Engineered Particles 'may become Antibiotics of the Future'

“Due to rising threat of antibiotic resistance, there is a pressing need for new approaches to fight harmful bacteria.” As reported via the Infectious Diseases Newsletter: “Now, researchers have been successful in developing engineered particles called "phagemids" that enter targeted harmful bacteria and release toxins that kill them. In a study, they developed a particle that works by targeting and killing specific bacteria without causing the cells to burst and release their toxins. These particles are "called phagemids" because they infect the target bacteria with plasmids.”

For further details, see Infectious Diseases.

Posted by Tim Sandle

Microbes and climate change

Scientists are trying to understand how populations of microorganisms regulate emissions of nitrous oxide from streams and rivers. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change. The source of the gas is nitrate, a compound made up of nitrogen and oxygen, which is commonly used in fertilizers and finds its way into waterways from agricultural runoff.

Normally, denitrification results in harmless nitrogen gas. In some cases, however, one of the intermediate compounds, nitrous oxide, is emitted instead of nitrogen gas before the denitrification process completes.

Many researchers argue that rates of nitrous oxide production in natural systems may be influenced by the distribution of microorganisms and whether they have the ability to reduce nitrous oxide to nitrogen gas.

For more details, see the Boise State University

Posted by Tim Sandle

Names for Life: species database

A good source of up-to-date microbial taxonomy is the website Names for Life.

NamesforLife was founded to solve a long-standing problem in biology: resolution of the ambiguity between nomenclature and biological objects and concepts. NamesforLife technology, N4L, makes names actionable. In a N4L-enabled document or database, when encountering a name, the user clicks or mouses over it and a menu of authoritative information is displayed: an up-to-date historical record of both the name and taxon in its current and prior states and its synonyms; technical and non-technical papers in which the organism is a key subject; information about its availability from biological resource centers, databases holding molecular sequence data; and reliable information regarding its pathogenicity, utility, and safety requirements are made available.

For more details, visit Names for Life

Posted by Tim Sandle

Exploring and exploiting microbiological commons

Strainfo is a relatively new on-line database of microbial taxonomy. The site describes itself as having “largest integrated microbial knowledge base” and from my initial evaluation, it appears very comprehensive and has some good links to research papers, which is useful when checking on new species.

For more details, visit Straininfo

Posted by Tim Sandle

BIOS: bacteria database

A good source of information about the latest bacterial species, or even to check the spelling of a species name, is the BIOS database. BIOS is an acronym for ‘Bacterial Insight Orienting System’.

BIOS contains data on 8,242 validly published species and subspecies and 2,000 higher taxa of the world’s Bacteria, Archaea and Cyanobacteria.

Besides taxonomic and strain data, BIOS contains links to further information in the NamesforLife prototype. The BIOS system was developed by a team based at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japan) and is part of a collaborative effort that includes contributions by J Euzéby and B Tindall.

The taxonomy is based on Release 7.4 of the nomenclatural taxonomy of GM Garrity, TG Lilburn and JR Cole.

To visit the site, go to BIOS

Posted by Tim Sandle