In studying antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, researchers from Boston University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have discovered that charitable behavior exists in one of the most microscopic forms of life.

Researchers from Purdue University have improved a previously developed yeast strain by modifying it to now ferment all five types of a plant's sugars - enabling the yeast to produce more biofuel from cellulosic plant material.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced new grants totaling $79 million that was given through the HHMI undergraduate program, and the HHMI Professors program.

Fifty research universities in 30 states and the District of Columbia will be awarded a total of $70 million through the undergraduate program. The schools will use the grants, which range from $800,000 to $2 million over four years, to develop creative, research-based courses and curricula; to give more students vital experience working in the lab; and to improve science teaching from elementary school through college.

Vanderbilt University has published a study that reports human cells moving in what seem to be independent ways similar to amoebae and bacteria. These results are thought to be a first in cell biology and were inspired in a unique way. The researchers’ adopted some new assumptions

The man who helped to first sequence the human genome ten years ago, is looking to use biology to tackle the energy problem.

A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.

Researchers from the National University of Ireland in Galway have found that adding increasing amounts of disinfectant to cultures of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa resulted in the bacteria adapting in ways to survive the disinfectant itself - no real surprise there. However, the researchers also discovered that the disinfectant exposed bacteria had also developed resistance to a commonly used antibiotic known as ciprofloxacin, without

Researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have overcome three challenges in the production of bioethanol from agricultural waste by inserting a single gene from the bacterium Escherichia coli into the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The invention is published in this weeks journal of "Applied and Environmental Microbiology".

Scientists from Pennsylvania State University have recently described a tiny new bacterium that has been isolated from the Greenland ice sheet. Dr. Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and her team named the new microbe Herminiimonas glaciei, and report the findings in the current issue of International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

Italian microbiologists Pietro Alifano and Luigi Del Giudice, and plant biologist Massimo Maffei, have found bacteria in the root of the tropical Vetiver grass whose oils are used in the cosmetic and perfume industries.