Researchers make new insights into bacterial cell cycle

Three scientists in the Mera Lab, Stephanie Puentes-Rodriguez, Paola Mera, and Inoka Menikpurage, stand together smiling for the camera. They are in the doorway leading from one lab space to additional lab space. They are all smiling.
In a recent paper published in the Journal of Bacteriology, the Mera Lab focused on how the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus coordinates the replication and separation of the chromosome simultaneously. The researchers found that the regulators of those two crucial events communicate with each other...

Researchers shed new light on how copper poisons microbes

Stefanie Eben looks up at the camera with a smile. She is standing next to an anaerobic chamber.
Copper is deployed by our immune system to fight off pathogens and is also used in health care settings to stave off bacterial infections, but how the element does so is unclear. Now, research published in Molecular Microbiology by microbiologists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign...

Scientists discover a small immune system that packs a big punch

Headshot of Asma Hatoum-Aslan
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.