This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Actinobacteria are some of the most widely distributed bacteria in soils and are well known for their ability to degrade plant residues in pure culture in the laboratory. Yet, despite the importance of microbe-driven decomposition to carbon sequestration in terrestrial systems, their importance and specific activity across diverse environments in the field are unknown. Researchers recently evaluated the ecophysiological roles of Actinobacteria in rice straw residue decomposition in a series of field and microcosm experiments. They found that although Actinobacteria represented only 4.6% of the total bacterial abundance, they encoded 16% of the total carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) involved in the breakdown of carbohydrates. The researchers also found that Actinobacteria taxonomic and functional compositions were relatively stable during straw decomposition and that the importance of Actinobacteria in decomposition increased as soil fertility decreased..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In northern ecosystems, winter carbon loss is estimated to exceed growing season carbon uptake, primarily because of microbial decomposition. Viruses in soil alter microbial carbon cycling by affecting metabolic pathways and killing their hosts, but whether viruses are active under anoxic and sub-freezing soil conditions remains unknown. To find out, a recent study used stable isotope probing (SIP) targeted metagenomics to investigate active microbes in Alaskan Arctic peat soils under simulated winter conditions, with a particular focus on viruses and virus-host dynamics. Overall, 46 bacterial and 243 viral populations actively took up soil water labeled with ¹⁸O and respired CO₂. Active bacteria represented a small proportion of the total microbial community but were able to ferment and degrade organic matter. In contrast, a large diversity of viruses were found to be active, one-third of which were linked to active bacteria..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"In the absence of oxygen, some prokaryotes can degrade organic matter via anaerobic digestion. This occurs in natural settings, like wetlands, and industrial ones, like wastewater treatment or biogas production. But what about viruses? Bacteriophages can impact their hosts’ community structure through selective pressure and have been used to influence microbial communities, such as through pathogen control. A recent study examined the virome of anaerobic digestion communities undergoing prophage- inducing environmental stresses. The virome was almost entirely composed of tailed bacteriophages of the order Caudovirales. Metagenome reconstruction revealed 1,092 viral genomes and 120 prokaryotic genomes, and over half of the prokaryotic genomes contained a provirus in their genomic sequence. In general, species of viruses and prokaryotes could be grouped by having similar reactions to stressors. Archaea had the most pronounced reactions to stressors and featured behaviors unique to those species..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

The pork chops you buy in the supermarket neatly packaged in plastic and styrofoam may look completely sterile, but are, in fact, likely to be contaminated with disease-causing bacteria - and not with just any old bugs, but with hard-to-treat, antibiotic resistant strains. In a recently published study, researchers with the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System bought meat from a wide sampling of chain grocery stores across the country and analyzed the bacteria on the meat. Resistant microbes were found in 81% of ground turkey samples, 69% of pork chops, 55% of ground beef samples, and 39% of chicken parts.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Human gut microbes are critical for maintaining the integrity of the GI tract, immune system homeostasis, and host energy metabolism. Alterations in this network can have health consequences, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Antibiotic treatment compromises the composition of the gut microbiome, affecting microbial function and resulting in long-lasting detrimental effects on the host. A recent study examined how different antibiotics affect the ability of gut microbes to control intestinal inflammation. Researchers treated mice with antibiotics prior to fecal microbiota transplantation. They found that antibiotic pre-treatment significantly altered the ability of the microbiota to control intestinal inflammation. Streptomycin- and vancomycin-treated microbes failed to control inflammation, and pathobionts associated with IBD thrived. In contrast, microbes treated with metronidazole were able to control inflammation, and beneficial microbial species were enriched..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotic resistance is a growing threat to human and animal health, and this problem is accelerated by the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) between individual bacteria. ARGs tend to accumulate in the gut microbes of animals, and they reflect the resistome, or collection of ARGs, of the environment. Thus, one way to monitor the resistome of an environment could be sampling the gut microbiomes of animals. To that end, researchers examined the gut resistomes of two domesticated honeybee species, _Apis cerana_ and _Apis mellifera_. The resistome corresponded most strongly with the honeybee host species, rather than geographic region. The more heavily managed species, _A. mellifera_, carried the most ARGs and had the heaviest load of transferrable ARGs. However, transferrable ARGs were common in the microbiomes from both honeybee species..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Resistance to antibiotics is a growing global threat to human and animal health. Much of the current research into antibiotic resistance has focused on the human gut, but significantly less of it has examined rivers, which are akin to a terrestrial ‘gut.’ To close this gap, researchers examined the antibiotic resistance genes and their hosts in the 3rd longest river in the world, the Yangtze. They identified 1853 species of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that collectively carried 31 types of antibiotic resistance genes. Human pathogenic bacteria carried a disproportionately large share of the resistance genes. Specifically, human pathogens accounted for 5.9% of the host population found in the river sediment, but they carried 46% of the resistance genes there. In the water column, human pathogens carried 64% of the resistance genes while representing only 13.4% of the host population. The dominant antibiotic resistance genes differed from those found in the human gut, anthropogenic systems, or lakes..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antibiotics are powerful for fighting infection. But they could create a dangerous imbalance in the gut, where the eradication of harmful bacteria might make room for gut fungi to invade. To find out, researchers analyzed stool samples from 14 healthy participants. Samples were collected over 3 months following a 6-day course of antibiotics. While the bacterial community mostly rebounded over those 3 months, the fungal community shifted from one characterized largely by mutually beneficial interactions (red) to one fraught with competitive interactions (blue) with half of the bacterial-fungal interactions detected before the antibiotic treatment disappearing 3 months later. Metagenomics data revealed that certain bacteria normally help keep opportunistic fungal pathogens like Candida albicans in check. Understanding how could help researchers find ways to restore balance to the gut microbiome following drug treatment or during disease..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Antimicrobials are commonly used in agriculture and are important for animal health. This use drives most of the antimicrobial use globally and has led to an increase in antimicrobial resistance (AMR), including resistance to antimicrobials that are critical in human medicine. Researchers recently examined the AMR profiles of over 400 pigs, including wild boars, Tibetan pigs, and commercial pigs, under multiple rearing modes. They identified over a thousand potential antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) sequences that belonged to 69 different drug resistance classes. From this dataset a few patterns emerged. Tetracycline resistance was the most enriched, but aminoglycoside resistance had the most unique ARGs. Farm-reared pigs had higher AMR levels than semi-free-range pigs or wild boars..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In the explorable explanation players can learn how antibiotic resistance happens. They can interact with bacteria in this simulation to learn how when living things reproduce, there is a small amount of variance in their offspring. This allows organisms to respond to changes in their environment over several generations. Applied to bacteria, when they treated with antibiotics, only the strongest survive and multiply, creating an increasing resilient population.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) is an important bacterial disease of shrimp caused by some Vibrio species and has severe negative impacts on shrimp aquaculture globally. Antibiotics are commonly used prophylactically against such diseases but can cause bacterial antibiotic resistance and microbiome impairment. Given the risk of antibiotics to human and environmental health, the application of probiotics is a promising approach, but whether these probiotics affect the shrimp gut microbiome remains unknown. Recently, researchers examined how the shrimp gastrointestinal microbiota responded to the ILI strain, a Vibrio strain that also serves as an effective shrimp probiotic. The ILI strain was effective not only in preventing AHPND and promoting shrimp survival but also in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Microbial metagenomes are like a blueprint of all the functions performed by a microbial community. Some microbes can't be grown in the lab, so metagenomics is important for investigating otherwise-unknown microbial "dark matter". Short-read sequencing provides large amounts of data, but it's hard to assemble into complete genomes. A recent study combined short-read data with nanopore long-read data using Iterative Hybrid Assembly (IHA). The researchers reconstructed 49 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs), including some with very low coverage. In total, 34 MAGs did not belong to any known genus, representing unknown microbe groups. The IHA method revealed more of the genes present than a short-read-only approach and showed that the anammox genome of genus Ca. Brocadia contains two identical hydrazine synthase genes. The current method is best for enriched microbial communities and will be extended to high-complexity samples in the future..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"SARS-CoV-2 is the notorious virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Like other viruses, it coexists with a multitude of other microorganisms that could influence our susceptibility to infection. Thus, identifying associations between bacteria and SARS-CoV-2 could lend critical insight for the development of strategies for COVID-19 prevention and treatment. To meet this need, researchers recently characterized the microbial communities associated with COVID-19 patients, health care providers, and indoor surfaces in the hospital environment using 16S rRNA sequencing. They found SARS-CoV-2 RNA on 16% of the surfaces in COVID-19 patient rooms, with the highest prevalence in floor samples and lower prevalence on bed rails. SARS-CoV-2-positive samples had higher bacterial diversity than SARS-CoV-2-negative samples. Interestingly, bacteria in the genus Rothia were commonly found in the samples containing SARS-CoV-2, suggesting the existence of an association between these microorganisms..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Students are introduced to the concept of engineering biological organisms and studying their growth to be able to identify periods of fast and slow growth. They learn that bacteria are found everywhere, including on the surfaces of our hands. Student groups study three different conditions under which bacteria are found and compare the growth of the individual bacteria from each source. In addition to monitoring the quantity of bacteria from differ conditions, they record the growth of bacteria over time, which is an excellent tool to study binary fission and the reproduction of unicellular organisms.

In this new video we look at the basics of bacteria. We look at their classifications, sizes, shapes and how they reproduce. This video is intended to be a primer on bacteria. We will go into more details as we progress in this series.
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Yogurt is the byproduct of hungry bacteria that digest the lactose in milk. You can make more yogurt just by feeding the bacteria more milk.

In this inquiry activity, students generate investigable questions to explore the link between hygiene/cleanliness and bacteria growth/population. The students will present their conclusions, and video clips containing additional information will be discussed.

Try your hand at assembling the following bacteria jigsaw puzzle created with a Streptococcus image from CELLS alive! This puzzle is 32 pieces and generally takes a few minutes to solve.

Students construct paper recombinant plasmids to simulate the methods genetic engineers use to create modified bacteria. They learn what role enzymes, DNA and genes play in the modification of organisms. For the particular model they work on, they isolate a mammal insulin gene and combine it with a bacteria's gene sequence (plasmid DNA) for production of the protein insulin.