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KNOW A SCIENTIST
A Nobel Prize laureate, Barry James Marshall is an Australian physician, who along with Dr Robin Warren made the historic scientific discovery, which stated the presence of bacterium Helicobacter pylori as the root cause for most peptic ulcers. The discovery came at a time when the world believed in the fact that stress, spicy foods, and too much acid caused peptic ulcer.
It was a ground-breaking discovery as it helped in establishing the link between H. pylori infection and stomach cancer then learned could be cured by antibiotics. Marshall and Warren shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work. Marshall was also honored in 2007 by being named a Companion of the Order of Australia, the highest civic honor in the country.
Deodorants and antiperspirants are changing your body’s bacteria
(Scientists fear that the by killing off these bacteria, we may be making room for others that could harm us. (Source: Thinkstock Images))
Wearing an antiperspirant or deodorant doesn’t only affect an individual’s social life, and it substantially cuts down the microbial life that survives on a person, says a new study.
Thousands of bacteria species have the potential to live on human skin, and in particular in the armpit, the researchers said, adding that anti-perspirant and deodorant can significantly reduce the influence of both the type and quantity of bacterial life found in the human armpit’s “microbiome”.
“Just which of these species live in any particular armpit has been hard to predict until now, but we’ve discovered that one of the biggest determinants of the bacteria in your armpits is your use of deodorant and/or antiperspirant,” said Rob Dunn, professor at North Carolina State University in the US.
The study, published in the journal the PeerJ, focuses on the effect that antiperspirant and deodorant have on the microbial life that lives on our bodies, and how our daily habits influence the life that lives on us, the researchers said.
To learn about the microbial impact of antiperspirant and deodorant, the researchers recruited 17 study participants. They then launched an eight-day experiment in which all of the participants had swabs taken of their armpits.
On Day 1, participants followed their normal hygiene routine in regard to deodorant or anti-perspirant use. On Days 2-6, participants did not use any deodorant or anti-perspirant. On Days 7-8, all participants used antiperspirants.
The researchers then cultured all the samples to determine the abundance of microbial organisms growing on each participant and how that differed day to day.
The researchers found that once all participants began using antiperspirant on Days 7-8, very few microbes were found on any of the participants, verifying that these products dramatically reduce microbial growth.
Source: www.sciencedaily.com
Nutrient-Control for GM Bacteria
(Blue-green algae (stock image))
Genetically modified bacteria that don’t survive unless given an unnatural amino acid could serve as a new control measure to protect wild organisms and ecosystems against accidental release.
Genetic and CRISPR-based kill switches have made headlines recently, as researchers engineer ways to prevent organisms built or modified in the lab from escaping to the wild. Now, Andrew Ellington of the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues propose a new solution: limit the growth of a genetically modified (GM) E. coli strain when the environment lacks unnatural, or noncanonical, animal acids (NCAAs). NCAAs have been used to expand or alter the genetic code of various organisms. But by reengineering the antibiotic resistance gene TEM-1 β-lactamase to only produce a protein in the presence of an NCAA, Ellington and his team created a bacterium that can be killed should it ever escape the lab. When provided with the necessary NCAA, however, the E. coli can live for hundreds of generations.
“We need to have biosafety features that allow you to ensure that when you’ve made something it’s not going to escape from the lab, or if it does it won’t be able to prosper,” Ellington told New Scientist. “In the presence of antibiotics and the absence of the [artificial] amino acid, there’s very little way for our circuitry to leave the lab.” The researchers published their results this week (January 18) in Nature Chemical Biology.
Source: www.the-scientist.com
Climate change warming world's lakes at alarming rate
Researchers have for the first time demonstrated that the production of a plant hormone by a beneficial microbe is protecting a plant from a pathogenic microbe by inducing plant resistance. The application potential within integrated plant protection strategies is significant.
Plant beneficial microbes mediate biocontrol of diseases by interfering with pathogens or via strengthening the host, but the microorganisms' production of the plant hormones phytohormones, including cytokinins, has not been considered as a biocontrol mechanism before.
"But now we have identified a novel mechanism of how bacterial production of cytokinin contributes to the microbe's ability to control plant diseases. More specifically we identified the ability of a bacterium to efficiently control a pathogen infection in a model plant by producing cytokinin, allowing the plant to maintain tissue integrity and ultimately biomass yield," explains Post doc Dominik Kilian Grosskinsky from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at University of Copenhagen.
He sees great potential in the findings:
"These results demonstrate a novel microbe based, hormone-mediated concept of biocontrol. And this mechanism provides a basis to potentially develop novel, integrated plant protection strategies combining promotion of growth, a favourable physiological status and activation of fine-tuned direct defence and abiotic stress resilience."
Source: www.sciencedaily.com
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