Pathogen News and Research

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Inflammation from bacterial infections linked to preterm births and deaths

New findings from the mouse study holds potential to develop ways to curb the emotional and economic toll on families that lose babies to preterm labor and fetal death, said Han, a member of from the department of periodontics.

9 Aug 2007

New drugs to combat bioterrorism

The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop new drugs to combat agents of bioterrorism.

7 Aug 2007

Neighbor clustering better identifies functionally related genes on the bacterial chromosome

The moment a bacterial pathogen makes contact with its host, its goal is simple: to infect.

1 Aug 2007

Safer fresh produce

Approximately one year after a foodborne illness outbreak caused by bacteria on fresh spinach sickened hundreds across the country, fresh produce growers and processors will meet once again with U.S. regulatory agencies to determine how best to reduce the chances of such an outbreak happening again.

1 Aug 2007

New treatment to combat bowel infection among the elderly

Scientists at the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC), based in University College Cork (UCC) and Teagasc’s Moorepark Food Research Centre, are researching a new treatment to combat the increasing incidences of hospital acquired diarrhoea which has become a major problem in hospitals, nursing homes and facilities for the elderly.

1 Aug 2007

Cell surface mucin 1 protects against gut infections

Mucins are large proteins that are secreted on the surface of the gut, and while long regarded as having a role as a barrier to mucosal infection, data to support this theory have been lacking.

20 Jul 2007

Consortium to fight malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax

The CRESIB has presented the research programme on malaria by Plasmodium vivax, a parasite causing over 70 million yearly cases of malaria in the world.

18 Jul 2007

Key mechanism to emergence of deadly strep bacteria discovered

The incidence of serious strep infections has risen dramatically in the last three decades, and this increase is largely attributed to the spread around the globe of a single strain of strep known as the invasive M1T1 clone.

16 Jul 2007

Researchers determine structure of protein from pathogen associated with cystic fibrosis

The structure of a novel protein in the bacterium that is the most persistent pathogen in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients has been solved.

16 Jul 2007

New evidence of very recent human adaptation

A Cornell study of genome sequences in African-Americans, European-Americans and Chinese suggests that natural selection has caused as much as 10 percent of the human genome to change in some populations in the last 15,000 to 100,000 years, when people began migrating from Africa.

12 Jul 2007

White blood cells are picky about sugar

Biology textbooks are blunt - neutrophils are mindless killers. These white blood cells patrol the body and guard against infection by bacteria and fungi, identifying and destroying any invaders that cross their path. But new evidence, which may lead to better drugs to fight deadly pathogens, indicates that neutrophils might actually distinguish among their targets.

11 Jul 2007

Rapid evolution of defense genes in plants may produce hybrid incompatibility

One of the basic tenets of evolution is speciation in which populations of the same species become so genetically and morphologically variable that they can be classified as two different species.

10 Jul 2007

Discovery of two effective antibodies for SARS

An international team of investigators has identified the first human antibodies that can neutralize different strains of the virus responsible for outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

4 Jul 2007

Listeria pathogen may be key to understanding cancer development

A research team including University of Central Florida Microbiology Professor Keith Ireton is using the bacterial pathogen Listeria Monocytogenes to understand the mechanisms of cell growth and cancer development.

29 Jun 2007

Summer's here so look out for Legionnaires disease

Summer's here and the living isn't always so easy especially if youre in the hospital. Patients who are vulnerable to infection run a greater risk of contracting Legionnaires disease, a severe form of pneumonia, during warm, humid weather, according to a study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

28 Jun 2007

Evolutionary dynamics of immune-related genes and pathways in disease vector mosquitoes

The genes that make up the immune system of the Aedes aegypti mosquito which transmits deadly viral diseases to humans have been identified in new research in Science.

23 Jun 2007

Invertebrate immune systems are anything but simple

A hundred years since Russian microbiologist Elie Metschnikow first discovered the invertebrate immune system, scientists are only just beginning to understand its complexity.

23 Jun 2007

First genome-scale model of microbe that causes tuberculosis

Tuberculosis remains one of the biggest killers in the world today being responsible for nearly ten million cases and one and a half million deaths each year.

23 Jun 2007

Acquired DNA key to certain bacterial infection

Researchers announced this week the discovery of a mechanism by which Mycobacterium avium - a bacterium which can result in serious lung infections and is prevalent in emphysema and AIDS patients among others - infects tissue cells or macrophages and thus compromises the body's immunity.

19 Jun 2007

Better understanding of how the body fights off mucosal pathogens

In a finding that could have important implications for HIV vaccine research, new research at Weill Cornell Medical College illuminates the ways in which the body prevents its mucosal surfaces from being overwhelmed by bacteria.

17 Jun 2007