Got food poisoning? The cause might be bacterial spores, en extremely hardy survival form of bacteria, a nightmare for health care and the food industry and an enigma for scientists. Spore-forming bacteria, present almost everywhere in our environment, can also cause serious infectious diseases, such as tetanus, anthrax, and botulism. Now researchers from Lund University [...]

An estimated 675,000 Americans died from the A/H1N1 pandemic influenza in the United States in 1918-1919. Many of these deaths were from ensueing bacterial pneumonia rather than directly from the viral infection. The United States Public Health Service conducted surveys in twelve cities and rural areas of the country in late 1918 to early 1919 [...]

Call it advanced warfare on the most elemental of levels.
Researchers at Texas A&M University’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering have discovered how certain types of bacteria integrate the DNA that they have captured from invading enemies into their own genetic makeup to increase their chances of survival.

Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre demonstrate how bacteria measure temperature and thereby control infection.
Bacteria are experts at adaptation: as soon as they have infected an organism, they adapt their metabolism to that of their host and produce substances which protect them from the body’s immune defences. How they do this is still unknown in the [...]

The bacterium behind one of mankind’s deadliest scourges, tuberculosis, is helping researchers at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) move closer to answering the decades-old question of what controls the switching on and off of genes that carry out all of life’s [...]