E. coli News and Research

RSS

E. coli or Escherichia coli is the name of a type of bacteria that lives in your intestines. Most types of E. coli are harmless. However, some types can make you sick and cause diarrhea. One type causes travelers' diarrhea. The worst type of E. coli causes bloody diarrhea, and can sometimes cause kidney failure and even death. These problems are most likely to occur in children and in adults with weak immune systems. You can get E. coli infections by eating foods containing the bacteria. To help avoid food poisoning and prevent infection, handle food safely. Cook meat well, wash fruits and vegetables before eating or cooking them, and avoid unpasteurized milk and juices. You can also get the infection by swallowing water in a swimming pool contaminated with human waste. Most cases of E. coli infection get better without treatment in 5 to 10 days.

Limiting antibiotic use in livestock associated with reduction in antibiotic-resistant infection

A California policy restricting antibiotic use in animals raised for food is associated with a reduction in one type of antibiotic-resistant infection in people in the state, according to a new study published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

23 Feb 2023

Engineering a phage's DNA by introducing modified CRISPR-Cas machinery genes

Bacteriophages (or phages) are viruses that infect bacteria. They are the most abundant biological entity, and they can be found wherever bacteria live. To propagate themselves, phages inject their DNA into their bacterial hosts.

13 Feb 2023

New arsenal in the fight against superbugs

RMIT scientists have created a new type of antibiotic that can be rapidly re-engineered to avoid resistance by dangerous superbugs.

8 Feb 2023

Researchers decipher how common environmental bacterium can digest complex waste

A common environmental bacterium, Comamonas testosteroni, could someday become nature's plastic recycling center.

7 Feb 2023

Learning about cellular proteins through “snapshots” of translation

Pep-tRNAs, nascent polypeptides inside the ribosome that are covalently connected to transfer RNA, are engaged in a variety of cell processes, including gene expression, according to advances in molecular biology.

1 Feb 2023

Scientists receive $10 million from HHMI for research on using viruses as therapeutic agents

Taking a bold step into a new era of biology, a team of scientists from the University of California San Diego, the J. Craig Venter Institute and Yale University has been awarded $10 million by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to support research on using viruses as new therapeutic agents.

27 Jan 2023

Researchers discover new transporter for recycling of bacterial cell wall

A transporter which some bacteria use to recycle fragments of their cell wall has been discovered by researchers at Umeå University, Sweden.

27 Jan 2023

Highly potent antibiotic candidate identified

One of the most promising new antibiotic candidates in decades is a powerful plant toxin that harbors a novel way of killing hazardous bacteria.

26 Jan 2023

Understanding the step-by-step development of E. coli resistance to drugs

Antibiotic resistance, which occurs when infection-causing bacteria evolve to the point where they are no longer affected by conventional antibiotics, is a worldwide concern.

15 Dec 2022

New information to combat the global challenge of AMR

An international research team has released important new information about what causes the emergence and spread of genes involved in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria.

14 Dec 2022

Sprayable new super-disinfectant can protect food from bacterial contamination

Researchers at McMaster University have created a powerful new weapon against bacterial contamination and infection.

6 Dec 2022

Expanding the CRISPR-based toolbox for extensive genome engineering

Researchers from North Carolina State University describe a variety of CRISPR-Cas systems-based molecular tools to rewrite, rather than just edit, significant portions of an organism’s DNA.

23 Nov 2022

Inexpensive recombinant protein production induced by urea

A common chemical present in the urine can be utilized to initiate large-scale production of proteins needed by biotech companies, like hormones and antibodies.

28 Oct 2022

Innovative strategy for studying membrane proteins

Membrane proteins are vital therapeutic targets. They exist between the interior and exterior of human cells. Some of them, known as “transporters,” transport substances into and out of the cellular environment.

26 Oct 2022

Cryo-EM solves the decades-old mystery of bacterial movement

Scientists from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their colleagues have discovered a decades-old mystery regarding how E. coli and other bacteria move.

28 Sep 2022

Yeast platform for the production of plant-derived anti-cancer drug

The supply of a plant-derived anti-cancer drug can finally meet global demand after a team of scientists from Denmark and the U.S. engineered yeast to produce the precursor molecules, which could previously only be obtained in trace concentrations in the native plant.

1 Sep 2022

Detecting multiple food poisoning bacteria based on color differences in scattered light from metals

Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have developed a simple, rapid method to simultaneously identify multiple food poisoning bacteria, based on color differences in the scattered light by nanometer-scaled organic metal nanohybrid structures (NHs) that bind via antibodies to those bacteria.

30 Aug 2022