To adapt to changing environmental pressures, bacteria have developed various methods that allow them to uptake exogenous DNA and incorporate it into their own genomes. One of these processes is ...

Researchers led by Imperial College London have uncovered new insights into how bacteria hook up to exchange DNA that helps them resist antibiotics. Understanding the molecular basis of bacterial ...

Broad-spectrum antibiotics have been lifesavers for decades, but their lack of selectivity can cause some problems. The drugs not only wipe out pathogenic bacteria, but also can kill beneficial ones.

There is a debate about whether antibiotics influence the rate at which bacteria acquire drug resistance, with some researchers showing that exposure to antibiotics increases the spread of antibiotic ...

The ever-diverse fungi play several key roles in our day–to–day life. From facilitating ecological nutrient cycling, to being used in industrial manufacturing and being a key ingredient in our food, ...

Conjugation has classically been considered a bacterium-to-bacterium DNA transfer driven by the donor cell and is typically plasmid-encoded. Theoretically it is possible that any type of cell can ...

Biomedical engineers have demonstrated that at least 25 percent of antibiotic-resistant pathogenic bacteria found in clinical settings are capable of spreading their resistance directly to other ...

A new system using bacterial communities to autonomously solve complex problems has been developed by researchers in Spain. The designed algorithms help to synchronize different bacteria according to ...

Bacterial cells often possess molecules of closed, circular DNA, otherwise known as ‘plasmids’. They can also be present at much lower frequencies in certain eukaryotic cell types, such as yeast. They ...