microorganisms

Since their discovery by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, microorganisms have been found in almost every environment on earth. Microorganisms are capable...

Plastic and microplastic pollution of oceans is a wicked problem. Using bioinformatics and statistical analysis, scientist Victor Gambarini looked to correlate marine microbes that could degrade...

Extremophilic microorganisms are called extremophiles and live in environments considered hostile to most forms of life. Scientists have only discovered life in these extreme environments in...

What are extremophilic microorganisms? Let’s start by looking closer at microorganisms. All the organisms we know about on Earth are either cellular (by far the majority)...

Florence Nightingale, who was born 200 years ago, is rightly famed for revolutionising nursing. Her approach to caring for wounded soldiers and training nurses in the...

There are many different viruses. Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in birds and mammals. They are all similar in their shape, and...

Research led by Victoria University of Wellington’s Dr Monica Gerth in collaboration with iwi has discovered molecules from New Zealand native plants could hold the solution...

The first human to ever visit the Ross Sea might have been Ui-te-Rangiora, who travelled there from Rarotonga in the 7th century. The first New Zealander...

Microbes – friend or foe? Some microbes are essential to life, while others cause sickness in plants and animals, including humans. For decades, we have kept...

CAPOW – Curious About Processing Organic Waste – is a Taranaki-based citizen science project and one of the Participatory Science Platform (PSP) projects supported by the...

In this video conference, find out how bacteria are being used to fight sore throats. Join 'Supervader' and participants from Wellington’s 2006 Kids’ Conference as they...

Kauri are a tuakana species in Aotearoa – they are like the older sibling, towering above the ngahere (forests), giving protection for the younger organisms. Kauri...

Citizen science and the local community Rongomai Primary School is leading a Healthy Homes, Healthy Futures project. The project is part of the Participatory Science Platform...

Our homes are supposed to be our safe places, but for nearly a third of New Zealanders, damp homes can have a serious effect on our...

What’s going on inside us when we get sick? What do germs have to do with us getting sick? How does our body help us to...

In 2014, the World Health Organization announced the results of its first global report on antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance. They say that antibiotic resistance is...

In an age where we are becoming increasingly concerned about bacterial evolution and the effectiveness of antibiotics, there is an on-going need for novel antimicrobial compounds...

Find out how and why we use bacteria to improve our lives, and discover how the DNA revolution has led to new uses for bacteria. Making...

By choosing appropriate genes to introduce into bacteria, scientists have developed bacteria with characteristics that are useful to humans – such as the ability to make...

Like other organisms, bacteria use double-stranded DNA as their genetic material. However, bacteria organise their DNA differently to more complex organisms. Bacterial DNA – a circular...

The bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli for short) is crucial in modern biotechnology. Scientists use it to store DNA sequences from other organisms, to produce proteins...

The development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of the greatest threats to human health today. The incorrect use of antibiotics, medical tourism and natural...

Using modern laboratory techniques, it is relatively easy to add pieces of foreign DNA to bacteria. To do this, scientists first package their DNA of interest...

Bacteria can produce foreign proteins from introduced genes, using their own gene expression machinery. Producing proteins in bacteria has greatly simplified the study of how proteins...

In a bacterial library, many different DNA sequences are introduced into the cells of a bacterial culture. Libraries are powerful tools for improving protein function. What...