Bacteria can sneakily evade our best efforts at eradication by developing resistance to various pressures in their environment, for example, antibiotic-resistant bacteria stubbornly survive the usual ...

Conjugation has classically been considered a bacterium-to-bacterium DNA transfer driven by the donor cell and is typically plasmid-encoded. Theoretically it is possible that any type of cell can ...

Extracellular appendages on gut bacteria accelerate the transfer of antibiotic-resistance genes. “The death toll from antimicrobial resistance is expected to match cancer by 2050, meaning we urgently ...

Genes responsible for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can spread from microbe to microbe through circular genetic material called plasmids, and this lateral transfer occurs in the gut. This week in ...

Bacterial cells (black outlines) contain plasmids (red) in addition to their main genome (green). A conjugative plasmid can transfer genetic material between cells as shown here, which can spread ...