(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Working with lab cultures and mice, Johns Hopkins scientists have found that a strain of the common gut pathogen Bacteroides fragilis causes colon inflammation and increases activity of a gene called spermine oxidase in the intestine. The effect is to expose the gut to hydrogen peroxide — the caustic, germ-fighting substance found in many medicine cabinets — and cause DNA damage, contributing to the formation of colon tumors, say the scientists.

(American Institute of Physics) Opportunistic seaweed, barnacles, and bacterial films can quickly befoul almost any underwater surface, but researchers are now using advances in nanotechnology and materials science to design environmentally friendly underwater coatings that repel these biological stowaways.

(University of Virginia) A vampire-like bacteria that leeches onto specific other bacteria — including certain human pathogens — has the potential to serve as a living antibiotic for a range of infectious diseases, a new study indicates.

(University of California – Santa Barbara) In a new study, University of California Santa Barbara scientists explain how they used DNA to identify microbes present in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and how they identified the microbes responsible for consuming the large amount of natural gas present immediately after the spill. They also explain how water temperature played a key role in the way bacteria reacted to the spill.

(Burness Communications) The 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene — the largest of its kind in the world — will bring together in one place global experts who are battling a wide range of bacteria, viruses, parasites and other pathogens that each year kill or sicken hundreds of millions of people.

(University of Houston) A team of researchers from the University of Houston and St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital are working to develop improved screening methods to detect a potentially lethal, drug-resistant superbug that has made its way to Texas. Commonly called CRKP, the bacteria were found in three patients at St. Luke’s, and the team published a report about it in the journal Diagnostic Microbiology & Infectious Disease. The researchers believe these are the first confirmed cases in Texas.

(DOE/Joint Genome Institute) Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a “twilight zone” where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year. They appear in the September 2, 2011, edition of Science.

(DOE/Joint Genome Institute) Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a “twilight zone” where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year. They appear in the September 2, 2011, edition of Science.

(California Institute of Technology) Bacteria can generally be divided into two classes: those with just one membrane and those with two. Now researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have used a powerful imaging technique to find what they believe may be the missing link between the two classes, as well as a plausible explanation for how the outer membrane may have arisen.

(DOE/Joint Genome Institute) Located between 200 and 1,000 meters below the ocean surface is a “twilight zone” where insufficient sunlight penetrates for microorganisms to perform photosynthesis. Details are now emerging about a microbial metabolic pathway that helps solve the mystery of how certain bacteria capture carbon in the dark ocean, enabling a better understanding of what happens to the carbon that is fixed in the oceans every year. They appear in the September 2, 2011, edition of Science.