It was long thought that when the membrane of a cell lost its integrity and broke down, the cell would die; cells cannot survive without a cell wall. Many antibiotics target the cell wall of bacteria, ...

Bacteria temporarily live without their cell wall if dangerous viruses are near. A remarkable feature, as the cell wall is a sturdy barrier against threats. Still, the discovery has a logical ...

Most bacteria, including many bacterial pathogens, are surrounded by an outer protective layer of sugar molecules, known as a capsule. This primarily protects the bacteria from environmental ...

We often hear about bacteria, but what exactly are they? A bacterium is a living organism that consists of a single cell (unicellular). It has ...

For bacteria, the first line of defense is the cell wall, which keeps toxins such as antibiotics out. Now, researchers have discovered a key mechanism that bacteria use to build their cell walls, ...

Drug-resistant bacteria are becoming harder to treat, pushing scientists to look for new antibiotic targets. Researchers have now discovered that several unrelated viruses disable a key bacterial ...

A new paper provides important new insights into the process by which bacteria recycle their cell wall. A new paper by a team of researchers led by Shahriar Mobashery, Navari Family Professor of Life ...

Bacteria are evolving to elude our drugs at an alarming rate, so much so that the UN has declared antibiotic resistance a global health emergency with the expectation that it could kill millions upon ...

Antibiotic resistance is considered one of the most urgent health threats of our time. Common bacteria such as E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus are evolving defenses against the drugs doctors rely on ...

A transporter which some bacteria use to recycle fragments of their cell wall has been discovered by researchers at Umeå university, Sweden. They found that the transporter controls resistance to ...

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered in mouse models how cell walls from certain pneumonia-causing bacteria can cause fatal heart damage; researchers have also shown ...

Jeff Errington receives funding from the Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the 17th-century Dutch scientist, was the first person to see single-celled ...