Genetic surveys reveal the diversity of bacteria and lead to the questioning of species concepts used to categorize bacteria. One difficulty in defining bacterial species arises from the high rates of ...

In a recent study published in the Microorganisms journal, researchers in China reviewed the uses of bacterial-artificial-chromosome (BAC)-based genome editing techniques in herpesvirus research.

New research shows bacteria form distinct species and maintain cohesion through frequent DNA exchange via homologous recombination. When Kostas Konstantinidis proved that many microbes -- like plants ...

Deinococcus radiodurans can survive a range of harsh environments and is resistant to very high levels of ionizing and UV radiation, dehydration, cold, vacuum, and even acid. Therefore, the bacterium ...

“TAR cloning is used to genetically engineer synthetic viruses with novel properties that may be used for the development of new vaccines.” Transformation-associated recombination (TAR) cloning ...

Bacteria don’t have sex as such, but they can mix their genetic material by pulling in DNA from dead bacterial cells and inserting these into their own genome. New research has found that this process ...

The Plant Cell, Vol. 23, No. 7 (JULY 2011), pp. 2499-2513 (15 pages) Members of the flowering plant family Cucurbitaceae harbor the largest known mitochondrial genomes. Here, we report the 1685-kb ...

When Kostas Konstantinidis proved that many bacteria—like plants and animals—are organized into species, he upended a ...