Fighting Cholera With Mass Vaccination
When studying bacteria it is quite easy to get fascinated with them as a laboratory specimen while forgetting the huge impact they can have in real life societies.
Lab Rat
Exploring the life and times of bacteria
Frost giants: the unfreezing of an ancient virus
One of the great things about working with bacteria and viruses is that they can be put into suspended animation by sticking them in the freezer.
Innate immunity: the first line of defence
The very first line of defence against any invasion of the human body is a set of physical barriers between the inside of the body and the outer world.
69th Carnival of Evolution: Darwin’s Day Edition
Welcome to the 69th edition of the Carnival of Evolution! As February 12th was Darwin’s birthday, this is a Darwin’s Day carnival edition. To start with there’s a celebration of all things Darwinian at Synthetic Daisies, and a letter to the man himself for his 205th birthday.
From the archives: life at 90C
I’m on holiday this week so this is an old post that appeared on my previous blog “Life of a Lab Rat” on July 1st 2010. Prokaryotes are by far the most successful superkingdom in terms of both biochemical diversity and the variety of environments conquered.
Bacteria in space!
Where humans travel, bacteria will follow. If people are in space for any amount of time, bacteria are sure to thrive there so it’s good to know that there are already researchers looking at how the environment within spaceships affects bacterial populations.
Categorising bacteria in purple and pink
When confronted with a new bacteria there are a series of simple tests that can be carried out to give a rough idea of the properties of the bacteria you are dealing with.
Dawn attack: how plants anticipate pathogen infection
Like animals, plants are susceptible to infections from bacteria, viruses and fungi. While animals have a wide variety of immune cells and in some cases an interconnected immune system plants must rely on other methods to fight infection.
Swirling and whirling: the movement of spherical bacteria
Research on bacterial movement tends to focus on the rod-shaped bacteria. With the aid of small waving flagella, each bacterial cell can push itself in the direction it wishes to go.
Speeding up reactions: biological vs. chemical catalysts
Most chemical reactions go pretty slowly at room temperature. This is good news most of the time, otherwise random parts of the environment would be exploding at regular intervals, but bad news for industrial processes which need reactions to occur.
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