Genetically Modified News

November 7, 2025

Top Headlines

Scientists Shocked to Find E. Coli Spreads as Fast as the Swine Flu

Nov. 4, 2025 — Researchers have, for the first time, estimated how quickly E. coli bacteria can spread between people — and one strain moves as fast as swine flu. Using genomic data from the UK and Norway, scientists modeled bacterial transmission rates and ...

Sunflowers May Be the Future of "Vegan Meat"

Nov. 4, 2025 — A collaboration between Brazilian and German researchers has led to a sunflower-based meat substitute that’s high in protein and minerals. The new ingredient, made from refined sunflower flour, delivers excellent nutritional value and a mild ...

Ancient Viruses Hidden Inside Bacteria Could Help Defeat Modern Infections

Nov. 3, 2025 — Penn State scientists uncovered an ancient bacterial defense where dormant viral DNA helps bacteria fight new viral threats. The enzyme PinQ flips bacterial genes to create protective proteins that block infection. Understanding this mechanism could ...

Trojan Horse Bacteria Sneak Cancer-killing Viruses Into Tumors

Aug. 17, 2025 — Scientists have engineered a groundbreaking cancer treatment that uses bacteria to smuggle viruses directly into tumors, bypassing the immune system and delivering a powerful one-two punch against cancer cells. The bacteria act like Trojan horses, ...

Bigger Crops, Fewer Nutrients: The Hidden Cost of Climate Change

July 10, 2025 — Climate change is silently sapping the nutrients from our food. A pioneering study finds that rising CO2 and higher temperatures are not only reshaping how crops grow but are also degrading their nutritional value especially in vital leafy greens ...

Insect Protein Blocks Bacterial Infection

June 2, 2025 — Scientists in Australia have developed a smart, bacteria-repelling coating based on resilin the ultra-elastic protein that gives fleas their legendary jumping power. When applied to surfaces like medical implants or surgical tools, the engineered ...

The EU Should Allow Gene Editing to Make Organic Farming More Sustainable, Researchers Say

May 30, 2025 — To achieve the European Green Deal's goal of 25% organic agriculture by 2030, researchers argue that new genomic techniques (NGTs) should be allowed without pre-market authorization in organic as ...

How Cholera Bacteria Outsmart Viruses

May 26, 2025 — Researchers uncover a notorious cholera strain that contains sophisticated immune systems to fend off viruses, which potentially helped it to fuel a devastating epidemic across Latin ...

Ancient DNA Used to Map Evolution of Fever-causing Bacteria

May 22, 2025 — Researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from Borrelia recurrentis, a type of bacteria that causes relapsing fever, pinpointing when it evolved to spread through lice rather than ticks, and how it gained and lost genes in the ...

Engineered Bacteria Can Deliver Antiviral Therapies, Vaccines

May 21, 2025 — New research demonstrates how specially engineered bacteria taken orally can operate as a delivery system for vaccines and antiviral ...

Researchers Restore Antibiotic Effect in the Event of Resistance

May 7, 2025 — Bacterial resistance negates the effect of antibiotics in the treatment of infection. Using mouse models, researchers now show that if antibiotics are administered with an enzyme called endolysin, the combined effect protects against infection by ...

Designer Microbe Shows Promise for Reducing Mercury Absorption from Seafood

May 4, 2025 — Scientists inserted DNA-encoding methylmercury detoxification enzymes into the genome of an abundant human gut bacterium. The engineered bacterium detoxified methylmercury in the gut of mice and dramatically reduced the amount that reached other ...

Latest Headlines

updated 7:38am EST

Stunning Images Reveal How Antibiotics Shatter Bacterial Defenses

Sep. 29, 2025 — Researchers have revealed how polymyxins, crucial last-resort antibiotics, break down bacterial armor by forcing cells to overproduce and shed it. Astonishingly, the drugs only kill bacteria when ...

Hiding in Plain Sight: Researchers Uncover the Prevalence of 'Curiosity' Virus

May 1, 2025 — A type of virus thought to be a 'mere curiosity' is plentiful in one common bacteria, and possibly others, a research team has found. The discovery ...

Bacteria's Mysterious Viruses Can Fan Flames of Antibiotic Damage

Apr. 30, 2025 — Scientists built a model that allows them to diminish phage communities from a mouse gut microbiome -- and then bring them back -- without affecting the bacteria. On a test run of their model, ...

Phages: Molecular-Scale Components of Head, Tail Tube, Tail Tip

Apr. 21, 2025 — Researchers have produced the most detailed image to date of a bacteriophage -- phage for short -- that has allowed them to see for the first time the structural makeup of the part of the phage that ...

Structural Images of a Tuberculosis-Fighting Virus

Apr. 16, 2025 — Mycobacteria are the world's most deadly bacteria --c ausing infectious diseases including tuberculosis (TB), which alone kills more than one million people each year. New drugs to fight these ...

Forward Genetics Approach Reveals the Factor Responsible for Carbon Trade-Off in Leaves

Apr. 16, 2025 — Starch and oils are known as storehouses of carbon in plants. However, the way in which carbon resources are allocated during metabolism in plants ...

In Croatia's Freshwater Lakes, Selfish Bacteria Hoard Nutrients

Apr. 13, 2025 — Bacteria play key roles in degrading organic matter, both in the soil and in aquatic ecosystems. While most bacteria digest large molecules externally, allowing other community members to share and ...

Discovery of Bacteria's Defense Against Viruses Becomes a Piece of the Puzzle Against Resistance

Apr. 4, 2025 — Antibiotic resistance is a global health challenge that could overtake cancer mortality within a few decades. In a new study, researchers show that ...

Multi-Resistance in Bacteria Predicted by AI Model

Apr. 2, 2025 — An AI model trained on large amounts of genetic data can predict whether bacteria will become antibiotic-resistant. The new study shows that antibiotic resistance is more easily transmitted between ...

How Bacteria 'Vaccinate' Themselves With Genetic Material from Dormant Viruses

Mar. 22, 2025 — Scientists say they have shed new light on how bacteria protect themselves from certain phage invaders -- by seizing genetic material from weakened, ...

Microplastics Could Be Fueling Antibiotic Resistance

Mar. 11, 2025 — Researchers at Boston University found that microplastics can help bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. When E. coli grew on microplastics, they formed stronger biofilms that blocked antibiotic ...

Synthetic Microbiome Therapy Suppresses Bacterial Infection Without Antibiotics

Mar. 3, 2025 — A synthetic microbiome therapy, tested in mice, holds promise as a new treatment for C. difficile, a notoriously difficult-to-treat bacterial infection, according to a team of researchers. The ...

Scientists Track Pneumonia-Causing Bacteria as They Infect the Blood Stream

Feb. 27, 2025 — Researchers use a unique barcoding system to track K. pneumoniae bacteria as it moved throughout the ...

Select Corn Lines Contain Compounds That Sicken, Kill Major Crop Pest

Feb. 26, 2025 — The corn earworm causes the loss of more than 76 million bushels of corn in the United States annually, and there is mounting evidence that increasingly extreme weather events and temperatures will ...

Understanding the World Within: Study Reveals New Insights Into Phage--Bacteria Interactions in the Gut Microbiome

Feb. 25, 2025 — Researchers are investigating whether certain viruses known as bacteriophages, or phages, which specifically infect bacteria but not human cells, affect the development of type 1 diabetes in young ...

Biologists Transform Gut Bacteria Into Tiny Protein Pharmacies

Feb. 18, 2025 — Biologists converted gut bacteria into miniature protein factories that manufacture and release a sustained flow of targeted proteins inside the lower intestines. This technique solves one of the ...

Helping Viruses Deliver a Knockout Blow for Killer Bacteria

Feb. 4, 2025 — In the face of rising concerns about antibiotic resistant infections, an international group of microbial experts have launched a powerful and flexible free online genomic toolkit for more rapid ...

High-Yield Rice Breed Emits Up to 70% Less Methane

Feb. 3, 2025 — Rice cultivation is responsible for around 12% of global methane emissions, and these emissions are expected to increase with global warming and as the human population continues to grow. Now, ...

A Common Mouth and Gut Bacteria May Be Linked With Increased Stroke Risk

Jan. 30, 2025 — Increased levels of Streptococcus anginosus, a common type of bacteria that usually lives in the mouth and gut, was found in the gut of recent stroke survivors in ...

Scientists Predict What Will Be Top of the Crops in UK by 2080 Due to Climate Change

Jan. 23, 2025 — While climate change is likely to present significant challenges to agriculture in coming decades, it could also mean that crops such as chickpeas, soyabeans and oranges are widely grown across the ...

Sophisticated Early Warning System: How Bacteria Respond to Threats

Jan. 16, 2025 — Researchers have discovered that bacteria can sense threats in advance through a general danger signal. Bacteria detect when nearby cells are dying and proactively form a protective biofilm. ...

Research Using Non-Toxic Bacteria to Fight High-Mortality Cancers Prepares for Clinical Trials

Jan. 16, 2025 — Scientists have made 'exciting,' patient-friendly advances in developing a non-toxic bacterial therapy, BacID, to deliver cancer-fighting drugs directly into tumors. This emerging ...

Bacterial Survival Genes Uncovered Using Evolutionary Map

Jan. 16, 2025 — Researchers have described how the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus genetically adapts to humans, including mutations that allow some strains to evade the immune system and become resistant to ...

System to Auto-Detect New Variants Will Inform Better Response to Future Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Jan. 1, 2025 — Researchers have come up with a new way to identify more infectious variants of viruses or bacteria that start spreading in humans -- including those causing flu, COVID, whooping cough and ...

Scientists Find a Vulnerability in Antibiotic Resistance Mechanism

Dec. 17, 2024 — Superbugs, bacteria that are immune to multiple antibiotics, pose a great challenge to modern medicine. Researchers have now identified a weakness in the bacterial machinery that drives antibiotic ...

How the Dirt Under Our Feet Could Affect Human Health

Dec. 12, 2024 — Researchers are linking human activity to increased gene transfer from soil bacteria to ...

Diverse Virus Populations Coexist on Single Strains of Gut Bacteria

Dec. 12, 2024 — A study offers evidence that a single bacterial species -- the host of the phage -- can maintain a diverse community of competing phage species. Knowing how more than one kind of virus can survive ...

Scientists Transform Ubiquitous Skin Bacterium Into a Topical Vaccine

Dec. 11, 2024 — Scientists' findings in mice could translate into a radical, needle-free vaccination approach that would also eliminate reactions including fever, swelling and ...

CAST Mouse Model: A Crucial Tool for Future COVID-19 Outbreaks

Dec. 6, 2024 — Researchers have identified the first mouse strain that is susceptible to severe COVID-19 without the need for genetic modification. This development marks a pivotal step forward in infectious ...

What a Gut Fungus Reveals About Symbiosis and Allergy

Nov. 27, 2024 — A fungus discovered in the mouse stomach may hold a key to fungal evolution within the gastrointestinal tract, according to new research. The finding suggests that preclinical studies until now have ...