This Week in Microbiology

Vincent, Elio and Michael recorded this episode before an audience at the 2013 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Denver, Colorado, where they spoke with Andrew, Ferric, Suzanne, and Michelle about their research on a phage system for evading innate immunity, retractions of research papers, bacterial infections of the eye, and cytoplasmic defenses against intracellular bacteria.

This episode was filmed live at ASM GM 2013 in Denver, CO. Visit www.microbeworld.org/asmlive to watch the full video archive of this episode as well as all the videos recorded during GM.

Vincent, Elio and Michael discuss the finding that copper surfaces reduce microbial burden and hospital-acquired infections in the intensive care unit.

Vincent, Elio, and Michael review how sex-dependent differences in the mouse microbiome regulate type I diabetes, and counterattack among bacteria.

Vincent, Laura, David, Kalin and Paul get together at the Society for General Microbiology meeting in Manchester, England to talk about next-generation approaches to antimicrobial therapy.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio meet up with Hazel Barton to talk about cave microbiology.

Vincent, Michael, and Stanley review the scientific career of Carl Woese.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio discuss the HIV co-receptor CCR5 as a receptor for S. aureus leukotoxin ED, and the vineyard yeast microbiome.

Vincent, Michael, and Jo discuss how subtle gender bias of science faculty favors male students, and the relationship of invasive infection and antibody orientation at bacterial surfaces.

Horizontal transfer of antibiotic resistance genes on metal surfaces, and using bacteriophage to reverse antibiotic resistance.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio meet up with Jonathan Dworkin to discuss how bacteria form spores and how they return to vegetative growth.

Vincent, Michael, Elio review innate immune sensing of Listeria secreted bacterial nucleic acids, and how Wolbachia enhances egg production in Drosophila.

Vincent, Michael, Elio discuss the role of prophage excision in exit of Listeria from the phagosome, and analysis of bacterial communities in saliva.

Vincent, Michael, Elio review formation of caveolae in a bacterium, and the limited genetic diversity and broad killing activity of P. acnes bacteriophages.

Vincent, Michael, Elio, and Joe review highlights of the 15th International Symposium on Staphylococci and Staphylococcal Infections (ISSSI) in Lyon, France.

Vincent and Michael travel to San Francisco for the 52nd Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC), where they meet with Bill, John, and Victor to discuss tuberculosis, monitoring infectious disease outbreaks with online data, and outside-the-box approaches to antibacterial therapy.

**MicrobeWorld app users, click the "e" symbol in the bottom right corner of this description to watch a bonus video version of this episode!**

Vincent and Stanley meet with Waclaw Szybalski and John Kirby at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on the occasion of its designation as a Milestones in Microbiology site. They reminisce about how the well known laboratory has advanced the science and teaching of microbiology, and discuss John’s work on the soil dwelling, predatory myxobacteria.

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This video is also available for free at www.microbeworld.org in the TWiM section, epsiode #40.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio reviews chapters from Microbes and Evolution, a collection of short, personal essays by microbiologists.

Vincent, Jo, Michael, and Elio review an outbreak of pertussis in Washington, and how culturing can reveal rare members of the soil biosphere.

Vincent, Jo, Michael, and Elio discuss two examples of dynamic microbial symbioses that switch between mutualistic and pathogenic states.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio explore the origin of Mycoplasma pathogens of ruminants, and share their thoughts on the recent ASM General Meeting.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio review necrotizing fasciitis, and a link between surface remodeling in gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Michael Schmidt, and Elio Schaechter

Vincent, Michael, and Elio discuss changing populations of Emiliania huxleyi and their viruses in the North and Black Seas.

Right click to download TWiM #34 (50 MB .mp3, 69 minutes).

• The protist wonderland (Microbe)
• Emiliania huxleyi home page
• DISCO in the North Sea (FEMS Microbiol Ecol)
• 7000 years of Emiliania huxleyi in the Black Sea (Science)
• Cheshire cat escape by Emiliania huxleyi (PNAS)
• Letters read on TWiM 34

Vincent, Michael, and Ivo review the requirement for segmented, filamentous bacteria for the induction of a specific type of helper T cell in the gut.

• Induction of Th17 cells by segmented filamentous bacteria (Cell)
• Segmented filamentous bacteria take the stage (Nature)
• Genome of segmented filamentous bacteria reveals auxotrophy (Cell)
• Segmented filamentous bacteria and diabetes protection (PNAS)

Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twim@twiv.tv ,

Rosie Redfield talks about her evidence that a bacterium cannot grow on arsenic instead of phosphorus.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Jo Handelsman, and Michael Schmidt

Vincent, Jo, and Michael discuss an archetypal protein transport system in bacterial outer membranes, and evidence that gut microbial enterotypes might not fall into defined groups.

Links for this episode:

• Discovery of a TAM, a new bacterial protein transport system (Nat Struct Mol Biol)
• Commentary on TAM discovery
• Enterotypes of the human gut microbiome (Nature)
• Gut enterotypes might be less clear-cut (Ed Yong)
• Letters read on TWiM #31

On episode #30 of the podcast, Vincent, Elio, and Michael review how a toxin from Burkholderia pseudomallei inhibits protein synthesis, and the role of the gut microbiome in modulating insulin resistance in mice lacking an innate immune sensor.

On episode #29 of the podcast, Vincent and Stanley review how a phage pierces the cell membrane with an iron-loaded spike, and two programmed cell death systems in E. coli.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio review how competition within a host drives virulence of Streptococcus pneumoniae, and the expanding universe of the bacterial cytoskeleton.

Vincent, Elio, and Michael review how inflammation allows Salmonella to compete with fermenting gut microbes, and a riboswitch in bacterial and Archeal species that is triggered by fluoride.

Vincent, Elio, and Michael discuss the finding of Sutterella species in the gut of autistic children, and methods for cultivating oral bacteria.

On episode #25 of the podcast, Vincent, Elio, and Michael review bacteria that use the earth’s magnetic field for navigation, and identification of totally drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Vincent, Michael, and Cliff review ten compelling microbiology stories from 2011.

Vincent, Jo, Elio, and Michael explain how a swarming bacterium helps disperse a non-motile fungus, and bacterial antibiotic tolerance mediated by hydrogen sulfide and starvation responses.

Vincent and Michael speak with Alfred Sacchetti, MD, Chief of Emergency Services at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, about microbial infections encountered in the emergency room.

Vincent and Elio discuss ancient symbiosis between Alphaproteobacteria and catenulid flatworms, and a toxin from Helicobacter pylori that engages the mitochondrial fission machinery to induce host cell death.

On episode #20 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Michael, and Elio follow up on the outbreaks of E. coli in Germany and cholera in Haiti, then discuss genes that confer self-identity to Proteus mirabilis.

Vincent, Michael, Elio, and Jo discuss the genome sequence of Y. pestis from victims of the Black Death, and the effect of diet on gut microbial enterotypes.

Vincent, Michael, Elio, and Stanley explain how to make the human intestinal commensal and benign laboratory bacterium Escherichia coli K-12 into an invasive organism, and the unearthing of century-old spores in New York City.

Vincent, Michael, and Elio focus on endosymbiosis: the rapid spread of Ricekttsia in whitefiles, and a metabolic patchwork in nested symbionts of mealybugs.

On episode #16 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Michael, Arturo, Stuart, and David converse about antimicrobial resistance and why most fungi do not cause disease at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC).

On episode #15 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Michael and Jo review the number of species on Earth, evidence that the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak originated in Nepal, and how gut microbiota influence the immune response to influenza virus infection of the lung.

On episode #14 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Stanley, Margaret, Michael and Elio review how the fungus Cryptococcus escapes from macrophages, and electrical conductivity in nanowires formed by the bacterium Geobacter.

On episode #13 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Stanley, Jo, Michael and Elio discuss how colonic microbial ecology and risk for colitis are regulated by an inflammasome, and amelioration of intestinal inflammation in mice by delivery of a probiotic-derived soluble protein to the colon.

Vincent, Margaret, Michael and Elio review the use of photothermal nanoblades to dissect the Burkholderia intracellular life cycle, and manipulation of chromosomes in vivo for genome-wide codon replacement in E. coli.

Vincent, Margaret, Michael and Elio review the presence of extended spectrum beta-lactamase genes in chicken meat and in humans, and a beneficial effect of Helicobacter pylori colonization on the development of allergen-induced asthma.

On episode #10 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Margaret, Elio, Michael and Dickson discuss the symbiosis between the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the luminous, gram-negative bacterium Vibrio fischeri.

Vincent, Michael, and Cliff review the outbreak of bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome in Germany caused by Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4.

Vincent, Michael, and Stanley recorded TWiM #8 live at the 2011 ASM General Meeting in New Orleans, with guests Andreas Baümler, Nicole Dubilier, and Paul Rainey. They spoke about how pathogens benefit from disease, symbioses between chemosynthetic bacteria and marine invertebrates, and repetitive sequences in bacteria.

Vincent, Cliff, Elio, Margaret, and Michael discuss programmed cell death in E. coli, and the daily synthesis and degradation of enzymes needed for photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation by cyanobacteria.