io9: Bacteria

Ultra-tiny "nano-ear" can hear bacteria and viruses

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:24:31 PST

The world's smallest ear doesn't belong to any animal. Instead, it's a tiny piece of gold suspended in a laser beam. It can hear sounds a million times fainter than any human ear can, making it a powerful acoustic microscope. More »

The appendix might actually be the body's bacteria storehouse

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:53:58 PST

The appendix is probably the most famous of humanity's vestigial organs, but it might not actually deserve the "vestigial" part of that title. The appendix may actually save vital bacteria for the body's later use. More »

Behold, the future's bioluminescent billboards

Geoff Manaugh - BLDGBLOG — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:45:00 PST

Scientists at UC San Diego have made a bioluminescent bacterial billboard. They call it a "living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs." Making it all work "involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of the bacteria, synchronizing the clocks of the thousands of bacteria within a colony, then synchronizing thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison." These are referred to as biopixels. More »

What on Earth are these mysterious, 570 million year old fossils?

Alasdair Wilkins — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:30:00 PST

The fossil you see here was found in Doushantuo, China, one of the world's richest fossil formations. It looks like grains of sand, but nobody is sure what it actually is, whether it's animal, bacteria, or something even weirder. More »

Deep sea bacteria use bioluminescence to hitchhike across the ocean

Alasdair Wilkins — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:30:00 PST

Many bacteria found at the bottom of the ocean glow in the dark thanks to light generated by their internal chemical reactions. This makes it easier for fish to see and eat them — which is exactly what the bacteria want. More »

These bacteria are controlled by magnetic fields

Tim Barribeau — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:22:14 PST

Magnetotactic bacteria were first discovered back in 1975. They're microbes that orient themselves along magnetic fields, thanks to their compartments of tiny magnetic nanocrystals called magnetesomes (the orange circles in the picture above), which force the bacteria into magnetic alignment. Unlike larger animals that navigate along magnetic fields, these bacteria can't control their actions - even when they die, they remain perfectly aligned with magnetic lines. Even though we know these creatures have existed for billions of years, we've yet to truly understand how they produce those nanocrystals. More »

All multi-cellular life might be descended from a parasitic invasion

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:40:00 PST

Eons ago, two single-celled organisms, a bacterium and an archaeon, combined to form the first complex cell. This symbiosis gave birth to all multi-cellular organisms, but new evidence suggests this wasn't about cooperation. That bacterium was actually a parasite. More »

Should there be E. coli warnings on cookie dough packages?

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:30:00 PST

E. coli warnings on cookie dough packages?" alt="Click here to read Should there be E. coli warnings on cookie dough packages?" src="http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2011/12/small_715fbb8b39ab793c2bacd18aa763a8c9.jpg"/>

Today I received the worst news a stay-at-home writer can get. There is a threat of Escherichia coli in our unbaked cookie dough. An investigation into a 2009 outbreak of E. coli turned up ready-to-bake cookie dough, eaten raw, as the culprit. And the CDC believes steps need to be taken to keep it from happening again. More »

Vampire bacteria could become the ultimate antibiotic

Alasdair Wilkins — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:00:00 PDT

A bacterium found in sewage water could revolutionize modern medicine. It's basically the bacterial equivalent of a vampire, spending its time hunting other bacteria and sucking out all their nutrients. This could revolutionize antibotics and stop the rise of "super bugs." More »

And Now, an E. coli Bacterium That's Fifteen Feet Long

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:00:00 PDT

E. coli Bacterium That's Fifteen Feet Long" alt="Click here to read And Now, an E. coli Bacterium That's Fifteen Feet Long" src="http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2011/10/small_ecolibig.jpg"/>

It seems strangely appropriate to spend some time on the scariest day of the year examining the world's largest model of the notorious E. coli bacterium. This model is two million times larger than E. coli itself. More »

Meet the ancestor of all living things on Earth

Alasdair Wilkins — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:00:00 PDT

The Last Universal Common Ancestor is the great-grandparent of everything that has ever lived on Earth. Scientists had long assumed it was a crude, simple thing, more a chemical mishmash than anything else. But our earliest ancestor holds some surprises. More »

Oh, hooray — seagulls are pooping resistant bacteria on beaches

Marc Abrahams - Improbable Research — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 12:10:00 PDT

Comes news that could lead someone to adapt Alfred Hitchcock's horror film "The Birds" and take it in a different direction-a direction that's both scary and scatalogical. Maryn McKenna, the science journalist widely known as Scary Disease Girl, tweeted this alert: More »

Contagion's bacteria grown billboard is the perfect "viral" marketing

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:20:00 PDT

Warner Bros. created a giant billboard for Contagion, made entirely out of bacteria and fungi, to promote the film. What better way to promote a movie about germs with germs. Watch the creature grow before your eyes. More »

The next NASA rover could bring the first microbes to Mars

Alasdair Wilkins — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:01:28 PDT

There's no way to be absolutely certain, but we're pretty sure that no germs have ever survived the grueling journey from Earth to Mars. But the latest rover to explore the Red Planet might just take along some microscopic colonists. More »

Electro-bugs have appendages that zap the uranium out of water

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:40:00 PDT

The bacteria known as Geobacter sulfurreducens, when exposed to uranium, pretty much just die. But under certain conditions, they can grow appendages that can literally make uranium drop out of water like a stone. Scientists have found a way to get them to grow the right way, and may even be able to recreate them artificially. More »

Do pandas hold the key to reducing US reliance on foreign oil?

Robert T. Gonzalez — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:53:52 PDT

Pandas have all kinds of talents, like looking adorable, dozing off for no reason, and looking tiny next to Shaq. More »

The bacterium responsible for the Black Death was once a mild stomach bug

Alasdair Wilkins — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:18:27 PDT

We've suspected it for awhile now, and now it's confirmed that the bacterium Yersinia pestis was responsible for the devastating plague that wiped out a third of Europe 650 years ago. But this ultimate killer started as something far different. More »

Deep-sea mussels are living hydrogen fuel cells

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:42:57 PDT

We're still trying to figure out how to properly harness the power of hydrogen as a clean energy source — and now we might be able to pick up some unexpected pointers from some bizarre symbiotic bacteria found at the ocean depths. More »

The Ultimate Symbiosis: Mealybugs have bacteria living inside their bacteria

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Lots of organisms rely on symbiotic relationships, in which two species rely on each other for survival and one lives inside the other. But citrus mealybugs enjoy a triply symbiotic relationship unlike any we've ever seen...with one absolutely crucial exception. More »

Our bellybuttons are home to hundreds of undiscovered species

Alasdair Wilkins — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 09:30:00 PDT

The Belly Button Biodiversity project recently began taking DNA samples from people's navels to find out what bacteria is living within. Of the roughly 1,400 bacterial strains discovered thus far, at least 662 of them are completely unknown. More »

The oldest symbiosis between animals and bacteria

Tim Barribeau — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:30:00 PDT

In the shallow waters of the ocean, hiding between the individual grains of sand, live flatworms known as Paracatenula. With neither a stomach nor internal organs, they survive using through a symbiosis with bacteria — in a relationship older than any ever found before. To gain energy, the worms essentially need the bacteria to feed them. The bacteria oxidizes sulfur compounds in the waters around the worms, in a food-sharing relationship generally found only among the rugged life that's rooted in deep sea vents. More »

This is how scientists make Jell-O shots

Robert T. Gonzalez — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:30:00 PDT

Here's a little something for your next science-themed soirée: delicious bacterial culture jellies! More »

Too many good mutations can actually be bad for a species' evolution

Alasdair Wilkins — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:30:00 PDT

Mutation is one of the big driving forces behind evolution, as it can allow species to quickly gain the genetic tools necessary to survive and adapt. But even the perfect mutation can mean trouble if it can't work with others. More »

Liquid crystals can detect bacterial infections

Tim Barribeau — Fri, 20 May 2011 17:00:00 PDT

Liquid crystals - yes the same as the ones in your calculator — may soon save lives: they'll be detecting deadly bacterial infections. It turns out liquid crystals are incredibly sensitive to endotoxin, a lipid that's found on the outside of many bacteria, including E. coli and Salmonella. More »

A new discovery about mosquitoes reveals why vampires will never exist

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 20 May 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Scientists have found a type of bacteria that kills off the mosquito that carries malaria. That's good news. The way the bacteria works means it could also be used to make sure there is never a plague of vampires. That's even more good news. More »

Bed bugs can carry ultra-virulent MRSA bacteria

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Tue, 17 May 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Apocalypse by fiery nuclear war, apocalypse by ancient Mayan prophecy, apocalypse by Buffy villain - we expected almost anything. But not apocalypse by bed bug. More »

Add sugar to your antibiotics and crush superbugs

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 13 May 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Doctors may be able to kill off persistent staph infections using a cheap and easy method. A little boost of sugar can help kill the type of bacteria that regular antibiotics miss. More »

The monster compound that could help purify water

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Sun, 08 May 2011 13:45:00 PDT

As more bacteria and algae are getting harder to kill, researchers are looking for new ways to eliminate them in water supplies. One idea is to unleash an electron-starved compound that will rip them apart. More »

Which "gut type" do you have, and what does it say about you?

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:30:00 PDT

We all have flourishing bacterial ecosystems in our intestines filled with thousands of microbes. But these gut ecosystems only come in three types. And the type you have may influence the kind of life you lead. More »

How to use a hyperbaric chamber to treat flesh eating bacteria

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:00:00 PDT

Hyperbaric chambers are usually sleek cylinders with long observation windows. Inside there's a place to lie down, and often a mask that goes over the patient's face. Once the patient is inside, the chamber is sealed and filled up with pure oxygen. In fact, so much oxygen is pumped in that the hyperbaric chamber winds up at several times atmospheric pressure. More »

Bacteria that turns flies into sex-crazed super-breeders

Tim Barribeau — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:30:00 PDT

The whitefly is a major agricultural pest, and over the last six years Southwest of America has seen the near total infection of the species by a symbiotic bacteria, which makes them super-breeders. The bacterium Rickettsia bellii was originally spotted in just a few specimens in 2000, but by 2006 was in 97% of the bugs. How did it spread so widely, so fast? The bacterium supercharged the the infected insects, and those carrying the symbiont had more offspring, developed faster, and were more likely to survive than the uninfected. The symbiont is passed on through the mothers and tweaked the infected to have a higher percentage of female offspring. More »

"Bacterial dirigibles" bring us a steambiopunk disease-fighting future

Tim Barribeau — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:00:00 PDT

Despite sounding like something you might think up in the final days of NaNoWriMo, bacterial dirigibles could be the next generation of disease fighters. Rather than creating a drug in a lab to be used as medicine, this new research proposes a way of repurposing bacteria as attack blimps against diseases. The bacteria are engineered to add targeting, sensing and switching capabilities, as well as the ability to drop their medicine cargo. More »

Experiments suggest that infections could spread more rapidly in space

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:25:12 PDT

In 1970, astronaut Fred Haise got very sick on the Apollo 13 mission. Now, a group of scientists at NASA teamed up with biologists at Arizona State to study what happens to bacteria in space. One of the microbes they're studying is Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is what made Haise ill. Now, the researchers have discovered that the zero-gravity environment causes some strains of bacteria to become more virulent. More »

Ten Things Bacteria Can Do That You Can't

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:11:36 PST

We humans like to think we're pretty great. We have things like the Mona Lisa, and the Large Hadron Collider, and The Kind of Chocolate Sauce That Turns Solid When You Put It On Ice Cream. Still, it turns out that if aliens were to visit planet Earth and kidnap the dominant species, they'd go for bacteria over us any day. There are more of them, they're more diverse, they've been around a lot longer, and between the lot of them, they've achieved a lot more. Have a look at ten things that bacteria do with their bare flagella that we could never manage to duplicate. More »

Why Australian mountain wildfires in 2006 caused these lakes to glow in 2008

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:00:00 PST

Phil Hart works every summer in the Gippsland Lakes area of Australia, and three years ago he observed a bizarre, blue glow in the lakes at night - but only when the water was disturbed. More »

Student wears same jeans every day for 15 months - for science!

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:00:00 PST

A student in Canada wore the same pair of jeans for 15 months straight as an experiment to see if he or the jeans suffered any ill effects. More »

An amoeba who raises bacteria crops is the world's tiniest farmer

Alasdair Wilkins — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:40:00 PST

Humans like to think we invented agriculture, but a single-celled organism might have us beaten by several million years. An amoeba species known as "Dicty" finds bacteria, moves them to the best location, and harvests them like crops. More »

A 34,000 year old bacteria has come back from the dead and is breeding

Alasdair Wilkins — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:46:45 PST

Thirty-four millennia ago, some bacteria got trapped inside salt crystals in what is now Death Valley. These crystals were recently dug up and the bacteria freed from their hibernation...and then they started reproducing. More »

Ancient Australians found the secret to truly immortal art

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 06:30:00 PST

What is the secret to art that lasts forever and stays fresh always? Some say passion, some say rigorous discipline, some say ingenuity, and some say fungus. The last one is right. More »

The microorganisms in your stomach could have arranged your marriage

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:07:24 PST

The phrase, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," just got a whole new meaning. A recent study suggests that gut flora could influence an animal's choice of mate. More »