Tuesday, 7 February, 2012

Dive deep, and meet the flashlight squid — with a billion-bacteria light bulb. Meet bacteria that live in boiling water, and the immense variety of weirder-than-weird critters that live between grains of sand. Plus a highly selected bio-freak show…

Bacteria can help or harm their hosts. Now we hear how one genus of bacteria can multiply fly reproduction. In this symbiosis, both parties benefit. This bacterium also alters insect immunity, and could lead to new tactics for killing horrific parasites.

Found: The smallest farmers in the world! If you’re hungry, and moving to a land without food, the smart money says, “Take some seeds.” And that’s exactly what a common soil amoeba does: It totes along bacteria so it can eat them in its new home.

The BP spill released about 160,000 tons of methane into the Gulf of Mexico, but a new study shows that it was eaten by friendly bacteria. The seabed contains an astonishing amount of methane, a strong greenhouse gas. So can bacteria reduce the global warming hazard of massive methane releases?

All life requires oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon, hydrogen and phosphorus. Until now. Bacteria in a toxic California lake that have replaced phosphorus with arsenic are quite healthy, thank you very much. Tune in for our scientific remake of the boffo comedy: “Arsenic in Old Lake!”

Most of our planet is ocean, and now we have a better idea of what lives there. Marine creatures are much weirder than those on land. The Census of Marine Life looked at salmon migration, Arctic animals, and the uncountable variety of bacteria in the sea. Want to take a look?

Rivalries in nature regularly produce clashing outcomes, and a recent study proved that this can also be the case for some bacteria. Colonies of the bacterium Paenibacillus dendritiformis have been shown to produce a lethal chemical to keep their competition at a distance. The study forced two colonies of bacteria into the same space, and [...]

Bacteria have vastly different survival abilities, says Jeri Barak, an assistant professor of plant pathology at UW-Madison. Many species normally live in soil or water, but some of those that live in the human intestinal tract display extreme longevity outside the body. Salmonella, which causes what we sometimes call “food poisoning,” can live more than [...]

Everyone’s seen them do it. They’re out in the yard, rooting out who knows what, pawing at all sorts of dirty things that ought to be left alone, and then they come in and kiss the unsuspecting right on the mouth! For the sake of good hygiene, humans should be trained better. At least that’s [...]

4B years ago, the “late heavy bombardment” burned out all life — or not… High-temp bacteria could have survived in deep rocks.