Tag Archive for 'Bacteriophage'

The average American spends 93% of their time in built environments, almost 70% of that is in their place of residence. Human health and well-being are intrinsically tied to the quality of our personal environments and the microbiomes that populate them. Conversely, the built environment microbiome is seeded, formed, and re-shaped by occupant behavior, cleaning, personal hygiene and food choices, as well as geographic location and variability in infrastructure. Huttelmaier et al. focused on the presence of viruses in household biofilms, specifically in showerheads and on toothbrushes.

Study: Your Showerheads and Toothbrushes are Teeming with Diverse Collection of Viruses

Oct 10, 2024 by News Staff

Viruses collected in a Northwestern University-led study are bacteriophages — a type of virus that infects and replicates inside of bacteria. The...

Halomonas phage vB_HmeY_H4907. Scale bar - 100 nm. Image credit: Su et al., doi: 10.1128/spectrum.01912-23.

Virologists Find Previously Unknown Virus in Mariana Trench

Sep 21, 2023 by Natali Anderson

Dubbed Halomonas phage vB_HmeY_H4907, the new bacteria-infecting virus is the deepest isolated siphovirus from the ocean, and it represents a novel abundant...

The structure of the bacteriophage P74-26. Image credit: Leonora Martinez-Nunez.

‘Rapunzel Bacteriophage’ Has Extremely Long Tail, Researchers Say

Mar 14, 2023 by News Staff

A bacteriophage (bacteria-infecting virus) called P74-26 and nicknamed ‘Rapunzel bacteriophage’ lives in inhospitable hot springs and preys on Thermus...

Neri et al. expanded RNA virus diversity from 13,282 to 124,873 distinct clusters at a granularity level between species and genus. Image credit: Neri et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.08.023.

Biologists Discover Over 100,000 New Types of RNA Viruses

Dec 26, 2022 by News Staff

Scientists from Tel Aviv University and elsewhere have detected 111,000 new RNA virus genomes in global environmental data from diverse habitats and hosts....

Yao Tandong, left, and Lonnie Thompson, right, process an ice core drilled from the Guliya ice cap in the Tibetan Plateau in 2015. Image credit: Lonnie Thompson.

Scientists Find 14,400-Year-Old Microbes and Viruses in Tibetan Glacier Ice

Jul 20, 2021 by News Staff

Microbiologists at the Ohio State University have found that the ancient bacteria and their phages (bacteria-infecting viruses) from Tibetan glacier ice...

Camarillo-Guerrero et al. introduce the Gut Phage Database, a collection of 142,809 non-redundant viral genomes (>10 kb) obtained by mining a dataset of 28,060 globally distributed human gut metagenomes and 2,898 reference genomes of cultured gut bacteria. Image credit: Camarillo-Guerrero et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.029.

Biologists Find Almost 143,000 Bacteriophage Species in Human Gut

Feb 19, 2021 by News Staff

A team of biologists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Universidad de los Andes has identified 142,809...

Depiction of huge bacteriophages (red, left) and normal phages infecting a bacterial cell. The huge phage injects its DNA into the host cell, where Cas proteins -- part of the CRISPR immune system typically found only in bacteria and archaea -- manipulate the host cell’s response to other viruses. The authors have not yet photographed any huge phages, so all are depicted resembling the most common type of phage, T4. Image credit: Jill Banfield Lab / University of California, Berkeley.

Giant Bacteriophages Bridge Gap between Living Microbes and Viral Machines

Feb 13, 2020 by News Staff

Bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — are considered distinct from cellular life owing to their inability to carry out most biological...

Ohio State University researchers cut an ice core retrieved from the Guliya ice cap in the Kunlun Mountains in Tibet in 2015. Image credit: Giuliano Bertagna, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, Ohio State University.

15,000-Year-Old Viruses and Bacteria Found in Glacier Ice from Tibet

Jan 31, 2020 by Natali Anderson

A team of U.S. researchers has found ancient viruses and bacteria in ice from two cores drilled on the summit and plateau of the Guliya ice cap in northwestern...

This scanning electron micrograph shows macrophages infected with Bacillus anthracis (Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology)

New Nanoparticle-Based Vaccine Protects against Anthrax and Plague

Oct 17, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team in the United States has developed a nanoparticle-based dual vaccine against Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis — pathogens that...

Thin-section electron microscopy of an agar overlay containing plaques of the representative Autolykiviridae virus 1.008.O; virus particles in contact with cell membranes are observed to occasionally possess tail-tube-like structures, whereas those not in contact with cells do not. Image credit: Kauffman et al, doi: 10.1038/nature25474.

Scientists Find New Type of Virus in World’s Oceans: Autolykiviridae

Jan 25, 2018 by News Staff

Non-tailed double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses infect bacteria and dominate water samples from the world’s oceans. They have long escaped analysis because...

This micrograph depicts the gram-positive bacterium Propionibacterium acnes grown in thioglycollate medium at 48 hours. Propionibacterium acnes is a very common obligate anaerobic, non-spore forming rod, and the etiologic pathogen responsible for acne vulgaris, or pimples. It normally resides in the sebaceous glands of the skin. Image credit: Bobby Strong, CDC.

Unbalanced Skin Microbiome May Be Key to Acne Development, Study Finds

Apr 6, 2017 by News Staff

The overall balance of the bacteria on a person’s skin, rather than the presence or absence of a particular bacterial strain, appears to be an important...

Four newly identified CRISPR-Cas9 inhibitor proteins encoded by Listeria monocytogenes prophages prevent Cas9 binding and gene editing in bacteria and human cells, including currently the most widely used Cas9 from Streptococcus pyogenes. Image credit: Benjamin J. Rauch et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.12.009.

Researchers Discover Off-Switch for CRISPR-Cas9 System

Jan 3, 2017 by News Staff

A team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, has discovered a way to inactivate the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system using newly...

Electron microphotograph shows two Wolbachia cells that have infected a Nasonia wasp. The one to the left is infected with the WO phage, pointed out by the black arrowheads. The one to the right is uninfected. The large dark patch is bacteria DNA that has been degraded by the phage. The image also shows the multiple wasp membranes wrapped around the Wolbachia that the phage must penetrate both to enter and escape from the bacteria. Image credit: Bordenstein Lab, Vanderbilt University.

Biologists Find DNA of Black Widow Spider Toxin in Genome of Bacteriophage

Oct 13, 2016 by News Staff

Biologists at Vanderbilt University have discovered DNA of the black widow spider toxin in the genome of a virus that attacks Wolbachia, a type of symbiotic...

Electron micrograph of bacteriophages infecting a bacterial cell. Image credit: Dr Graham Beards.

CrAssphage: Previously Unknown Ancient Gut Virus Lives in Half World’s Population

Aug 11, 2014 by News Staff

About half the world’s population carries a newly discovered gut virus, dubbed CrAssphage, says a team of virologists led by Prof Robert Edwards of San...

Electron microscopy of Tsamsa phage. Scale bar - 100 nm. Image credit: Ganz HH et al.

Newly Discovered Bacteriophage Kills Anthrax, Scientists Say

Jan 28, 2014 by News Staff

The Tsamsa phage – a giant virus isolated from zebras that died of anthrax in the Namibia’s Etosha National Park – could open up new...

Electron micrograph of bacteriophages infecting a bacterial cell (Dr Graham Beards)

Viruses Can Have Immune System, Study Finds

Feb 28, 2013 by Natali Anderson

A new research led by Dr Kimberley Seed from the Tufts University School of Medicine provides the first evidence that bacteriophages – viruses that...