Microbiology News and Research

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Ancient Ice Cave Bacteria Show Modern Antibiotic Resistance

Bacteria have evolved to adapt to all of Earth's most extreme conditions, from scorching heat to temperatures well below zero.

18 Feb 2026

Chemical Tweaks Boost Peptide Stability and Antimicrobial Power

Antibiotic treatments are losing effectiveness against a range of common bacterial pathogens, including E. coli, K. pneumoniae, Salmonella and Acinetobacter, according to a warning issued by the World Health Organization last October.

16 Feb 2026

Formic Acid Drives Novel Electron Transfer in the Gut Bacteria

Researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt have discovered a surprising role for formic acid in the human gut: The small molecule acts as a kind of “taxi” for electrons – both within bacteria and, likely, also between different microorganisms.

9 Feb 2026

Sugar Molecules Point to a New Weapon Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Australian researchers have developed a powerful new way to target deadly, drug-resistant bacteria by designing antibodies that recognize a sugar found only on bacterial cells – an advance that could underpin a new generation of immunotherapies for multidrug resistant hospital-acquired infections.

4 Feb 2026

Bat Virome in Indochina Peninsula: Uncovering PEDV Evolution and Zoonotic Threats

Bats, critical reservoirs of viruses with significant cross-species spillover risks, have long been understudied in the Indochina Peninsula.

3 Feb 2026

Melbourne Scientists Use AI to Tame CRISPR

Last year a ten-month old baby in the US was the first person in the world to have their rare genetic disease effectively cured through the use of CRISPR gene editing technology.

27 Jan 2026

Gut Bacteria Use Protein Injection to Influence Human Immune System

Bacteria in the human gut can directly deliver proteins into human cells, actively shaping immune responses.

27 Jan 2026

Unveiling How a Respiratory Bacterium Obtains Lipids and Targets Fatty Tissues

A multidisciplinary team has uncovered a key mechanism that allows the human bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae-responsible for atypical pneumonia and other respiratory infections-to obtain cholesterol and other essential lipids directly from the human body.

16 Jan 2026

Intelectin-2: A Dual-Action Lectin Fortifies Gut Barrier and Fights Bacteria

The mucosal surfaces that line the body are embedded with defensive molecules that help keep microbes from causing inflammation and infections.

14 Jan 2026

Marsupial Gut Microbiomes Show Diet Adaptations, Antibiotic Resistance Risks

Marsupials are a group of mammals that encompass many of Australia's most iconic animals, unique because of their geographically isolated evolution.

14 Jan 2026

New Technique Measures How Effectively Antibiotics Kill Bacteria

Drugs that act against bacteria are mainly assessed based on how well they inhibit bacterial growth under laboratory conditions.

12 Jan 2026

Giant Virus Uses Unique Codon Strategy to Optimize Host Resource Usage

A virus relies on the host's translation machinery to replicate itself and become infectious. Translation efficiency partially depends on the usage of a codon, or sequence of three nucleotides, that matches the cellular pool of tRNA, key molecules in translation.

12 Jan 2026

Unusual Antibody Tactics Hinder Pathogen Attachment to Cells

Pathogens can create sticky situations. When microbes invade the body to cause an infection, often one of their first lines of attack is to cling tenaciously to the surfaces of targeted human cells.

8 Jan 2026

Cooperation's Fate: Population Bottlenecks Reshape Microbial Social Dynamics

Microbes often display cooperative behavior in which individual cells put in work and sacrifice resources to collectively benefit the group.

8 Jan 2026

A Molecular Tug-of-War Shapes Gene Regulation and Disease

A newly revealed molecular tug-of-war may have implications for better understanding how a multitude of diseases and disorders - including cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and immune disorders - originate, as well as how to potentially treat them, according to researchers at Penn State.

18 Dec 2025

Specific Gut Bacteria Found to Control Weight and Blood Fat Levels

The gut microbiome is intimately linked to human health and weight. Differences in the gut microbiome-the bacteria and fungi in the gut-are associated with obesity and weight gain, raising the possibility that changing the microbiome could improve health.

17 Dec 2025