Synthesis gas, that consists largely of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen, has been used in a process to make the commodity chemical, 2-hydroxybutyric acid. This news report discusses a proposal to alter regulations of materials and products involved in using synthetic biology to make chemicals. Genetic engineering can be complex and time consuming. This research paper describes an a...

AlkL is an outer membrane porin from Pseudomonas. Its expression in E. coli was shown to greatly stimulate the oxidation of hydrophobic substrates by a a recombinant oxygenase enzyme system. Bacterial membranes can be perturbed for biotechnological purposes by enzymatic treatment. Some of the enzymes and their actions are discussed on this commercial site. Different chemical treatments that are...

This review presents a broad survey of experimental microbial evolution, covering diverse topics including trade-offs, epistasis, fluctuating conditions, spatial dynamics, cooperation, aging, and stochastic switching. Emphasis is placed on examples that highlight key conceptual points or address theoretical predictions. Experimental evolution is discussed from two points of view. First, populat...

In this issue of Diabetes Care, Simon et al. (1) report the results of a study testing the hypothesis that the administration of Lactobacillus reuteri in subjects without diabetes improves insulin sensitivity. A quick review of the background may help us put this work in context. Our digestive tract hosts some 2 kg of microbes, made up of ;100 trillion microorganisms. Present in sparse colonies...

This is an excellent starting point for research on antibiotics. The site contains a large list of antibiotics that is arranged into different structural classes. This review describes a book that provides an excellent background on the types of antibiotics, their synthesis and their mechanisms of action. This timeline shows the dates of introduction of new antibiotics. It should be noted that ...

The growth and survival of organisms often depend on interactions between them. In many cases, these interactions are positive and caused by a cooperative modification of the environment, such as the cooperative breakdown of complex nutrients in microbes [1]–[3] or the construction of elaborate architectures in social insects [4]. However, organisms can similarly display negative interactions b...