In the wake of the oil spill catastrophe, researchers are searching harder than ever for energy alternatives. It turns out that Bacteria can help clean up the spill and it can also play a part in our use of solar energy in the future.
read more
Toilet seats are safer than most people think they are, but it turns out that showers can be dangerous.
A film of bacteria clings to the inside of most shower heads and is pushed out by the water when you take a shower, meaning you get a large dose of warm germs. Shower heads can contain as much as 100 times the levels of bacteria found in water.
Researchers who tested shower heads at random found that 30% of them had significant levels of Mycobacterium avium, which most often infects people with compromised immune systems but which can occasionally infect healthy people too.
read more
If BACTERIA do it, you can too! Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it. A group of researchers in the US and Israel worked together to examine microorganisms living in environments that change in predictable ways. Their findings show that these microorganisms’ genetic networks are hard-wired to “foresee” what comes next in the sequence of events and begin responding to the new state of affairs BEFORE it happens.
read more
We once wrote about what might happen if melting glaciers release long-frozen bacteria. Now it’s happening: a recent microbe that has been frozen in ice in Greenland for over 120,000 years has finally melted. Studying this could give scientists a clue about what might happen when we encounter germs on other planets.
In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner quotes Jean Brenchley, one of the researchers who discovered this newly-awakened bacteria, as saying, “We don’t know what state they were in. They could’ve been dormant, or they could’ve been slowly metabolizing, but we don’t know for sure. Microbes have found ways to survive in harsh conditions for long times that we don’t yet fully understand.”
read more