Blog listing

Dr Christina Bronowski on behalf of the Microbiome-Net team  

What have microbes ever done for us? It turns out the answer is almost everything we can think of. Microbial communities help us digest food and train our immune systems. They help plants grow, make our yoghurt and beer, clean up pollution and keep insect pests in check. The list is endless, and so is the potential for research.  

Dr Victoria Orr at the University of Liverpool, UK, takes us behind the scenes of their latest publication 'The pQBR mercury resistance plasmids: a model set of sympatric environmental mobile genetic elements' in Microbial Genomics.

Each month, the Microbiology Society publishes the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, which details newly discovered species of bacteria, fungi and protists. New to Science is a monthly blog series unravelling these latest microbial discoveries.

Society Champion Simeon Makafui Nutsuklo (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana), recently organised a fellowship programme at Hive Biolab, aimed at young women in science, to allow them to gain vital experience in a lab. Below, Simeon provides more details and reflects on the experience.

Dr Sarah Walsh, Rebecca Ross, Prof Pablo Murcia and Prof Edward Hutchinson at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, UK, take us behind the scenes of their latest publication, 'Bovine mammary tissues are susceptible to infection by viruses bearing panzootic H5N1 influenza A virus glycoproteins' , published in Microbiology.

Bárbara Cipulo Legabão, Ana Luisa Perini Leme Giordano and Prof Angelica Zaninelli Schreiber at the University of Campinas, Brazil, take us behind the scenes of their latest publication, 'A simplified MALDI-TOF MS method for rapid fluconazole susceptibility testing in Candida species', published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Society Champion Ankita Priyadarshini (Parul University, India), recently organised an event for diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate students at Parul University, India, to help spread the word about microbiology. Below, Ankita provides more details and reflects on the experience.

Celebrated annually during the month of October in the UK, Black History Month recognises the contributions, culture and history of Black people. This year, we hear from Society Champion, Mariam Bhadmus (University of Huddersfield, UK), who has reflected on this year’s theme of ‘Honouring Our Communities’.