Biology related to microbes, including parasites, bacteria, viruses, alga, and other single-celled organisms
The microbes that live in the vagina constitute to the vaginal microbiome (or microbiota). New research from the lab of Jacques Ravel at the University of Maryland shows that Chlamydia infection is associated with a different composition of the vaginal microbiome compared with the microbiome of healthy patients. Additionally, the vaginal microbiome of the patients … Read more
Summaries of recent articles related to human pathogenic and commensal microbes
A list of articles classified by Nancy R. Gough as good, valuable contributions or not so valuable contributions to the scientific literature.
In light of the study showing that bacteria with a particular form of the protein DnaK can interfere with a cell’s response to DNA damage and the ability to repair such damage, I have been thinking about what kinds of cancers may have a bacterial cause or contribution. The one that the researchers studied to … Read more
In a study of infection by bacteria of the mycoplasma family, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have discovered that the bacterial protein DnaK triggers a cascade of events that can cause infected cells and nearby uninfected cells to become cancerous. DnaK is a prokaryotic stress-induced protein (Figure 1) that is a … Read more