The discovery of antibiotics made many bacterial infections easily curable. However, today the world is facing a 'post-antibiotic era' crisis as bacteria are rapidly evolving new ways to resist antibiotics. Yearly, 700, 000 deaths are caused by bacterial infections that are untreatable with currently available... click to read more

Microbes in the human gut play essential roles in maintaining human health. Gut microbes carry out many of these roles using a large toolkit of enzymes that can metabolize and transform larger, complex compounds into smaller compounds. Microbial enzymes breakdown many compounds from the human... click to read more

Modern scientific equipment has revolutionized the study of hidden life. Advances in genetic sequencing allow us to discover mysterious worlds of diverse microbes in Earth's harshest environments or within our bodies. Life also hides from us through time. Studying long-extinct creatures can be challenging. We must... click to read more

In the 1980s it was discovered that some relatives of the bacterium Burkholderia cepacia (formerly Pseudomonas cepacia) were able to form close relationships with plant roots, and also make a range of antimicrobials capable of killing plant pathogens. Several US pesticide companies exploited this bacterium... click to read more

Therapeutic drugs are an important pillar of modern health care and often crucial for the treatment of patients. Besides their desired effects to cure diseases, drugs can also cause unwanted side effects, which often occur only in some patients. The causes of these side effects... click to read more