Microbes

The Olympics of Germs: Mayo Expert Offers Tips on Avoiding Illness in Crowds

Massive crowds from around the globe will mingle in London during the Olympics, and that means a world-class array of germs will mix with them. Mayo Clinic infectious diseases expert Gregory Poland, MD, offers several tips for avoiding illness when you are around lots of ...More
July 26, 2012
Posted in News
Gut Microbes Battle a Common Set of Viruses Shared by Global Populations

The human gut is home to a teeming ecosystem of microbes that is intimately involved in both human health and disease. But while the gut microbiota is interacting with our body, they are also under constant attack from viruses. In a study published online in Genome ...More
June 25, 2012
Posted in News
Census of Microbes in Healthy Humans is Reported

Trillions of microbes inhabit the human body, occupying virtually every nook and cranny. And most of the time, this relationship is a friendly one, with microbes helping to digest food, strengthen the immune system and ward off dangerous pathogens. But despite their ...More
June 13, 2012
Posted in News
Infectious Disease May Have Shaped Human Origins

Roughly 100,000 years ago, human evolution reached a mysterious bottleneck: Our ancestors had been reduced to perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 individuals living in Africa. In time, “behaviorally modern” humans would emerge from this population, expanding dramatically in both number ...More
June 5, 2012
Posted in News
Scientists Work Together to Achieve Milestone Against Deadly Diseases

Investigators at the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID) and the Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) announced today that they reached a significant milestone by determining 1,000 protein structures from infectious ...More
June 5, 2012
Posted in News
Report Details Efforts to Improve, Advance Indoor Microbial Sampling

Humans spend greater than 90 percent of their time indoors, but we're never alone there. Bacteria and viruses, scientists estimate, make up half of the world's biomass—some 10 nonillion (1 followed by 31 zeros) microorganisms—and we most often meet them within enclosed ...More
May 30, 2012
Posted in News, Environmental Hygiene
Where the Germs Are: New Study Finds Office Kitchens, Break Rooms are Crawling with Bacteria

If you thought the restroom was the epicenter of workplace germs you don’t want to know about office break rooms and kitchens. The place where U.S. workers eat and prepare their lunch topped the list of office germ “hotspots,” with sink and microwave door handles found to ...More
May 29, 2012
Posted in News, Environmental Hygiene, Hand Hygiene, PPE & Standard Precautions
An Exploration of 'Germ Porn'

There's finally a name for those who can't turn away from the mainstream media's latest segment on how microbes are overtaking the world -- it's called "germ porn" and it's a favorite past-time of writer A.J. Jacobs, the author of a new book, "Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's ...More
April 18, 2012
Posted in Blog
Scientists Discover the Unfolded End of a Protein Can Kill E. coli-Like Bacteria Selectively

When bacteria wage a turf war, some of the combatants have an extra weapon. Certain strains of the bacteria E. coli produce proteins that kill competing E. coli and other like microbes, and researchers from Newcastle University in England have recently discovered something ...More
February 23, 2012
Posted in News
Soil Bacteria, Pathogens Share Antibiotic Resistance Genes

Disease-causing bacteria’s efforts to resist antibiotics may get help from their distant bacterial relatives that live in the soil, new research at Washington University School of Medicine suggests. The researchers found identical genes for antibiotic resistance in soil ...More
February 20, 2012
Posted in News