Bacteria can sneakily evade our best efforts at eradication by developing resistance to various pressures in their environment, for example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria stubbornly survive the usual ...

Antibiotics usually save lives—but against some bacteria, they can make things worse. That’s the case with the Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli, where bacterial death releases a flood of a ...

Microplastics can go right through wastewater treatment plants, and researchers have engineered bacteria commonly found there to break down this pollution before it can persist in the environment.

Genes responsible for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can spread from microbe to microbe through circular genetic material called plasmids, and this lateral transfer occurs in the gut. This week in ...

Conjugation has classically been considered a bacterium-to-bacterium DNA transfer driven by the donor cell and is typically plasmid-encoded. Theoretically it is possible that any type of cell can ...

Humans have long had a love-hate relationship with bacteria. While there are bacterial strains that humans cannot live without, such as those that help us digest our food and bolster our immune ...

Bacterial blushing: Donor (red) bacteria have a repressor that blocks red fluorescent protein (RFP). Following conjugation, a bacterium (indicated by the arrow) that lacks the repressor receives the ...

Bacteria are good at evolving to evade efforts to destroy it. But building defenses like antibiotic resistance drains limited energy resources, forcing tough survival trade-offs. A recent study has ...