Tips from the Journals of the American Society for Microbiology: August 2001
...nce Some bacteria don't need to be exposed to antibiotics to develop resistance, just other bacteria. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Iowa State University report in the August 2001 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology that Salmonella bacteria exposed to a com...Widespread 'superbug' is expert at acquiring drug-resistance
...his bacterium to acquire resistance traits against antibiotics is amazing," says Alexander Tomasz, Ph.D., co-auth...lthough many of the spectacular early successes of antibiotics were observed in this microbe, clinical records in hospitals today tell a very different story: an a...New model of staph drug resistance implicates unlikely protein
...nces, emphasizes the importance of looking for new antibiotics that target this protein. "Mariana's work shows t...ofessor at Rockefeller. Since the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, Staphylococcus aureus, the number one cause of potentially life-threatening hospital-b...Antimicrobial resistance poses increasing problem for growers
...ast, growers have used antimicrobial compounds (or antibiotics as theyre more commonly known) to control fire bli...ugust. Adds Lewis, Apples are a good example since antibiotics are critical for controlling fire blight disease and obtaining an acceptable harvest. However, apple...How bacteria harden their "armor"
...public health threat worldwide, with commonly used antibiotics proving less and less effective. According to the...teration reduces the ability of positively charged antibiotics like polymyxin or certain peptides, to attach to the outer coat -- a key step in the antibiotic's pr...... mailings and ensuring the availability of anthrax antibiotics and vaccines, he believes it is imperative that government accelerates work on protection against untreatable viruses. Its great that federal officials are working to have the anthrax antibiotic, Ciprofloxacin readily available for those believed to ...Typhoid fever bug sequence raises hope of complete eradication
...i known as 'CT18', which is resistant to all cheap antibiotics and is close to becoming untreatable. Professor G...of strains are reported to be resistant to several antibiotics (multi resistant) including recently developed ones. In regions where typhoid fever is common, schoo...Scientists uncover the exact mode of action of five antibiotic drugs
...ent Raz Zarivach, decided to examine how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome and shut off its protein prod...o they treated bacteria with one of five different antibiotics and then created crystals capturing the individual complexes formed between the bacterial ribosome a...UI researchers and colleagues identify genetic changes in bacterial biofilms
... clusters for proteins that allow bacteria to pump antibiotics out of their cells. These genes were not expressed...ms. Because cells in biofilms are spatially fixed, antibiotics applied to the biofilm, even at very high concentrations, only gradually diffuse to distant parts of...Anthrax - How to protect ourselves
...etter treatments (see opposite), but at the moment antibiotics only work if given early enough. That means the key to saving lives is to detect an attack as soon as possible. But identifying anthrax isn't easy. There are some "quick and dirty" field tests. An antibody test can give results within 15 minutes. Bu...'Smart bandage' diagnoses danger before infection takes hold
...the wound may require special care or what kind of antibiotics may work best in treating it. The bandage is part of the Center for Future Health's "smart medical home"-a series of devices working in conjunction in the home to monitor a family's health. Benjamin Miller, assistant professor of chemistry at the Uni...Sea Grant researchers isolate new antibiotic from fish
...dins after the Latin term "pisces" for fishes, the antibiotics were isolated from mast cells in hybrid striped ba...e same lineage as mammal mast cells. "The peptide antibiotics or piscidins have the potential to fight important bacterial pathogens of both fish and mammals, inc...Researchers discover new family of naturally occurring antibiotics
...ly of naturally occurring peptide antibiotics. The antibiotics were found in fish. These are the first peptide antibiotics that have been isolated from mast cells of any animal, and the discovery indicates that these cells ...New Biofilm Research Center will explore the wonderful world of slime
...erial biofilm can be 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than solitary organisms a problem that is especially acute in long-term catheters, artificial heart valves and other medical implants, where the accumulation of slime often results in serious infections. "But not ...Bacteria's natural foe fights drug-resistant infections
...ion to arise in order to treat it." "Resistance to antibiotics is rapidly becoming a serious public health concer...mbating resistant pathogens," he adds. Traditional antibiotics primarily attack bacteria that reside inside cells, while the recently discovered "bacteriophage" en...USDA establishes Honeybee Genetics and IPM Center
...nt on a growing number of expensive pesticides and antibiotics into one that is free of chemical inputs and that is economically viable in today's competitive global marketplace," says Calderone. Because the breeding populations will be maintained using closed-mating technology, they will be kept free of Africa...Pain in the gut? Don't blame stomach acid
...y the wrong thing to do. U-M scientists found that antibiotics were the best way to kill the bacteria that cause ...astrin-deficient mice and normal control mice with antibiotics for 20 days. Other mice were treated for two months with a proton-pump-inhibiting drug called omepra...Excessive growth of bacteria may also be major cause of stomach ulcers
... bacterial overgrowth. Treating these animals with antibiotics reduced inflammation and the amount of gastric bac... not the case, because treating these animals with antibiotics caused their gastrin and parietal cells to return to baseline levels. The elevation was due to infla...Third piece completes deadly puzzle: Structure of anthrax toxin offers clues to treatment
...thrax and perhaps other bacterial toxins. Although antibiotics can kill the bacteria, anthrax produces toxins that can cause death even after the bacteria have been eradicated. Since some forms of anthrax infection produce few symptoms until the disease is advanced, physicians need better drugs to counteract ...