Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that causes hundreds of thousands of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea cases every year, and these infections often prove fatal. Usually, C. difficile is unable to cause disease as the bacterium is kept in check by the friendly bacteria in the gut; the... click to read more

What constitutes a human body? What is it that makes your body, your own? If we begin to break it down, you can easily see that your body is covered with a layer of hair and skin. Beneath that lie your circulatory systems, bones and... click to read more

Each of us carries intestinal gardens, where microbes process food for our own consumption. We evolved to benefit from this, but as our guests are selfish single-cell creatures, tense diplomacy was always needed. Since these bacterial communities in our gut play surprisingly large roles in... click to read more

Ours is a world dominated by microbes. Diverse microbial communities colonize just about any available space, even deep within our bodies' cavities. Remarkably, every human being carries as many bacterial as human cells, leading us to question the very meaning of what constitutes a human.... click to read more

The fungal skin disease "Chytridiomycosis" is an important cause for amphibian diversity loss. This particular disease is emblematic for human mediated spread of pathogens from their native into new ranges, with the potential to extirpate the newly invaded host populations. The Asian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium... click to read more