Microbes articles
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Mesmerising microbes: bacteria as you’ve never seen it before – in pictures
Tal Danino’s day job at Columbia University, New York, is engineering “living” medicines. “We program microbes for cancer therapy using synthetic biology,” he says. As a side hustle he manipulates and photographs the microbial world; his images are collected in a book, Beautiful Bacteria. Taking bacteria from substances such as wastewater, dental plaque or kimchi, Danino lets them multiply in a petri dish, adding dyes. The results are artworks differing from the digital enhancements often made...
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From roots to resilience: Investigating the vital role of microbes in coastal plant health
Georgia's saltwater marshes—living where the land meets the ocean—stretch along the state's entire 100-mile coastline. These rich ecosystems are largely dominated by just one plant: grass.
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Iron-sulfur minerals may bear witness to first microbes on Earth that lived billions of years ago
A team of researchers at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen has found that certain minerals with characteristic shapes could indicate the activity of bacteria in hydrothermal vents—or black smokers—in the deep ocean several billion years ago.