Blog listing

December 19, 2022

In this festive episode of Microbe Talk, Charlotte speaks to Dr Lorna Lancaster about the harmful and helpful microbes involved in making Christmas food.

October 24, 2018

Dr Stafford Vigors is a researcher at Teagasc, a Food Research Centre in Ashtown, Dublin. At the 2018 Microbes and Mucosal Surfaces Focused Meeting, Stafford presented his research ‘Analysis of the intestinal microbiome of pigs divergent in feed efficiency.’ Here, he explains how differences in the gut microbiome could improve - or hinder - pig growth on farms. 

March 30, 2016

Each month, the Microbiology Society publishes the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM), which details newly discovered species of bacteria, fungi and protists. Here are a few of the new species that have been discovered and the places they’ve been found. The full papers are available to journal subscribers, but the abstracts are free to read.

March 3, 2015

Wine connoisseurs, or oenophiles, possess a seemingly endless vocabulary for describing their tipples of choice. To the uninitiated, it may sound like they are describing an entire gourmet meal, or even a good friend, but this is not just make-believe: those in the know can sometimes pinpoint not just the country or region a wine came from, but the exact vineyard. How can this be possible?

July 15, 2014

Reports of the imminent demise of the world’s most popular fruit have surfaced repeatedly over the course of the last decade. Bananas, particularly those grown in large monocultures for the hungry markets of the EU and the US, are vulnerable to a number of diseases, and fears are mounting that the tide is turning against our prevention and mitigation strategies. How much stock should we put in these reports – are the days of the banana truly numbered? Jon Fuhrmann investigates.