Latest CRISPR Stories

Viruses can wreak havoc on bacteria as well as humans and, just like us, bacteria have their own defense system in place, explained Professor John van der Oost, at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting on March 31. Uncovering the workings of the bacterial "immune system" could be used to keep industrial microbes at peak performance.Professor van der Oost and his team at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have spent the last three years working out the molecular...

Bacteria don't have easy lives. In addition to mammalian immune systems that besiege the bugs, they have natural enemies called bacteriophages, viruses that kill half the bacteria on Earth every two days.Still, bacteria and another class of microorganisms called archaea (first discovered in extreme environments such as deep-sea volcanic vents) manage just fine, thank you, in part because they have a built-in defense system that helps protect them from many viruses and other invaders.A team of...

It's as simple as A, T, G, C. Northwestern University scientists have exploited the Watson-Crick base pairing of DNA to provide a defensive tool that could be used to fight the spread of antibiotic resistance in bacteria -- one of the world's most pressing public health problems.The resistant nasty pathogens cause thousands of deaths each year in the United States. Particularly virulent is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which often cause hospital- and community-acquired...