Blog listing

August 16, 2016

A single drop of fluid can contain billions of bacteria swimming around inside it. For the most part, the movements of these bacteria are random and chaotic. But if you look at them under the microscope, you begin to see patterns emerging – swirls and vortices that come in and out of existence as groups of bacteria briefly swim in the same direction.

December 8, 2015

Over the past few months, Rebecca Philp, a PhD student from the Pirbright Institute, has been working at the Microbiology Society as our Public Affairs intern. While researching for a policy briefing, Rebecca learnt a lot about bioremediation. She explains a little about it in this blog.

June 18, 2015

Concrete is the most commonly used construction material on earth. It’s made from mixing cement, sand, stone and water, and is used in everything from roads and buildings to bridges and sewers.

October 29, 2014

Many aquatic animals spend much of their lives stuck to surfaces that can include rocks, ships or even whales. Limpets and sea stars, for example, use a form of adhesion that allows them to move on the surface they have colonised, but which makes them very hard to remove from that surface.

October 3, 2012

Across the globe, teams of intrepid microbiologists are tirelessly sampling and characterising microbes from strange and exotic lands. Just imagine isolating a new yeast species from Hibiscus flowers in Borneo, or a new bacterium from the sediment of an Arctic lake… Okay, it’s not always that glamorous – another novel bacterium was found on a mouldy indoor wall and a considerable number are from hazardous waste sites. Don’t underestimate these microbes based on their humble origins though! Sometimes organisms flourish in challenging environments for a simple reason – they can utilise unusual substrates as an energy source. That means they might be useful for bioremediation – the use of microbes to safely degrade harmful chemicals into water and harmless gases.