Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan Medical School researchers found that calcium in the gut may help Clostridium difficile bacteria germinate. The new research shows C. diff, which forms ...

It lurks in hospitals and nursing homes, preying upon patients already weak from disease or advanced age. It kills nearly 30,000 Americans a year, and sickens half a million more. But new research ...

Here’s a spooky conundrum: Is a spore alive or dead? Gürol Süel, a biologist at the University of California, San Diego, wouldn’t blame you if you voted for dead: “There’s nothing to detect: no ...

When spore-forming bacteria, such as Bacillus or Clostridium, enter a state of starvation, they transform into a state of dormancy in order to survive. No other life form is as difficult to eliminate ...

Each year, about 500,000 people in the U.S. deal with gastrointestinal infections from Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), and more than 20,000 die from these infections. A new study performed in mice ...

Tapping into the unknown world of awakening dormant bacterial spores, researchers have revealed through atomic force microscopy the alterations of spore coat and germ cell wall that accompany the ...

It lurks in hospitals and nursing homes, surviving the cleaning crew's attempt to kill it by holing up in a tiny hard shell. It preys upon patients already weak from disease or advanced age. ‘Older ...

Understanding how clostridia bacteria emerge from spores, germinate and go on to produce the toxin responsible for botulism has taken a step forward thanks to scientists from the Institute of Food ...

GERMINATION of fungal spores is characterized physiologically by transformation of the spore from a dormant state of low activity to a state of high metabolic activity, and morphologically at a later ...