Thursday, February 09, 2012
Andrew F. Read, a professor of biology and entomology at Penn State, has been named the Alumni Professor in the Biological Sciences. Read perhaps is best known for his research on how natural selection shapes the virulence of malaria and how the "unnatural" selection imposed by medicine shapes the evolution of disease-causing organisms. This evolution causes drugs to fail and can create "super-bugs" that are resistant to pharmaceuticals. Since evolutionary responses to drugs, insecticides, and vaccines are the main causes of problems in preventing and treating infectious diseases, Read sees potential to use an improved understanding of pathogen evolution to inform public-health decisions. (more)
Monday, January 30, 2012
The bottom of a glacier is not the most hospitable place on Earth, but at least two types of bacteria happily live there, according to researchers. The bacteria -- Chryseobacterium and Paenisporosarcina -- showed signs of respiration in ice made in the laboratory that was designed to simulate as closely as possible the temperatures and nutrient content found at the bottom of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers, said Corien Bakermans, assistant professor of microbiology, Penn State Altoona. She said that carbon dioxide levels in the laboratory-made ice containing the bacteria, which were collected from glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, indicated that respiration was occurring at temperatures ranging from negative 27 to positive 24 degrees Fahrenheit. (more)
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
In the war between drugs and drug-resistant diseases, is the current strategy for medicating patients giving many drug-resistant diseases a big competitive advantage? A research paper that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues for new research efforts to discover effective ways for managing the evolution and slowing the spread of drug-resistant disease organisms. The research is led by Andrew Read, professor of biology and entomology and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University.
The ultimate goal is to develop a new science-based model for drug-resistance management that will inform treatment guidelines for a wide variety of diseases that affect people, including malaria and other diseases caused by parasites, MRSA and other diseases caused by bacterial infections, AIDS and other diseases caused by viruses, and cancer. (more)
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Bonnie Bassler, Howard Hughes medical institute investigator and Squibb professor of molecular biology at Princeton University, will present the spring 2011 Dean's Lecture at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, May 17, in the Junker Auditorium on the Penn State Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine campus.
Bassler's lecture, titled "How Bacteria Talk to Each Other," will draw upon her groundbreaking research on the molecular mechanisms bacteria use for intercellular communication. (more)
Thursday, April 28, 2011
For the first time, scientists have been able to paint a detailed chemical picture of how a particular strain of bacteria has evolved to become resistant to antibiotics. The research is a key step toward designing compounds to prevent infections by recently evolved, drug-resistant "superbugs" that often are found in hospitals, as well as in the general population. The research team that made this discovery, which is published in the journal Science, is led by Squire Booker, an associate professor in the department of chemistry and the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State. (more)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Scientists have discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. It is among the type of ultra-small bacteria that can pass through microbiological filters, including those used to prepare ultra-purified water for dialysis. Its study may help to reveal how life, in general, can exist in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and elsewhere. The discovery will be presented at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston. (more)
