For the first time, scientists in Australia have observed bacteria shedding their protective shells and changing shape to escape detection by antibiotics.

It's possible to come up with a variety of similarly shaped molecules that can pair up in a way that keeps the spacing of DNA constant but forms base pairs that are physically distinct from those ...

New method reveals parts of bacterial genome essential to life Date: August 30, 2011 Source: Stanford University Medical Center Summary: A research team has cataloged, down to the letter, exactly ...

They set out to chemically synthesise this genome from scratch, as a continuous ring-shaped chromosome. Such a task was previously seen as a true tour de force: The chemically synthesised bacterial ...

The bacteria are alive, though unusually shaped and reproducing slowly. ... bacteria with a genome containing one million base pairs. Now scientists have created an E.coli genome four times larger.

In nature as well as in our bodies, bacteria predominantly live as organized communities called biofilms. These structures play a central role in antibiotic resistance mechanisms. In a ...

The most famous is the DNA double helix, but some organisms have gone so far as to evolve helical anatomy. Take, for example, the bacteria Helicobacter pylori . This little corkscrew of a cell is an ...

The viruses that infect bacteria are the most abundant biological entities on the planet. For example, a recent simple study of 92 showerheads and 36 toothbrushes from American bathrooms found ...

Because the bacteria are so big, it’s possible that having these pockets of DNA and ribosomes allows each region of the cell to respond better to its environment, the authors suggest.

Researchers have developed a ‘smart tweezer’ that can pluck a specific bacterial strain from a microbiome of trillions and sequence its genome better than current methods allow. The tool could ...