Archaea are a domain of single-celled microorganisms. They have no cell nucleus or any other organelles inside their cells. By The Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE), an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society.

Bacteria are any of a very large group of single-celled microorganisms that display a wide range of metabolic types, geometric shapes and environmental habitats—and niches—of occurrence. By The Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE), an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society.

Bacteria suffer from negative public relations. You probably associate bacteria with the three D’s: dirt, disease and death. And indeed, for centuries bacterial infections were the major cause of infant and child mortality worldwide. By Actionbioscience.org, a non-commercial, educational web site created to promote bioscience literacy.

Although the carboxysome was for nearly 30 years the only microcompartment recognized within microbial cells, additional microcompartments, including some that are involved in metabolic processes such as degrading carbon sources, are known. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Biofilms are receiving attention as never before, reflecting our increasing awareness of their impact on health, the environment, industrial processes, and natural and manmade materials. Problems associated with biofilms cost the United States billions of dollars every year in energy losses, equipment damage, product contamination, and the management of infections. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a long chain organic molecule that contains the coding for all metabolic and reproductive processes of all living organisms, save for certain viruses. This helix shaped molecule consists of a spine that contains a sequence of nucleotides, whose order comprise the coding instruction for each specific lifeform. By The Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE), an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society.

Evolution is key to our understanding the deluge of data being generated by massive DNA sequencing efforts, microarray analyses of gene expression, high-throughput structural biochemistry, proteomics, and systems biology. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

We live in a beautiful world – and that beauty and complexity extends far beyond what humans can see unaided. From plant and animal anatomy to cells and proteins and even down to the level of atoms, there are worlds within worlds of detail to be explored on the microscopic scale. By The Science Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of science in New Zealand schools.

Microbial taxonomists are cautious about adopting novel approaches for classifying organisms. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

The word fungus usually invokes images of mushrooms and toadstools. Although mushrooms are fungi, the forms which a fungus may take are varied. There are over 100,000 species of described fungi and probably over 200,000 undescribed. By The Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE), an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society.

Using modern laboratory techniques, it is relatively easy to add pieces of foreign DNA to bacteria. By the Biotechnology Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of biotechnology in New Zealand schools.

Before progeny virus particles depart an infected cell, each virion needs to contain viral nucleic acid, accessory proteins, and enzymes within an outer shell before the capsid structure is completed to shield the sensitive cargo from the external environment. One mechanism that many viruses use to govern this process is morphogenic proteolysis. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Many people who watched the TV images coming back from the two Mars rovers this year were probably disappointed. By Actionbioscience.org, a non-commercial, educational web site created to promote bioscience literacy.

Starting in the 1980s, researchers began to realize the long-standing dream of studying individual molecules, particularly proteins. With a growing number of specialized techniques to use, researchers can now manipulate and visualize individual molecules and thus study mechanical unfolding and refolding of proteins or nucleic acids, the strength of receptor-ligand bonding interactions, and the nanomechanics of biological motors. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

The term microbial community often comes up in the context of natural microbial assemblages (NMAs) being analyzed. Because the majority of microbes in such NMAs show no detectable activity or growth, researchers use molecular techniques to characterize microbes in these NMA—while assuming that nucleic acids recovered in bulk from such samples represent those microbial communities. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

We can’t see them. We can’t hear them or feel them, but they are with us. There are 10 trillion (10 x 1,000,000,000,000 or a million million) cells in the average body. By The Science Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of science in New Zealand schools.

The human genome proved surprisingly skimpy, encoding somewhere in the range of a mere 20,000 proteins, on the same order as the fruit fly genome—a psychologically humbling number. However, humans provide a scaffold upon which microbes build elaborate ecosystems and, by young adulthood, each of us carries many more microbial genes than our own. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Electron microscopes are very powerful tools for visualising biological samples. They enable scientists to view cells, tissues and small organisms in very great detail. By The Science Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of science in New Zealand schools.

Bacteria are single-celled organisms. They are prokaryotes and therefore do not have any cell organelles including a cell nucleus. By The Science Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of science in New Zealand schools.

Gram-negative bacteria produce lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the endotoxin that causes septic shock and is a leading cause of death in critically ill patients. Because LPS is the predominant surface-exposed lipid in Gram-negative bacteria, it is one of the first compounds to interact with host cells. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Many scientists believe that phages are the most abundant life form on Earth. Although phages outnumber their bacterial prey 10-fold, bacteria persist, sometimes relying on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) of DNA sequence as a defense mechanism. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

Electron microscopes were developed in the 1930s to enable us to look more closely at objects than is possible with a light microscope. By The Science Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of science in New Zealand schools.

Viruses and viral diseases have been at the center of science, agriculture, and medicine for millennia, and some of our greatest challenges and triumphs have involved virology. Smallpox is a prime example. This greatest killer of humankind changed the course of history during the European conquest of the New World and is also the only disease ever eradicated. By Microbe Magazine, the monthly news magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t eat, it doesn’t excrete, and it doesn’t grow. By The Science Learning Hub, a national project designed to support the effective teaching of science in New Zealand schools.