Microbiology

A recent study by a team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has discovered a unique immune system in bacteria composed of a single enzyme that destroys a broad range of bacterial viruses (known as phages). Their findings were published in Cell Host & Microbe.

MCB major Neha Arun shares her experiences working as an undergraduate researcher in Professor Collin Kieffer's lab in the Department of Microbiology, as well as a look at life outside the lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The SHIELD: Target, Test, Tell program combined frequent saliva tests with modeling and an app to keep the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus and surrounding community safe when on-campus operations resumed in fall 2020.

Wilson’s lab works, among other things, to elucidate the structure and function of bacterial toxins, to understand how they interact with host cells, and to develop post-exposure toxin therapeutics.

It is rare to fall in love with a field during college, pursue it, and build a stellar career. Yet, that’s what John Cronan’s life has always been about- fatty acids.

Two School of Molecular & Cellular Biology students were named winners at the 2022 Undergraduate Research Symposium.

A team led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign tracked the rise and fall of SARS-CoV-2 in the saliva and nasal cavities of people newly infected with the virus. The study was the first to follow acute COVID-19 infections over time through repeated sampling and to compare...

The world around us contains many chemicals that are useful for medicines, crop protection, and animal health. These chemicals—known as natural products—have typically been discovered by sheer luck. Unsurprisingly, traditional techniques often find the same products, like antibiotics, repeatedly...

Researchers at the University of Illinois shed new light on the process surrounding the transport of vitamin B12, a type of large corrinoid molecules. Their findings on how the mobilization of B12 transporters alters the competitive dynamics in a human gut microbe are published in the journal Cell...

The Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute spotlights microbiology assistant professor Paola Mera and shares how she discovered her passion for research. Mera's research aims at filling the gaps in knowledge to control the life cycle of bacteria so that they can design better ways to enhance...