Bacteria

UF students and researchers address the links between intestinal pathogens, livestock, and children’s gut health.

A UF professor deploys unusual methods in the field to investigate bacteria that infect tomato and pepper crops.

A UF infectious disease expert underscores a call for research into connections between the gut microbiome and health inequities.

New UF/EPI study uncovers a connection between an animal's genetics and helpful gut bacteria that are associated with faster animal growth and resistance against disease.

New work from the lab of Tony Maurelli, associate chair of the department of environmental and global health in UF's College of Public Health and Health Professions, has solved a quirky mystery about parasitic bacteria that cause the sexually-transmitted disease known as Chlamydia.

An unusual melioidosis infection in Australia offers researchers a rare window into understanding how highly pathogenic bacteria can adapt to life within a host.

UF researchers uncovered evidence that the bacteria which cause cholera, Vibrio cholerae, have established an aquatic reservoir in Haitian waterways where they are now adapting and evolving. This marks the first time the pathogenic bacteria are known to have a reservoir outside of the Bay of Bengal, which is traditionally viewed as their home.

UF researchers have resolved a two-decade old mystery centered upon how the bacteria Chlamydia divide and reproduce. Newly published results from the lab of Anthony Maurelli, a microbiologist in UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions and the EPI, reveal that how these parasitic pathogens replicate diverges from a nearly universal norm.

An international interdisciplinary project led by EPI investigator Arie Havelaar seeks to identify bacterial causes of enteric dysfunction and chronic gut inflammation in Ethiopian children. By studying complex interactions between livestock and people, the project aims to identify reservoirs and exposure pathways by which Campylobacter bacteria colonize kids. But interventions are the ultimate goal.

A new study published in Nature Microbiology reveals that bacteria present in different regions of the gastrointestinal tract either enhance or block murine norovirus infections. The startling findings expand our understanding of how the virus interacts with both its host immune system and the intestinal microbiome, which may one day be useful for developing an antiviral therapy.