Bacteria can sneakily evade our best efforts at eradication by developing resistance to various pressures in their ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Bacteria are good at evolving to evade efforts to destroy it. But building defenses like antibiotic resistance drains limited ...

In lab experiments, bacteria transferred plasmids with AMR genes in the presence of zinc at reduced or nonexistent rates. Stopping the transfer without killing microbes may help reduce AMR without ...