bacteria

Federal health officials confirmed Thursday that two cases of invasive infections caused by cronobacter sakazakii have been reported in 2023, both in infants who consumed powdered infant formula made by Abbott Nutrition, the company at the center of the 2022 crisis.

Farmers and scientists have long understood that what lives beneath the soil affects how crops grow. Often, they work to fight plant diseases—warding off…

Flooding and concerns about water quality have prompted the closings of more public swimming beaches in Missouri.The Department of Natural Resources says…

A southwest Missouri county health department has posted health advisories for three waterways because of high bacteria levels.The Springfield News-Leader…

Soil bacteria may be helping to make disease-causing bacteria resistant to antibiotics. That’s according to a new study out of Washington University. Lead researcher, microbiologist Gautam Dantas, says he and his colleagues found seven genes in farmland soil bacteria that are identical to genes in human pathogens – and that provide resistance to a wide range of antibiotics. Dantas says the genes for antibiotic resistance were clustered together with other genes known to move DNA between bacteria. “Now you have these multi-drug resistance clusters, these genes clusters, which in principle, in a single transfer event, could transfer multi-drug resistance from one bacteria to the other,” Dantas said. Dantas says soil bacteria could be passing genes to human pathogens, or vice versa. “Even though these bacteria might live most of the time in different spaces, associated with humans, or associated with the soil, or associated with aquatic environments, they have the ability to exchange these genes,” Dantas said. “And they’re exchanging genes that are clearly going to compromise our ability to treat infectious disease.” Dantas says antibiotics are being overused both in human medicine and in agriculture, and combatting antibiotic resistance is going to take a joint effort in agriculture and medicine. “We need to be better about how we regulate antibiotic use in animals, and at the same time, better about how we regulate the prescription of antibiotics in the clinic,” Dantas said. His research is published in the journal Science. Follow Veronique LaCapra on Twitter: @KWMUScience

The bacterium Enterococcus faecalis, which lives in the human gut, is just one type of microbe that was studied as part of the Human Microbiome Project…