One of the better bits of banter I drew from Valerie Brown’s piece on bacteria for us a little over two years ago was the idea that the bacteria in our gut had a vital job to do, and like other important workers they could parachute into other locales when disaster struck: Some researchers are even exploring the idea of stool transplants — that is, introducing a healthy person’s gut bacteria into a sick person’s intestines via the donor’s feces. Although there are not many peer-reviewed studies of this rather disturbing concept, a review in the July 2004 Journal of Clinical ... Read More
Defeating Bacteria From the Inside Out
April 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Bacteriophages, a class of viruses that only attack bacteria, have been controversial ever since their discovery by a brash, young, self-taught researcher named Felix d’Herelle nearly a century ago. In the 1920s and ’30s, before the advent of antibiotics, doctors using phage therapy reported near miraculous cures for infections, even at the critical stage. The treatments, however, didn’t work in every case, and after the discovery of much more reliable antibiotics, starting with penicillin in the 1940s, phage therapy was ushered off the medical stage in the United States and Western ... Read More
Was Lou Gehrig’s ALS Caused by Tap Water?
January 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Rudyard Kipling called it “Hell’s Half Acre,” a geothermal wonderland where people could fall through the Earth’s thin crust or be poached by steamy hot springs and geysers. Most visitors to Yellowstone National Park’s Midway Geyser Basin stroll the wooden boardwalks, but a few hike a short, steep side trail that reveals a bird’s-eye view of the entire valley, including Grand Prismatic Spring, which can be fully appreciated only from above. Mustard-yellow and vibrant-orange mats spread like tentacles from the turquoise pool. “Not even the most talented artist could imagine ... Read More
Among Antibiotics, Resistance Knows No Bounds
September 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Since penicillin was isolated from a fungus in 1929, mankind's stockpile of antibiotics has expanded to include a diversity of life-saving compounds. However, from streptomycin in the 1940s to synthetics such as ciprofloxacin in the late 1980s, they are losing their effectiveness. While the idea that we are losing some potent antibiotic weapons is widely known, that's not the same as it being widely understood, says Jo Handelsman, Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor of microbiology at Yale University. She cautions that what researchers know and what the public knows are not the ... Read More
ARCHIVE Says Home Is Where the Health Is
April 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Peter Williams took for granted the holes in the wood floors of his house — and the rats that crawled through them. But when his father contracted a bacterial infection that left him paralyzed, Williams, a budding architect, began to recognize the connection between shoddy housing and ill health. "The disease was directly attributed to the fact that the house was poorly constructed," says Williams, 35. "I saw firsthand how housing was both responsible for his illness and also incapable of meeting his care needs, given that he was quite immobile." If the ... Read More
Next They’ll Tell Us Germs Can Dance
December 23, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Anyone who's ever visited a male collegiate dorm room can testify to the amazing properties of bacteria, but not even the guys in Animal House could have seen this one coming: Bacteria can stand up — gulp — and walk around. University of Notre Dame researcher Joshua Shrout, co-author of a new study with UCLA scientist Gerard Wong in the journal Nature, reports that he and his colleagues have observed very specific patterns in the movement of bacteria, which has important implications for the treatment of infections. "The significance of the work is that we show bacteria are capable ... Read More
Bacteria ‘R’ Us
December 2, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Today’s revelation in the journal Science that researchers have found a bacterium in California’s Mono Lake that can thrive on arsenic — usually implicated in killing life, not sustaining it — is quickly revolutionizing our conception of what is life and where it might be found. To help in deciphering the direct contribution bacteria make to human life, we’re reposting this story which originally debuted on Oct. 18. A few scientists noticed in the late 1960s that the marine bacteria Vibrio fischeri appeared to coordinate among themselves the production of chemicals that ... Read More
Top Ten Bacteria Working in the Shadows
October 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Childhood was a hazy mix of lace and mud — an age of cookie time, horseplay and the occasional cootie shot. It seems like a far cry from the fettered world of adulthood. But there were darker forces at play, infiltrators that showed up everywhere we were — near us, on us, in us. Some working for the forces of good, some for evil, some on both sides. These secret agents were bacteria. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that we adults have endowed bacteria with all our possessive and neurotic qualities. (See Valerie Brown's "Bacteria 'R' Us" in Miller-McCune magazine.) What were once ... Read More
Smelliot
October 20, 2010 • By •
"Hey, everybody! She's cool with 'Smelliot,'" chimes ne'er-do-well, John Dorian from TV's Scrubs. Everyone knows a Smelliot. Smelliot was the social outcast in grade school burdened by his parents with an unfortunate name and so, in retribution, assumed an arsenal of poor hygiene habits to stave off childhood teasing. Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterium, Brevibacterium linens, is the Smelliot of the microbial world. Found in dairy products, fresh and salt water, soil, insects and decaying organic matter, Smelliot can be grown in a broad range of pH levels and salinity. Most know Smelliot ... Read More
Little L
October 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
If the probiotic movement is a shiny discotheque, Lactobacillus, or Little L, would be the glamorous VIP whose celebrity moves velvet ropes. Lactobacillus is a gram-positive, rod-shaped bacterium native to the mouth and digestive track and found in the production of yogurt, cheese, chocolate, pickles and other fermented foods. In the body, Little L converts lactose and other sugars to lactic acid, which inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria and aids in regulation and digestion. Lactic acid produced from Lactobacillus is also used in detergents as a soap-scum remover and antibacterial ... Read More
