Anaerobic soil bacteria fighting cancer

Interesting article sent to me by Dr Vick

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14761417

The bacteria they refer to is Clostridium sporogenes. Many of you will recall that this genus is one of the endospore-formers, and that this genus is primarily anaerobic. The general idea is that the C. sporogenes can grow within the tissues because it is anaerobic. This is not necessarily intuitive to me because I seem to recall that vascularization (and hence blood/oxygen supply)  is an important feature of a tumor - but there must be more to it. 

Anyhow, to those currently in the course - I thought this was timely considering the material that has been covered in this first section

Want to share microbial profiles?

A research group in Europe is looking for participants in a microbial gut profiling study. One of their side enticements is that they will - if you want - put you in contact via social networking with other people worldwide who share your microbial profile. Sounds weird but really I think this is brilliant. Gut microbes impact us in ways that we don't fully understand yet. There may be many other people who have figured out good balance with their microbes that you can learn from. OK, that still sounds weird, but cool in a sciency way

http://my.microbes.eu/

Here's the more sensationalized interpretation....
http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/new-social-network-matches-people-based-on-gut-bacteria

Changing role of clinical work in Microbiology

http://www.microbeworld.org/index.php?option=com_jlibrary&view=article&id=7429&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter

Highlights:

• advances in molecular biology are what's changing things (Microbial Renaissance #2, right?)
• cost and accessibility of these tools is still somewhat of an issue, limiting widespread use

Quick staining technique to view endospores

Quick staining technique to view endospores was noted on MicrobeWorld. Presumably they would need to be out of the cell already, and it helps that there are some fully intact bacteria for size comparison. We'll need to give this a try in class!

http://www.microbeworld.org/index.php?option=com_jlibrary&view=article&id=7411&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter

New tech sequences bacterial genome in 2 hrs

http://www.iontorrent.com/technology-how-does-it-work-more/

How it works (if you're into this kind of thing): 

many miniwells, each with strand of DNA (stands that you want to sequence) anchored. Wash specific nucleotide (ex. dATP) over the slide. If that specific nucleotide gets incorporated, sensors detect the release of H+ ions from the reaction which lets you know "yep, that was an A". Generates 100 bp length reads - of course it's 1.4 million of them. They sequenced bacterial genomes (5x-10x coverage) in 2 hours with just 6 hours of prep time for each sample. 

Interestingly enough, they also sequenced Gordon Moore's genome as a test. He's the guy who developed Moore's Law which describes how technology doubles. His genome coast $50K to do but they think that this technology will advance quickly to get close to that target $1000 genome that everyone talks about. Not sure how much the bacterial genomes cost each

Link to the Nature summary

Long term diet affects your gut microbe composition

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/08/31/science.1208344

the food you eat acts very much like an enrichment disturbance to your gut microbes!

Evidence of ancient antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria

"Researchers Find Antibiotic Resistance in Ancient DNA"

link to NYTimes article

Highlights

• researchers isolated and sequenced DNA from bacteria in 30,000 yr old permafrost
• by comparing the gene sequences to current databases they were able to identify some of the ancient genes as genes involved in antibiotic resistance

for current Micro students - so given that 30,000 years precedes human use of antibiotics (considerably I might add), why did those bacteria have antibiotic resistance genes? (let me know if you think you have an answer...you'll find out later this semester but it's an interesting one to think about in the meanwhile.)