Rabies is a fatal viral disease largely transmitted to humans by infected animals—predominantly from domestic dogs. The contagion is usually through the saliva from rabid animals. The disease is entirely preventable through prompt administration of post-exposure prophylaxis to bite victims and can be controlled through widely applied vaccination of domestic dogs. Yet, rabies is still […]
For a while, new evidence has been accumulating linking the gut microbiota to brain function. A new paper published recently in Cell Reports, shows that the intermediary is a type of white blood cell, evidencing as well the relationship between the brain and the immune system. While the crosstalk between the peripheral immune system and […]
It all began in 1891, when Dr. William B. Coley, a bone sarcoma surgeon at the Memorial Hospital in New York, injected streptococcal organisms into a patient with inoperable cancer. He thought that the infection he induced would have the side effect of shrinking the malignant tumor… and quite surprisingly he was right! The patient’s […]
Some pharmaceutical painkillers and analgesics like Noscapine, papaverine and tubocurarine or the most famous opioids codeine or morphine are Benzylisoquinoline derivatives. Few of them are used daily for thousands of people to relieve a variety of physical pains. However, due to their rather complex biosynthesis, they are still obtained by processing plant extracts (mainly from […]
Last Friday I was, as is always the case listening to an enthusiastic talk given by one of the PhD students from my department. As part of her PhD work, she is trying to understand why periodontitis, an inflammatory disease where gums get swollen as a consequence of bacterial infection, is essentially painless. This is […]
We are one of a kind because our genetic background says so. When our parents conceived us, one set of chromosomes from each of them merged to create a brand new diploid cell called zygote, which is already unique. Yet, such singularity doesn’t start with the zygote itself, but much earlier with our progenitors. The […]
There is a widespread concern about the increasing antibiotic resistance and the limited new drugs to treat infectious diseases, as discussed in a previous post . Consequently, the discovery of a new antibiotic active against a range of bacterial pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus has been greatly welcome, especially because no resistance to it has been […]
Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne Gram positive bacteria that causes the infection listeriosis. It is responsible for serious clinical manifestations including gastroenteritis, and meningitis and encephalitis in newborns, with 20 to 30 % of clinical infections resulting in death. It is a facultative intracellular pathogen that can invade and move within eukaryotic cells by polymerization […]
Bacteria are the workhorses for a large number of biotechnological processes. From different fermentation processes to insulin production, they are widely used in industry due to their efficiency, fast duplication times and ease of maintenance. But often their behaviour it´s much more complex than one would expect from a unicellular organism. This is where the […]
Few weeks ago, a new report by WHO reveals that antibiotic resistance is now a major threat to global public health: “ the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era ”. One of the priorities is the treatment of urinary tract infections caused by Escherichia coli strains isolated from several countries and which are resistant […]