Reports of the resistance of UTIs to antibiotics are on the rise. Can a new method focused on preventing the bacteria from clinging to the lining of the urinary tract help?

Just when you think you’ve found the lost City of Ithaca, pesky science goes and proves otherwise…

This week’s image is the bacterial hand print of an 8-year old boy, developed by his mother in her microbiology lab.

Sarah Gaunt on how we know whether it’s safe to go for a swim

Faiza Peeran on why the citizen scientists of America collected bacteria to send into space

Anna Ikarashi on how agriculture today will make it harder for future generations to feed themselves

Joanna Blackburn shines light on important but often forgotten organs of the human body

From speed and endurance to cognitive limits, Anne Petzold takes a look at just how far humans can go…

Ureaplasma, normally a resident of the urinary tract, has been discovered to be causing devastating problems for some organ transplant patients

Enter into the Bacteria Light Lab. Bask in the light of bioluminescent bacteria, learn about the quantum effects of light in whole-genome sequencing, investigate historical heliotherapy and modern cutting-edge laser light treatments to combat infection, create your own light-reactive bacteria ‘pet’, and vote in a bacteria beauty contest.

From the origin of life through to the development of language and culture, Charlotte Mykura explores the rise of human beings

2015 Leeuwenhoek Lecture by Professor Jeff Errington. The cell wall is a crucial structure found in almost all bacteria. It is the target for our best antibiotics and fragments of the wall trigger powerful innate immune responses against infection.

Connie Orbach and Nic Rae endure temptation at the Press Launch of Cravings, the new Science Museum show

An ingenious new invention named ‘iChip’ allows detection of antibiotics produced by soil microbes – such antibiotics utilised by humans to fight infection

Leprosy was once thought to be on the verge of elimination. Neil Stoker talks to Professor Diana Lockwood about what went wrong.

Bacteria are our ancient enemies, evolving ever more clever ways of outmanoeuvring our natural defences and scientific technologies. For millennia, a simple cut or cough could kill. With the development of antibiotics, it seemed we would reign supreme. But now the bacteria are gaining ground.

From the ingenious to the ridiculous: Hannah Wilson describes startling super biological adaptations

Circadian rhythms run the biological world like clockwork. Madeleine Hurry explains how they work, from the genes in a bacterium to the human brain

Mutations are ticks on the molecular clock, and can now be used to measure evolutionary distances

Why studying our microbial friends may reveal how and why we age

From tens of seconds to billions of years, the rate evolution has no rules …

Extremophiles thrive in the most uncomfortable places on Earth and beyond …

Longitude prize recognises growing antibiotics resistance could be disastrous for global health …

An emerging new field that links concepts of biology to the expression of design – and vice versa …

Part of the Imperial Festival podcast series: Senja Barthel uses mathematics to discover more about knots …

Using analogue computation could ramp up the processing power of synthetic life …

From HG Wells’s Invisible Man to Sir Isaac Newton, what motivates scientists to become their own experimental guinea pigs? …

Harmful bacteria selectively ‘eat’ DNA to build antibiotic resistance. The discovery could help prevent outbreaks of meningitis …

Raising a glass to self-experimenting scientists…

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the cinema to watch The Amazing Spider-Man. When the words “DNA” and “recombination” popped up during the film, I got excited and started thinking. I later asked myself: In reality, how close are we to creating artificial hybrid species? Let’s briefly revisit the idea of Spider-Man, a.k.a. Peter Parker. Parker […]