microbe

“If there is something alive — imagine a Europanian microbe, let alone Europanian fish people — these things would be shot into space,” Nye said.

Their study appears today in Cell Host & Microbe.

Generically, however, it refers to laboratory work that augments natural qualities of a microbe to facilitate experimental scrutiny or achieve a necessary goal, such as allowing microbes to produce a flu vaccine or bacteria to produce artificial insulin.

The group was intrigued with the healing properties of certain bacteria such as S. epidermidis, a microbe that naturally lives on human skin and has been shown to reduce inflammation.

The study is a proof-of-concept that antibiotics that kill a pathogenic microbe while sparing beneficial bacteria in the gut can be developed for gram-negative infections -- some of the most challenging infections to treat, Hergenrother said.