. A combination of fire and floods changed the conditions of the water and led to the proliferation of Synechococcus, a photosynthetic cyanobacteria. But that wasn’t what knocked everyone’s socks off.
As summer took hold at the end of 2008, what happened surprised everyone – a new species called Noctiluca Scintillans began to prosper, by feeding on the Synechococcus.
In contrast to the widespread bright green of the Synechococcus, Noctiluca Scintillans was visible during the day as localised murky red patches, often building up on sections of shoreline facing the wind during the day. At night though, Noctiluca Scintillans produced a remarkable form of bioluminescence (popularly referred to as ‘phosphorescence’) – the water glowing brightly wherever there was movement – in the waves breaking on the shore, in ripples in the water and wherever people played in the water.
See more pictures of this phenomena at Phil’s Blog. Link -via Monkeyfilter
The amoeba species Dictyostelium discoideum slime mold (or dicty, as scientists lovingly call it) is one fascinating organism. For instance, its life cycle involves unicellular amoeba, then a multicellular slug that scoots around to find food, then a "fruiting body" to disperse spores to new growing areas.
Scientists have just discovered that the slime mold is even cannier than previously thought: it can also "farm."
Research described in Nature shows that a third of these spores contain some of the bacteria to grow at the new site.
Food management has been seen in animals including ants and snails, but never in creatures as simple as these.
The behaviour falls short of the kind of "farming" that more advanced animals do; ants, for example, nurture a single fungus species that no longer exists in the wild.
But the idea that an amoeba that spends much of its life as a single-celled organism could hold short of consuming a food supply before decamping is an astonishing one.
More than just a snack for the journey of dispersal, the idea is that the bacteria that travel with the spores can "seed" a new bacterial colony, and thus a food source in case the new locale should be lacking in bacteria.
British designer Tamsin van Essen has created ceramic cups that appear to have been colonized by various bacteria. Pictured above is streptococcus. No matter how thirsty I was I couldn’t be convinced to drink from that vessel .
The raw clay for these cups was contaminated with various ‘foreign’ materials, to mimic the growth and multiplication of bacterial colonies. Bringing the microscopic to the macroscopic level, the contamination spread in an uncontrollable way during firing.
Link – Via Book Of Joe
BioCouture is an environmental sustainability project by designer Suzanne Lee to grow fabric for clothing using bacterial cellulose. The resulting sheets can be molded while wet, or cut and sewn when dry. Examples of her work are currently on display at London’s Science Museum.
Link via Nerdcore | Artist’s Website | Exhibit Website | Photo: BioCouture
Conventional sewage treatment plants use several different bacteria to break-down the waste and the ammonium and phosphates that are produced thereafter. Each of these bacteria needs different environments that must be created artificially. However, Gijs Kuenen at Delft University of Technology in the
Netherlands has created a new process of cleaning sewage water that uses a recently discovered microorganism called anammox bacteria. It cuts out many of the bacteria normally needed, while producing methane as a byproduct, saving and giving energy at the same time.
One by-product of this [new] process is methane, which Kuenen proposes to harvest and use as fuel. The team calculates that, far from consuming energy, the process could generate 24 watt-hours per person per day. “This is about trying to make waste water treatment plants completely sustainable, in the sense that they could even produce energy, which is not the case in present treatment facilities,” says Kuenen.
(image credit: Jonathan Hordle)
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Those who know me personally know my suspicion that antibacterial soaps are the work of the devil himself.
In a nutshell: a) they don’t work because you have to leave it on your skin for 2 minutes for it to work. Ever done that? b) they kill off the good bacteria that defend your body against truly harmful ones and c) they promote resistance to bactericidal agents over time.
Anyhoo, I’m going to add this to my list of bad things about antibacterial soaps: triclosan, the antibacterial chemical used in many consumer products, may interfere with the body’s endocrine system.
The FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency say they are taking a fresh look at triclosan, which is so ubiquitous that is found in the urine of 75 percent of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reassessment is the latest signal that the Obama administration is willing to reevaluate the possible health impacts of chemicals that have been in widespread use.
In a letter to a congressman that was obtained by The Washington Post, the FDA said that recent scientific studies raise questions about whether triclosan disrupts the body’s endocrine system and whether it helps to create bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. An advisory panel to the FDA said in 2005 that there was no evidence the antibacterial soaps work better than regular soap and water.
German researchers studying wasps known as beewolves (Philanthus triangulum) find they have a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria Streptomyces. The bacteria produce nine different antibiotics that protect the wasps from harmful bacterial infections and even fungus!
Female beewolves cultivate the useful bugs in specialised antennal gland reservoirs and apply them to the ceilings of brood cells, said the scientists. The wasp larvae, growing in the cells, later take up the bacteria and transfer them to the outside surfaces of their cocoons.
Laboratory tests showed that the beewolves employed an advanced form of “combination medication” using nine antibiotic varieties.
Johannes Kroiss, from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, said: ‘A combined treatment with streptochlorin and eight different piericidines we were able to isolate from the cocoon helps to fend off a very broad spectrum of micro-organisms.
Not only do the wasps use a combination of broad-spectrum antibiotics, they’ve been doing it for millions of years. Link -via the Presurfer
Photo: NASA
Michael Mautner of Virginia Commonwealth University says that part of the human condition we enjoy is a responsibility to ensure life continues after our home, Earth, dies. It will happen, someday. And panspermia missions now will fulfill our moral obligation to see that life on other planets gets a fair chance, even if we won’t ever see the results.
As Mautner explains in his study published in an upcoming issue of theJournal of Cosmology, the strategy is to deposit an array of primitive organisms on potentially fertile planets and protoplanets throughout the universe… (he) has identified potential breeding grounds, which include extrasolar planets, accretion disks surrounding young stars that hold the gas and dust of future planets, and – at an even earlier stage – interstellar clouds that hold the materials to create stars.
To transport the microorganisms, Mautner proposes using sail-ships. These ships offer a low-cost transportation method with solar sails, which can achieve high velocities using the radiation pressure from light. The microorganisms could be bundled in tiny capsules, each containing about 100,000 microorganisms and weighing 0.1 micrograms.
The article addresses criticisms such as the possibility of interfering with any pre-existing extraterrestrial life.
First of all, Mautner explains that we can minimize these chances by targeting very primitive locations where life could not have evolved yet. In addition, he argues that, since extraterrestrial life is not currently known to exist, our first concern should be with preserving our family of organic gene/protein life that we know exists.
So what’s the consensus? Are we morally obligated to “keep the ball rolling” as far as life in the Universe goes?
Most states and countries would be loathe to name a state bacteria, but Wisconsin is not most places. After boasting their dairy products in the form of giant foam cheeseheads for years, the state is taking a new step towards celebrating the substance that put the state on the map –cheese.
Wisconsin Assembly Bill 556 aims to honor bacterium Lactococcus (the little guy that helps make milk become cheese) as the state microbe.
If the measure passes, be sure to keep an eye on the Neatorama store, because I’m sure it won’t be long until Giant Microbes releases the first ever state microbe, Lactococcus. The cute guy to the left is in fact not him, but his distant cousin, mad cow disease.
Scientists have always thought that colorful mineral deposits in caves are the work of geology, not biology – but they were wrong: unusual deposits may actually be microbial poop!
"We’re finding that you need to look at things you might write off as not being biological—they might be biological," said Penelope Boston, a cave scientist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.
The microbes were found on the walls of lava tubes in Hawaii, New Mexico, and the Portuguese Azores islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean (see map).
The finds include "a lovely blue-green ooze dripping out of the [cave] ceiling in Hawaii; a vein of what looks like a gold, crunchy mineral in New Mexico; and, in the Azores, amazing pink hexagons," said Diana Northup, a geomicrobiologist at the University of New Mexico.
"That’s the waste—the bug poop, if you will."
Link (Photo: Kenneth Ingham)
Dutch designer Jelte van Abbema created a typeface out of e. coli bacteria. Cliff Kuang wrote in Fast Company about how he did it:
Van Abbema created the font by stamping bacteria into paper, and then placing the paper in a jury-rigged incubator, which provided the right humdity and warmth for the organisms. As they multiplied and died, the resulting fonts changed color and shape. As van Abbema says, bacteria “transforms the image to something new,” creating something that is literally alive, changing every minute without ever being tended.
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Biochemistry professor Judy Walls of the University of Missouri is working on ways to use sulfate-reducing bacteria to render radioactive metals harmless. This, she hopes, would provide a cheaper alternative to conventional cleanup:
The bacteria Wall is studying are bio-corrosives and can change the solubility of heavy metals. They can take uranium and convert it to uraninite, a nearly insoluble substance that will sink to the bottom of a lake or stream. Wall is looking into the bacteria’s water cleansing ability and how long the changed material would remain inert.
Wall’s research could also be beneficial to heavy metal pollution from storage tanks and industrial waste. The bacteria are already present in more than 7,000 heavy metal contaminated sites, but they live in a specific range of oxygen and temperature, making them difficult to control.
Link via Popular Science
(Image: Science Daily)
All you science-lovers on Neatorama should appreciate this great sweater featuring the Periodic Table of Elements. The sleeves feature fungi and bacteria names. The creator made it for her husband, a microbiologist working in the pharmaceutical industry.
At one time, scientists were surprised to discover microbes living in places that were thought to be uninhabitable. That doesn’t happen anymore, because scientists know life can thrive almost anywhere on earth.
After 3 billion years of evolution, life has flowed into every last nook and cranny, from the bottom of the sea to the upper edge of the stratosphere. From blazing heat and freezing cold to pure acidity and atomic bomb-caliber radiation, there’s seemingly no stress so great that some bug can’t handle it.
This gallery highlights a few particularly tough species of bacteria and archaea, a lesser-appreciated but equally-vast branch of the organismal tree. Until the late 1970s, archaea was lumped in with bacteria, a confusion that speaks to the embryonic state of human microbial knowledge. Less than 1 percent of Earth’s microorganisms have been identified, and most of those won’t even grow in a lab.
Shown is Ferroplasma acidophilum, which can survive in an environment with a ph of zero, meaning it thrives in toxic waste. Link
The recently revived Herminiimonas glacei – image: The Society for General Microbiology
Forgetting the lessons of Jurrasic Park, scientists have "awaken" a strain of bacteria called Hermeniimonas glacei from a 120,000-year slumber trapped beneath a block of ice. What could go wrong?
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 the bacteria were in a spore-like state in which there’s not a lot of metabolism going on, so the bacteria wouldn’t be reproducing much. It’s possible the bacteria could have been slowly metabolizing and replicating. [...]
To coax the bacteria back to life, Brenchley, Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and their Penn State colleagues incubated the samples at 36 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) for seven months, followed by more than four months at 41 degrees F (5 degrees C).
The resulting colonies of the originally purple-brown bacteria, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, are alive and well. "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," Brenchley said. "It was viable."
Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience has the fascinating story: Link
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A few years ago, Drew Oliver got a Eureka moment. He was reading a memoir by scientist Richard Feynman. In it, the physicist wrote about being amazed looking at a water droplet through a microscope to see a microbe swimming about. This gave Drew a multimillion dollar business idea: a line of plushy germs for the scientifically-minded.
With the help of his brother, Drew launched Giant Microbes, which makes dozens of cute plush dolls of germs that cause some of life's most miserable diseases like ebola, HIV, flesh eating bacteria, ... and yes, even STDs!
We've recently gotten our shipments of Giant Microbes, so if there's someone close to your heart that could use a little herpes, mad cow, or even the black plague, here's your chance: Link
Bonnie Bassler, professor of molecular biology at Princeton, explains how bacteria communicate with one another in this TED talk.
She begins with bioluminescence, and why it only occurs after bacteria have multiplied to a critical mass/concentration. She then extends the concept to virulence in human infections (the bacteria actually control their pathogenicity).
A related concept is that multicellular creatures (humans, etc) evolved [or were created, depending on your cosmic view] using an extension of the same principle of quorum sensing that bacteria use to distinguish "self" from "other."
She closes by explaining how the principles elucidated in this talk might be used to overcome antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
– via videosift
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
