Similar in function to ballast tanks in submarines or fish bladders, many water-based bacteria use gas vesicles to regulate their floatability. In a new publication in Cell, scientists from the ...

Biologists from ETH Zurich have discovered speargun- like molecular injection systems in two types of bacteria and have described their structure for the first time. The special nanomachines are used ...

Bacteria are also able to communicate with each other through chemical signals, a behavior known as quorum signaling (QS). These chemical signals spread through a biofilm that colonies of bacteria ...

Lucy Shapiro received this year’s Lasker Special Achievement Award for her discovery of how bacteria use genetic circuits to encode three-dimensional cellular life. “I was quite shocked, truly,” said ...

Bacteria talk to each other using N-acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs) as quorum sensing (QS) signals. This signaling allows the bacteria to control gene expression of virulence factors and biofilms once ...

Some bacteria carry tiny syringes filled with chemicals that may thin out competitors or incapacitate predators. Now, researchers have gotten up-close views of these syringes, technically known as ...

The figure illustrates bacterial cell wall synthesis as mediated by an enzyme called MraY (yellow/green). The enzyme modifies the cell wall building blocks (bricks) with a carrier lipid (cyan) so that ...

Researchers have discovered that the ancestors of legionella bacteria infected eukaryotic cells as early as two billion years ago. It happened soon after eukaryotes began to feed on bacteria. These ...

Researchers found bacterial cells so large they are easily visible to the naked eye, challenging ideas about how large microbes can get. By Carl Zimmer In a Caribbean mangrove forest, scientists have ...