“What’s the news: If bacteria had blood, the predatory microbe Micavibrio aeruginosavorus would essentially be a vampire: it subsists by hunting down other bugs, attaching to them, and sucking their life out. For the first time, researchers have sequenced the genome of this strange microorganism, which was first identified decades ago in sewage water. The sequence will help better understand the unique bacterium, which has potential to be used as a “living antibiotic” due to its ability to attack drug-resistant biofilms and its apparent fondness for dining on pathogens.”
Absolutely awesome. And if there’s one bug that does this, there must be many many more.
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“The traditional view of mRNA as a pure intermediate between DNA and protein has changed in the last decades since the discovery of numerous RNA processing pathways. A frequent RNA modification is A-to-I editing, or the conversion of adenosine (A) to inosine (I).”
Hah. One more inflection point in the complexity of molecular biology. I think the reality is that life doesn’t give a hoot about the individual organism, but is one gigantic randomization engine (or should I say, purposeful variation), sampling adjacent possibles, giving rise to genomic variants of all sorts, with some variants tending towards even greater complexity and randomization techniques. [Hm, that's a brain wave developing there...]
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“The Microbial Home Probe consists of a domestic ecosystem that challenges conventional design solutions to energy, cleaning, food preservation, lighting, human waste and healthy lifestyle.”
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Microbial Home by Philips
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Paternoster plastic grinder and mushroom grower
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Bio light
Very cool. And mentions of a Post Electronic Age, too.
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Images from Philips – more at Microbial Home
“Although these appliances won’t be manufactured any time soon, lifelike models of the concepts are currently on view at the Piet Hein Eek gallery during Dutch Design Week (which opened on October 22 and runs through October 30) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. While the thought of cooking dinner with gas harvested from bathroom waste might not seem appetizing, the elegant concepts of Philips’ Microbial Home appliance system may seduce some skeptics via the power of their eye-catching design.”
[via @erigentry]
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“Prebiotics are selectively fermented ingredients that allow specific changes in the gastrointestinal microbiota that confer health benefits to the host. However, the effects of prebiotics on the human gut microbiota are incomplete as most studies have relied on methods that fail to cover the breadth of the bacterial community. The goal of this research was to use high throughput multiplex community sequencing of 16S rDNA tags to gain a community wide perspective of the impact of prebiotic galactooligosaccharide (GOS) on the fecal microbiota of healthy human subjects.”
I’ve seen a ton of papers on “probiotics”, but I think this is the first I’ve heard of “prebiotics”. There is mounting data about the effect of gut bugs on our own systems, and there is a growing set of data on how our diet affects our gut bugs. A wee Google search shows that there’s been a lot of papers data on specific foods that selectively promote the growth of specific gut bugs.
Hm, this is really interesting. It all seems to be coming together. My suggestion: if you’re a grad student or a post-doc in biology, human gut microbiology and ecology is gonna be a big topic in the near future. It’s gonna change the face of medicine.
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“”Laurie Cox, a graduate student who works in the lab, held up the test tube with the 100-year-old bacterium. She explained that they can determine if the spores are alive by their growth, which should be visible within 24 hours. “I think it’s really interesting and amazing to be able to culture bacteria that’s over 100 years old and to see what we can do with it,” she said. Dr. Blaser said they will attempt to sequence the genome and compare it with a modern organism to see how things have changed. “We’ve had 70 years of antibiotics, so the question is, have there been new changes in the bacterial genome from the time of that organism,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s an opportunity to compare our ancient organisms with our modern ones.”"
Really cool. I wonder how many old vials are stored away with interesting bacterial samples.
[via @bruces and @paleofuture]
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“The diagnostic tests designed in Dr. Whitesides’s Harvard University chemistry laboratory fit on a postage stamp and cost less than a penny. His secret? Paper.”
I’d read about this before. But glad to see that things are moving along well – funding, products, future. While diagnostics on paper is nothing new (pregnancy and diabetes test, those ubiquitous dip sticks), the creation of channels with wax allows for a more sophisticated chemistry.
This is a great example of lo-tech hi-tech, using simple, long-established tools to do something better. I think folks too often head for the more complex and more expensive because it’s easier and less constrained (I used to say the same thing about dumbphones vs smartphones).
What they’ve done here is printed out wax channels, added some chemicals (by hand!), cut and package the postage stamps. To use it, spot some liquid, the paper wicks the liquid through the channels, chemistry is done, and you read out the color.
Very cool.
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Watch the video…
“For the first time, researchers have sustainably produced hydrogen gas, a potential source of clean energy, using only water and bacteria. The challenge now, scientists say, is to scale up the process to provide large amounts of hydrogen for various purposes, such as fueling vehicles or small generators.”
I keep thinking of how to extract electricity or combustible gas from bacteria. And here someone has improved on the process to extract hydrogen in some usable quantity. Seem like there are still a few technical hurdles, but the most interesting comment to me was that they really can’t use ALL the hydrogen the bacteria produce – the bugs need the hydrogen as well. That got me thinking of milking cows – you still need to feed that calf.
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“Researchers have invented a new form of secret messaging using bacteria that make glowing proteins only under certain conditions. In addition to being useful to spies, the new technique could also allow companies to encode secret identifiers into crops, seeds, or other living commodities.”
Cool.
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“The thumb-size black strip looks like a thin magnet. But in reality, it is an artificial leaf, made of silicon and capable of using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen that can be fed into fuel cells to make power. “You drop it in a glass of water and you walk outside and hold it in the sun, and you’ll start to see bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen,’’ explained Daniel Nocera, an MIT professor who led the team that invented the device.”
Quite cool.
Image from the Globe
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