Sukunaarchaeum has the smallest archaeal genome yet found: about 238,000 base pairs and 189 genes, with almost no metabolism. Smaller bacterial genomes exist, and the peer-reviewed abstract drops the cell-or-virus label.
Kobe University isolated seven bacterial strains from PFAS-polluted river sediment in Osaka. Three cut PFOS by up to 17.8%; one removed up to 97% of PFHxS in real landfill leachate. Degradation or adsorption? Unsettled.
A team at the Institute of Science Tokyo found resistance genes running harder inside hospital drain biofilm than in the wastewater itself. Why new pipes can backfire.
A bacterium at Okinawa's deep-sea vents grows on electric current alone, building itself from CO2. JAMSTEC has caught electrosynthesis happening in the wild.
A Japanese research team from the University of Tokyo, JAMSTEC, and the National Institute of Polar Research has produced the first direct observational evidence that warm-water microbes carried into the Arctic Ocean are altering its nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Aboard the R/V Mirai between 2015 and 2020, they tracked how UCYN-A2, a nitrogen-fixing organism normally associated with subtropical seas, surged into the Arctic basin during the early ice-melt year of 2017, and why that matters for the world's most rapidly warming ocean.
Researchers at Japan's JAIST found that Ewingella americana, a bacterium from Japanese tree frog intestines, completely eliminated colorectal tumors in mice after a single dose, a 100% complete response rate that outperformed chemotherapy and immunotherapy in the same comparison. Here is what the preclinical study showed, and what it does not yet show.