Alleviating food insecurity is often seen as one of the fundamental roles a country should fulfill. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is effective in addressing the right to food in the US, and that the program can serve as an example for countries that struggle to provide food for all citizens.
Read moreAn international team of researchers identifies the genetic basis for the hypervirulence of a Listeria strain that can cause severe infections.
Read moreThe calorie content of popular starters, sides and desserts served in UK restaurant chains is too high and only a minority meet public health recommendations.
Read moreBiological engineers can program bacteriophages to kill different strains of E. coli by making mutations in the protein that the viruses use to bind to host cells. These engineered phages are less likely to provoke resistance in bacteria, and could help to overcome antibiotic resistance.
Read moreWe make food decisions several times a day – from what time we eat to how much – but a new study has found we are not very good at judging the energy-density of what we consume.
Read moreThe new observation that strains of V. cholerae can be expelled into the environment after being ingested by protozoa, and that these bacteria are then primed for colonization and infection in humans, could help explain why cholera is so persistent in aquatic environments. The disease-causing bacteria are protected in the protozoan gut and ejected into the environment in membrane-bound expelled food vacuoles (EFVs).
Read moreAn international study used human retinal cells to demonstrate how the Toxoplasma parasite creates a characteristic eye lesion that can help doctors diagnose the infection.
Read moreNew findings reveal many different structural models for viruses, which can eventually lead to developing more targeted antiviral vaccines, by improving our understanding of how viruses form, evolve and infect their hosts.
Read moreFor the last 60 million years, fungus-growing ants have farmed fungi for food. In their cultivation of those fungi, they've successfully relied on bacteria-produced antimicrobial ingredients to protect their crops from other species of parasitic fungi. Now, researchers say they are looking to these ants to find new ways to stop or slow the evolution of antibiotic resistance that now presents a threat to modern medicine.
Read moreThe first extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains of Salmonella Typhimurium, a pathogen which is responsible for millions of bloodstream infections per year in sub-Saharan Africa, have been identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Drug-resistance has increased in successive groups of S. Typhimurium over time. These new strains are resistant to all but one of the commonly available drugs in the DRC, with one sample showing reduced susceptibility to this final antibiotic.
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